Could you please review (your thoughts on its basic outlook/design) my amateur personal website: tadejpersic.50webs.org? This version is in Slovenian language, however the one on sub-domain ending with .com is in English; you can easily navigate from one to another through the drop-down box (see the screenshot below) Although it's true that it is just a website that I've used to practice HTML (XHTML to be precise) & CSS on, and things like how <div> containers work (one inside another one and stuff), floating the content to left/right, experimenting with margins & padding and other such stuff. But above all, I give a credit to it for NOT using tables for layout anymore. As mentioned, it's written "by hand" with a bit of copy/paste of course (I mean it's not built with any "build your own website" type of program or such), it is more or less completely valid by web standards (including all pages being XHTML 1.0 & CSS valid by W3C). I must stress though that its main point is in its simplicity! It does contain the allowed number of Httpool AdPlatform ads (the Slovenian version) and the allowed number of Google AdSense ads (the English variant), and that's all. And trust me, I don't get almost anything (from either version). Thanks in advance, tayiper
Inaccessible fixed width layout mated to inaccessible fixed metric fonts makes it pretty much useless to a LOT of visitors. The stuffing the menu in full width makes it hard to use, as does the relatively short line-heights with the lengthy 'wall of text' -- and since I'm pretty much famous for MAKING "walls of text" for me to react such is saying something. The 'whitespace stripping for nothing' makes the markup hard to follow, though I suspect that was mostly done to sweep the pointless useless meta, overstuffed/not relevant/guaranteed to be ignored keywords, and other pointless <head> elements under the rug. There seems to be a complete lack of anything remotely resembling semantic markup on the page, broken attempts to use scripting to supplant TARGET - a behavior that has no business on any website written after 1997, pointlessly stupid use of the TITLE attribute on elements like your H2, gibberish use of numbered heading tags, presentational use of classes, multiple pointless tracking packages, that stupid malfing RDF nonsense... Not exactly surprising you have 20k of HTML to deliver 4k of plaintext and NO content images. (literally I wouldn't even have any IMG tags on the page given what I'm seeing) -- that's easily two to three times as much code as should have been needed. You figure in all the extra crap on the page like the 16 javascripts totalling over 547k, and the end result is a 41 files train wreck coming to over 600k, for a site that when built properly probably shouldn't consume more than a half dozen files coming to 70k or less. Inaccessible design, lack of design, inaccessible/incomplete/gibberish markup -- I'm kinda shocked it validates...
It was created back in 2004 or 2005 or so as I said, strictly as an "amateur personal website" which main purpose was for me to practice HTML & CSS on (compare to using tables on my first such similarly odd looking website which does use one table on one section of the site, see: "intro.html" page), and also I didn't have in mind smart phone users at the time, and honestly, nor I do now. And again, I don't even expect many visitors (and/or AdSense clicks). Yeah I agree with that, as some well-known and established websites do, I use a lot of unnecessary meta tags. My bad. True, everything you said except I have one commment regarding "broken attempts to use scripting to supplant TARGET", since as we all know ="TARGET" HTML would broke W3C standards, I decided to use a bit of JavaScript on those links for which I wanted to open in new tab/window (instead of the same one) so that the visitor doesn't leave my page. But what's the alternative nowadays? Because clearly I am not in this business as you can see. I am not sure exactly what are you talking about here; 16 javascripts & 600k for the entire website? (/EDIT: Ahh I see, you mentioned also "41 files train wreck" ), because for example, if I save one page (let's say the "index.html" one) in Firefox for instance, I get one 24 KB .html file and 13 .pngs (those 16x16 px icons, total: 6,7 KB) and 1 .gif, while all the .js files ("counter_xhtml.js", "ga.js", "script.js", and "show_ads.js") added by "Httpool AdPlatform" are "responsible" for the remanining 64,7 KB. If I recall correctly, when I ran my pages through WebSiteOptimization.com analyse service (I don't know if it's still there /EDIT: Yeah here it is: Web Page Analyzer) it showed just a few warnings, while all other parameters were ok (single pages' sizes, number of external/total http requests, total size of images etc.) Thanks a lot anyway!
The alternative is related to the fact you are missing WHY it was deprecated/removed from 4 Strict/newer-- common mistake since most who 'demand' that action stick their heads in the sand when you try to tell them this. WHY you ask was it removed? That's the question everyone SHOULD ask; it wasn't arbitrary at all. Opening in a new window breaks the default navigation of a browser, particularly for keyboard or non-visual users. It is -- generally speaking -- a complete train wreck in terms of accessibility and a behavior you have NO BUSINESS putting on a website. Shoving a new window down the user's throat whether they want it or not is just bad accessibility -- no matter how gooey in the pants it makes certain marketing types who don't know enough about the Internet or accessibility to open their mouths about what should/shouldn't be done on a site. If the user wants to open a link in a new window, they can middle click, or control click, or choose it from the right click menu -- do not take the decision away from visitors, you're just going to piss off users LIKE ME. So the 'alternative' to TARGET? That's simple. DON'T!!! I pulled the numbers from the waterfall in Opera Dragonfly, though you could get the same results from Firebug or the Web Developer Toolbar for firefox. It tells you how much is REALLY being downloaded in files. VERY handy to know particularly with off the shelf rubbish like ad services -- more so when users like myself NEVER see ads on ANY website; since I don't believe in putting ads on websites as I trust the sleazeball online advertising scam artists about as far as I could throw the USS Iowa. ... as to WSO, their cute little 'tool' misses a LOT... though at least unlike Yahoo or Google's page speed tools it's not skewed and lying to try and sell you something. Case in point those two will give lower ratings to sites they ADMIT are ten times faster just because they aren't dicking with caching or using a DSN :/ Really though automating page analysis, at least in the case of the existing tools, leaves out a lot as machines just aren't able to make a proper analysis compared to a bit of grey matter.