In this issue

Style sheets – web pages are changing

In the beginning was a web browser called Mosaic.  Back in the early days all web pages consisted of words in Times Roman on a grey background with the odd picture placed in between paragraphs.   At the time this seemed great. 

Then things changed and new HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) standards meant you could place text and images anywhere you wanted on the screen.  Text could be any font and any size.  It was a breakthrough.  Now after about ten years things are changing again. 

In 1996 style sheets were introduced (CSS1).  A style sheet is code which is separate from the HTML but which specifies things like fonts and colours.  Because the style information is separate from the web pages, it is much easier to make global changes to the site. 

In 1998 things went further forward with CSS2 which provided many more functions.  It took a while before browsers caught up with CSS2 and rolled out to users, but we have pretty much reached the stage at which we can use it with reasonable confidence, and we are standardising on CSS2 techniques for new web sites.

With CSS2, all of the cosmetic aspects of a page can be handled by the style sheet.  This includes positioning, rollovers, drop-downs and graphics as well as fonts and colours.  The HTML code shrinks dramatically. 

This brings many benefits:

• The web site may load much faster because the style sheet can be downloaded once by the browser per site; the pages themselves are very simple and small.
• The web pages tend to be very accessible because they are so simple
• Search engines think that these simple pages are great, so it’s a real benefit to search engine optimisers.
• Different style sheets can be specified for different purposes.  You don’t need a ‘printer friendly page’ because a different style sheet can be specified for the printer which makes the printed page look just the way you want.  The same goes for mobile devices.

So CSS2 brings real benefits.  However there are a couple of issues:  

• CSS2 doesn’t work with Nescape 4.x at all.  They get Times Roman with no pictures.
• Internet Explorer 5 on a Mac is rather buggy with CSS2.  Some things don’t work and there are definite bugs.  If I were a Mac user I would have switched to Firefox by now but there is no accounting for taste.  Basically you can spend 50% of your time making the wretched page work for IE5 on a Mac.  You may decide it is not worth the trouble and I couldn’t possibly comment.

This is in our view the way forward.   If you want to find out more please talk to us. By the way, I would just like to thank Helen White at Dogstar who opened my eyes to what is possible. 

Business intelligence

Broadcase email vendor EmailLabs has figured out how to measure the length of time an email is open for.  The average for an opt-in mailing list was 15-20 seconds.  They estimate 20 seconds is about the time to scan 50 words.  Of course people don’t spend all their time reading, so on average less than 50 words will be read.  Now this is an average – so treat with care.  Many people will open an email and delete it immediately.  Others (often like me) will  open it, get distracted, and the mail will stay open covered by other windows for hours.  So the distribution curve of reading times would be more interesting than the average. 

By the time this newsletter goes out the free access time on this report will have gone.  But here was the link anyway.  If you don’t subscribe (free) to the Marketingsherpa service and you are interested in stuff like this them you should do so. 
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2892

MarketingPilot have an approach to design that would make most creative types wince.  There site is strictly functional, with simple black and white pages.  They use icons familiar to PC users to indicate document and folders.  Yet it works. People see the page and know exactly what it contains and what they need to do next.   Read the case study here http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2911 (open access till 19th feb.)

Technical tips - Page rank.

Page rank is one of the factors that Google takes into account when ranking pages.  It is a measure of how many and how good are the links to your site from other sites (inbound links).  Not all links are equal.  An inbound link will score higher if the page it is on has a high page rank and lower if it is one of many links on that page.

You can find out your page rank by installing the Google toolbar on Internet Explorer on your PC.  Go to toolbar.google.com and follow the instructions.

The page rank figure you get will be indicative.  It only seems to be updated over a cycle of several months, so anything you see could be way out of date.  If your site shows up as zero don’t panic for three months at least.  Then you can panic to your hearts content.

Another important factor is that if you have multiple domain names for your web site, for example www.yourcompany.com and www.yourcompany.co.uk Google will see them as two separate sites with two separate page rank figures.  If some sites link to one and some to the other you split the score.  The best answer is to choose your primary URL and then make sure that all the others are redirected by your web server with a special redirect method that goes under the name of a ‘301 redirect’.  Your web server administrator should know what this means. 

News from the web

The big news is that the Microsoft search engine went live this week.  Check it out at http://search.msn.com/

The New York Times (‘All the news that’s fit to browse’) is considering charging for access to its web site.  How much longer can we expect to get great content like this (and for example the BBC and Guardian) for free?  I don’t know. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20050107/wr_nm/media_nytimes_dc  

VOIP (Internet Telephone) can be used to dramatically lower your phone costs, but how about saving you money while you are on the road?  Vonage in the States are releasing a (relatively) cheap VOIP mobile phone.  This means that if you are in range of a WiFi service you can make cheap calls over the Internet.  The problem?  It won’t work outside a WiFi area, so you will have to carry two phones about with you.  Experts are predicting in about 2006 a mobile phone which will roam between WiFi and regular mobile. 
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2005-01-03-wifi-phone_x.htm

Someone somehow has figures out what search engines are used by search engine people.  For example only 19% of Microsoft people use MSN, and 66% use Google.  They have interesting data on browser usage as well.  As they say the .6% of Mictrosoft people that use Firefox are waiting for their severance cheques.
http://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/01/03/what-search-engines-do-search-engine-companies-use/

A new security risk has been proposed for users with wi fi connections.  A hacker sets up a wi fi network near (say) a railway station, jamming a genuine service and posing as the service.  Once users link in, the software can totally control what goes to the internet, disabling encryption and logging sensitive information.  The threat is called the Evil Twin for obvious reasons.   So don’t do sensitive things while you are on the road.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4190607.stm