Posted by Mark Parnell on 01/12/04 11:28

In our last episode, "Jemdam.com" <noemail@nospamplease.com> pronounced
to alt.html:

[http://www.pubtricks.com/]
> I write my HTML by hand

You wrote that by hand? Ouch.

> and don't use all the tags.

It would be unusual for any page to need every HTML tag. Or even every
element.

> The tags in font and img
> for example are optional

Assuming you mean attributes, some of them are, including alt for <img>.
<font> shouldn't be used at all - it has been deprecated in favour of
CSS.

> and the markup test you have used thinks a lack of
> an alt is an error

That's because the specs say that it is:

"The alt attribute must be specified for the IMG and AREA elements."
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#adef-alt

> which is total rubbish.

References?

> The HTML coming out of
> dreamweaver etc is so heavy, it is full of so much un-needed code.

True, but you would have got better results from Dreamweaver than your
hand-coding. Heck, you probably would have got better results from
FrontPage.

> Magic Tricks is too competitive,

Scared to try in case you fail?

> biggest factors for high google rate is the
> title and domain name.

Title and links from relevant sites are the most important. The address
does help, but that includes page and directory names. When doing a
search for magic tricks, only half of the first 10 sites have magic in
the domain name. A couple of others have it in another part of the
address, but some don't even have that.

> I don't have magic in the domain and I don't think it
> will be easy to get to the top for that.

Doesn't mean it's impossible. Someone's got to be at the top.

--
Mark Parnell
http://clarkecomputers.com.au
alt.html FAQ :: http://html-faq.com/

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