by WebKeyDesign | Mar 7, 2006 | CSS
For the most part, font selection for the Web is limited. There are only a select few fonts that are available on all platforms, and even when we say cross-platform fonts, we really mean just Macintosh and Windows. We forget all about Linux, other desktop operating systems, and portable systems as well. Personally I tend to reach for Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, and Lucida Sans. Verdana is probably the best choice for web fonts and more preferred than Arial. I like to replace Times with Georgia as well, as Georgia looks cleaner and more distinct to me than any of the Times fonts. For medium to large headings Trebuchet MS and Lucida Sans are more appealing, than Verdana.
To learn more about type for the web, read Joe Gillespie’s All You Wanted To Know About Web Type. This article from Web Page Design For Designers is still a must read for web page design.
Once you know which fonts to use, you need to know what CSS can do for you. Garrett Dimon’s CSS Typography mentions some concepts to keep in mind when styling fonts. The most important idea to grasp being that white space and headings make web pages easier to read.
by WebKeyDesign | Mar 2, 2006 | Google Bits
Forget Web 2.0, the real talk on the Internet right now has to do with Google’s massive datacenter changes, nicknamed by almost everyone as “Big Daddy”. Instead of just a normal pagerank update that everyone can see in their Google Toolbar, Big Daddy is essentially an update of everything Google, according to most industry insiders.
Google is testing a new data center infrastructure, a feat much bigger and comprehensive than an algorithm change. Dubbed “Big Daddy†both in the search marketing blogs and forums and by the friendly folks at Google, this new data center—still in shakedown mode—will reportedly add new ground-level capabilities into the Google search function and drive those powers deep into all the algorithms with which Google searches, studies and indexes the Web.
The more apparant thing that most webmasters will notice as Big Daddy rolls out is Google’s new spider. Looking over your logs in February you might notice this:
Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
Google’s new bot is based on Mozilla code and so all that work you did on making your site more open standards friendly should pay off, especially if you check your site with Firefox or any other Mozilla based browser.
For a while now webmasters have been noticing the aggressiveness of Google’s new search bot, and in case you decided to discourage Googlebot 2.1, you probably should think about reversing this action quickly. The notion is that Google now uses this new bot first to spider sites. If you send Googlebot 2.1 away, Google will stop sending any other bots to your site period!
All this means that Google is stepping up and upgrading their datacenters to meet the challenges of newer competitors like MSN and Yahoo.
by WebKeyDesign | Feb 22, 2006 | Web Site Basics
In Finding Deleted Domains, I talked about using WhoIs.net to search for expired domains, but this is not exactly the best way to get a valueable domain. For a high quality domain, you probably have to go with one the auction services, like Snap.com. You should be prepared to pay more as the bidding process can be quite costly, but cheaper than directly dealing with a domain owner who wants thousands of dollars for their domain name.
Before jumping in with the bidding process, read How to Snatch an Expiring Domain, which is a thorough and interesting look into the way registrars are retaining deleted domains and making it harder for the rest of us to actually catch an expired domain.
