Hi Kriss
1 I'd say go for the introductory text and update it in cycle with your search engine refresh rate, to catch any seasonal promotions, and give indexers enough matches.
2 If you go for fixed width, you're discriminating against the rising number of devices that can browse XHTML but don't have standard desktop monitor display sizes (you can write separate anticipatory style sheets for these, but why struggle to keep up when you can plan for accessibility?). Also, if your user overrides or changes their browser text size you're usually scuppered with fixed width, plus you might at time need to accommodate content outwith your control (like a long hyperlink label or wide table).
Tavis Reddick
The Adam Smith College, Fife
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-----Original Message-----
From: Managing an institutional web site [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of K Fearon
Sent: 07 December 2005 11:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Two queries
Apologies for cross posting.
We're having our web pages redesigned at the moment and a couple of issues have arisen on which I'd appreciate some feedback.
Firstly, the designers have advised us to have some intro text on our main welcome page to make it more friendly to search engines. Currently we only have links to content, and meta tags. We'd originally cut any text on our home page as it tends to be uninformative and people don't really read it, but we might reconsider if they're right. Any comments?
Secondly, we're having a discussion about fixed width vs relative width designs. They are keen for us to go for fixed width, but this goes against accessibility standards. I know a lot of university pages are designed at a fixed width - was this a point you decided to compromise on? Was the compromise worth it?
Thanks
Kriss
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