Re: Accessibility/SEO and IDs?

You are right, it makes a difference...I certainly wouldn't give ids
names like "something_logn_and_ireitating_here"..

However, it does make it easier for someone reading the code. If you
have to put 3 lines of comments around it for it to make sense, then
you've lost the original goal.



On 3/22/06, Jim Auldridge <[email protected]> wrote:
> I should correct my earlier e-mail about ID attributes and SEO.  It
> turns out that the HTML standards may soon include header and footer
> (etc) elements based on the amout of sites using DIVs with those IDs.
> It was a search engine company that provided that information to the
> standards folks, which is where I confused the issue.  My apologies.
>
> In regards to Anthony's statement, "since it's an id, it should only
> be on the page once....if your page load time is effected by the id
> attribute, you've got bigger problems," I don't think that is
> completely accurate.  True, a given ID should only appear once in a
> document, but your document can have as many IDs as it does elements.
> So shortening their names can certainly shorten the total size of
> outputted content.  This is a valid thought on the part of site owners
> with cheaper hosting whose sites could receive bursts of traffic.
> Serving 100 extra bytes several thousand times can add up.  If it adds
> up enough, it can cost you down time or extra money.  Just a thought.
>
> Jim
>
> On 3/22/06, Anthony Ettinger <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 3/22/06, Chris <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > If you work in a team, there's the benefit of whoever does the CSS, or
> > > ties in backend code, etc, has a better chance of discerning one chunk
> > > of HTML from another and its purpose.
> > >
> > >  From a user's perspective, remember that every ID can be targeted as an
> > > anchor, i.e.: blah.html#list_of_shopping - that can be useful if for
> > > example, you want to link someone to a specific section of a long page
> > > they want to read. Personally, I'll occasionally View Selected Source in
> > > Firefox to get IDs like that and add them into a link I send to people
> > > on occasion. That's an extremely geeky use of the capability, but the
> > > point is, there are uses... probably some far less geeky than my own. So
> > > you may as well make them user-friendly.
> > >
> > > Lastly, you're going to run into overlap with short IDs... but if small
> > > HTML is of the utmost importance for some reason, the shorter IDs may be
> > > a better fit.
> > >
> > > -Chris
> > >
> > > Seb Frost wrote:
> > > > Is there any reason (other than to make your own work/maintenance easier) to
> > > > use semantic IDs on your webpages?
> > > >
> > > > In other words, does <div id="header"> benefit anyone other than the coder
> > > > over <div id="h">?
> > > >
> > > > I'm all for cutting down on any bytes that don't need to be sent to the
> > > > browser, and if working by myself I'd quickly get used to shorthands like
> > > > this, and they wouldn't proove to be a maintenance headache at all, for me.
> > > >
> > > > But is there a benefit to longer IDs?  Will search engines pick up on <ul
> > > > id="list_of_shopping"> or is <ul id="l"> just as good?
> > > >
> > > > cheers
> > > >
> > > > Seb
> > > >
> > > >
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> > microformats are on the rise, but I would stop short of saying it
> > makes a difference in Google serps.
> >
> > The main concern should be readability. id="header" makes much more
> > sense than id="h".
> >
> > since it's an id, it should only be on the page once....if your page
> > load time is effected by the id attribute, you've got bigger problems
> > :-)
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Anthony Ettinger
> > Signature: http://chovy.dyndns.org/hcard.html
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Anthony Ettinger
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