[thelist] CSS, H1 and Netscape

Shirley Kaiser (SKDesigns) skaiser at skdesigns.com
Wed Dec 27 09:50:15 CST 2000


Tony,

Well, a couple of good reasons to use the <h#> tags are:

1. Search engines:
Many (but probably not all) search engines use tags as a means of 
identifying more important words and phrases within a document for 
ranking purposes. The structural markup does make a difference. So if 
search engines are a consideration, keep that in mind.

How much difference? It's just one ingredient of many for improving your 
rankings, so eliminating these tags may not destroy your rankings but 
you're not helping rankings, either.

2. Accessibility:
--Voice readers, for example, use tags for interpreting the content, 
too. So not using the header tags does make a difference this way, too.
--Browsers with CSS turned off or don't have CSS capability won't 
interpret your titles

If these reasons don't matter for your site, such as building it for an 
intranet where search engines and accessibility issues don't exist, then 
those reasons may not matter.

For more info about accessibility issues, WebsiteTips.com has an entire 
section of very good annotated links:
http://www.websitetips.com/design/

There's also great search engine information at the following:
RankWrite
http://www.rankwrite.com

Search Engine Watch
http://www.searchenginewatch.com

section of annotated links at WebsiteTips.com:
http://www.websitetips.com/search/

And, there are also lots of good annotated CSS links at WebsiteTips.com, 
too:
http://www.websitetips.com/html/

You mentioned that you had trouble with CSS and header tags. What kind 
of problems were/are you having? Maybe it's something that one of us on 
this list could help with, and there's also an excellent CSS newsgroup, 
too, with many recognizable CSS gurus responding to questions all the time:
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets

HTH.

Warmly,
Shirley
-- 
Shirley E. Kaiser, M.A.
SKDesigns mailto:skaiser at skdesigns.com
Website Development http://www.skdesigns.com/
Pianist, Composer http://www.shirleykaiser.com/

tbounds at gci.net wrote:

> on 12/26/00 5:54 PM, aardvark at roselli at earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> 
>> instead of ditching the <h#> tags altogether, and thereby purging
>> useful structural markup from your document, sometimes it's better
>> to accept the differences in rendering and allow your design to flow
>> with it, regardless of the browser...
> 
> 
> Actually for the site I'm working on right now I simply didn't use any <h#>
> tags at all. I've had problems with them and css before with NN. So the
> solution I'm using right now is to define headings and such using .classes.
> It seems to be working well but if its not a good idea I would love to hear
> why. #B^) Thanks for the help.
> 
> Best regards,
> --
> Tony





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