[thelist] Re: Perkins School for the Blind's new site

[Joshua Olson]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Timothy J. Luoma" <lists at tntluoma.com>
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2002 2:09 PM


> FYI I do this -- jump (not skip ;-) *to* navigation --  for many
> reasons, but one of them is for search engines like Google that like
> your content to be closer to the top of the page.

You just reminded me of something.

<tip type="HTML Trick" author="Joshua Olson">
You can have your cake and eat it too.  It is possible to put the navigation
on the left AND first in the order of the HTML.  One way, using the still
typical use of tables, is to do something like this:

<table>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp</td>
<td rowspan="2">Main content goes here</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Navigation goes here</td>
</tr>
</table>

The space field, whcih I've filled in with a non-breaking space, could be
filled in with anything.  An single pixel image with a nice alt-text
summarizing the page would be a nice plus for screen readers.  Spiders would
get the content earlier in the page, bu visually, not much has changed.  If
you want to make a link to the navigation for screen readers, make the
spacer the link.

P.S.  There are ways to do this without tables and using CSS.  However, this
tip does not cover that subject.
</tip>

-joshua