[Suggestion] Implementing H1 Headings without coding

[pauland]

Richinri, you make interesting points but I cringe when I read your posts. A little less ego and a lot more humility will help you no end.

We've heard what you have to say. You may be right, but this is a community and there are other voices to hear. You are quite mistaken if you think anyone at Xara is going to assist you, particularly with posts that constantly snipe at their developers.

Don't make the same mistake that other talented people have made and find yourself an outsider when there's so much going on here.

Paul (Who is not a moderator, but has seen this cycle before).

[V12CatMan]

V12CATMAN - ok, but where is the link to the site [or did I miss it?] - without that it is all just words and opinion

RICHINI - you too have not provided any proof, and frankly sound like a vested interest defending its pitch

I am willing to be convinced either way as I do not come with any preconceptions here, but lets have some actual case work and stats please..
not diatribe

For those who need to "see to believe"

[URL removed as requested]



Go to Google and type in the following:

*IBM*4690*File*Integrity*Monitoring (7th hit on 1st page)
*4690*File*Integrity*Monitoring (towards the bottom)
*4690*PCI*DSS (6th hit one 1st Page)

Try Yahoo:
*4690*PCI*DSS - (5th and 6th hit)

Change the *s to spaces

Then look at the home page and compare the wording that Google shows under each hit with the text content on the home page. Then look at the page source and check the title and description and keywords. While you're there do a search for h1 (hint -you won't find it).

Seeing is truly believing

PS I was quite pleasantly surprised myself that some elementary changes could yield such good results.

[covoxer]

Thank you V12CatMan, your experience is highly appreciated.

[remi]

@Paul: There are always two sides necessary, in order to let a discussion come to no end.

@John (covoxer):

Fact 4. The <h1> element is not user visible. It is easy to make text within it look like a paragraph text or even be completely invisible. If SE would rely on it, it would provide another way to fool the SE just the way description metatag did.

The blue colored part of this paragraph is a fact, the violet colored part is your assumption, the interpretation from your side. But whether a search engine is able to recognize fools or not is more the headache of the Google engineers. Additionally, besides the simple recommendation from Google to use headers, the second point with using such tags like <h1> - <h6> is, that they are also necessary for well structured, semantically meaningful HTML (we've discussed this before). Using good clean markup (including headers) is just best practices.

If you're planning to include a styles concept within Xara Xtreme and/or Xara Web Designer, you should do it with support of semantically meaningful HTML tags and the necessary CSS. For now I see no reasons except your and Charles dissenting opinions, why one should follow anti-patterns instead.

Simon Collison was saying it a little bit more jovially: "You can’t read a woman’s mind, but good markup is transparent. Like great lovers, CSS and well-structured code are bound by fate, and are destined to live happily ever after." [1]

Some concrete tips for you:

• Use predefined styles called "Header 1" to "Header 6" like in text editors and match them to <h1> - <h6> tags during the export.
• Outsource the CSS for such headers to an external stylesheet.
• Furthermore let users define additional styles on their own without matching them to <h1> - <h6> tags during the export (if they really need more than 6 headers)
• and you're finished.

Give it a chance, instead of fighting against Web Standards.

Remi

[handrawn]

For those who need to "see to believe"

I don't believe a lot of what I see

But I do like an argument that is supported, thanks

[covoxer]

Give it a chance, instead of fighting against Web Standards.

It's not a fight against standards, it's management of development resources. Any feature that is useful and is not present is a potential feature to implement. But there are a lot of them, and development resources are limited. So the question here is not do it or not, but what to do first. That's all.

[V12CatMan]

It's not a fight against standards, it's management of development resources. Any feature that is useful and is not present is a potential feature to implement. But there are a lot of them, and development resources are limited. So the question here is not do it or not, but what to do first. That's all.

Understood John. That's the world I live in every day. I work with our developers to determine what we need to do to our products:
1. To benefit existing customers.
2. To entice new customers to buy our products (because competitors are doing things also).
3. To "optimize" market acceptance/perception - Man is this one that gets our developers going People take a quick look at a product, see/read/imagine a perceived weakness or omission (maybe their buddy's a CSS programmer), skip over all the great features & then ultimately make negative posts on website reviews as to why they purchased another product and Google caches it forever!

We try to prioritize (as I'm sure you do) based on user benefit and scope of effort (1&2) - we have to deal with the $ realities of life just like you do. Only when that is done do we take account of 3. If making the change can create a marketing edge (distance us from a competitor) and also ranks high for customers then it will jump to the top of the list. Selectively it can really position a Company in the area of thought leadership and goodwill - something Xara has that many Companies are appalling at. Xara is developing functionality not bloatware which is absolutely terrific.

I suspect this h1-hx fits into 3. It looks to me like a great opportunity to bridge the gap between designers and coders and has real usability. The additional benefit is that it also dispels another potential notion that WD is for picture websites and "Susie homemaker" as its called in the US. Of course WC3 compliance is already a huge silver bullet you have on this one.Sometimes I choke on the "perception is reality" argument.

Anyway fwiw - fantastic job, both on the development and forum contribution side. Keep it up.

[V12CatMan]

I don't believe a lot of what I see

But I do like an argument that is supported, thanks

No problem. It should have been in the original post but I got all tangled up when I hit the word limit

[Drwyd]

If there is enough interest I am willing to conduct an experiment. Currently two websites I am responsible for are #1 and #2 on Google for their brand name "Tower Forge" (out of 2.5 million other pages). Both use a H1 tag containing that key phrase. If I change the #1 site to use paragraph tags then that may (possibly by changing positions) shed some light on the subject.

Are there any experts here that could give me an idea as to how long it will take to have an effect (if any) and more importantly how long to recover as this is a commercial site that provides my main income.

Drwyd

[pauland]

@Paul: There are always two sides necessary, in order to let a discussion come to no end.

Actually Remi, I'm in favour of supporting h1 tags. I don't see the problem in supporting them and really it's not so much supporting h1, but supporting styles.

The thing I really hate is someone insisting they have some superior view that the rest of us mortals and Xara developers should accept as absolute fact.

If I were thinking of using h1 tags because of serious concerns, I would do so by editing the html/css by hand and doing it myself. Bit fiddly perhaps.

Probably 90% or more XWD users couldn't care less anyway because they use word of mouth not just search engines.

For a lot of people, using h1 tags isn't going to affect their search ratings much if they operate some everyday business with thousands of competitors.

I'm all for debate, but not keen on reliving groundhog day on the forums.

Paul