Ok, great. There is somewhat an answer to this. But how about this:
If blind people have not had to use an arrow before to get to this information via the sites built by another program, how do they know that now for the first time, in order to get to the same data as before, now they have to use another key to get said data? This is not the elegant way of doing things and if anything, I thought Freeway was supposed to be elegant.
Sometime around 9/3/09 (at 19:04 -0400) Rgator said:
If blind people have not had to use an arrow before to get to this
information via the sites built by another program
[…]
Can you see my point here?
No!
I’m beginning to wonder if we’re talking about totally different
things here. (I try to be charitable.)
Alt text, right?
How to get long strings of text in as alt text (regardless of the
RNIB’s rejection of this technique), yes?
This has zero to do with how somebody reads the alt text, it is how
YOU can step through the words in that alt text field in Freeay’s
Inspector palette. This is entirely to do with you creating the alt
text. This is, is it not, what you were talking about, right?
If blind people have not had to use an arrow before to get to this
information via the sites built by another program, how do they know
that now for the first time, in order to get to the same data as
before, now they have to use another key to get said data? This is
not the elegant way of doing things and if anything, I thought
Freeway was supposed to be elegant.
Can you see my point here?
You’re not thinking too straight about all this, are you? If you put
the Alt info in, it will be read out to blind people just as it would
be had it been put in with any other application. Just because YOU
need to use an arrow key in Freeway, doesn’t mean THEY need to use it
in something else.
Personally if I was wanting to write a screed of text for my Alt Tags I think I would compose and edit it in BBEdit before copy/pasting into FW’s Alt Text dialogue box and then I wouldn’t have to use the arrows.
Arrows which are only used for this in the FW interface
Ok, sounds like some of this is getting figured out here. Sorry, I assumed (make an ass out of me) that since we needed the arrows to “see” the alt text, then so would the blind. I do not have any kind of a “blind person’s” program to do any studying with.
So you said:
BTW, Robert, you can extend the length slightly by going to the Preferences window, clicking the Output tab, and changing the Max Filename Length to 31 - the longest that it currently allows.
I just opened my Preferences so that I could do this and I have no “Output” tab to click onto. I have General, Text, Apparance, Grids, Layout and Labels. I have checked and recheck those options and can not find this option available.
I just opened my Preferences so that I could do this
Sorry! I meant Document Setup.
Doh! That’s a kind of document-level preferences thing (there are
similar things in QuarkXPress, InDesign and a number of other
pro-level apps), but not actually “Preferences”.
Sometime around 9/3/09 (at 17:54 -0400) Rgator said:
It is doubtful that there is more restrictive and less user friendly
web editor SEO wise on the Mac market today.
“colour copies” 1 out of 37.5 million - and this is from a very old
3.5 Freeway site, with very little finer SEO points Rgator mentions.
Just in case anyone thought Freeway SEO was flawed in some way.
And how about 3rd out of 18,600,000 for ‘precision pressings’, quite a
generic term - not bad for a small UK engineering client and based on
just carefully originated titling and content copy, in a Freeway
generated site - no SEO tricks whatsoever!
Colin
On 10 Mar 2009, at 09:38, David Owen wrote:
Sometime around 9/3/09 (at 17:54 -0400) Rgator said:
It is doubtful that there is more restrictive and less user
friendly web editor SEO wise on the Mac market today.
“colour copies” 1 out of 37.5 million - and this is from a very old
3.5 Freeway site, with very little finer SEO points Rgator mentions.
Just in case anyone thought Freeway SEO was flawed in some way.
Sometime around 10/3/09 (at 09:58 +0000) Colin Alcock said:
based on just carefully originated titling and content copy, in a
Freeway generated site - no SEO tricks whatsoever!
Of course, careful consideration of the text that goes into the pages
is one of the most important things to do in good, long-term search
engine optimising. Finding appropriate content is precisely what
Google and all the rest want to do, and working with them is always a
good idea.
But you’re right, this is hardly a ‘trick’ - just good practise.
I’m no expert on search engines and their complex algorithms, but I do
note that they seem savvy to where in the world you search from - down
to quite small regions. So the results you can expect locally may not
be mirrored on a broader scale.
That’s an advantage to the local marketer, but may be slightly counter
productive to international markets. Correct me if I’m wrong (which I
could well be), but if so it’s a consideration to take into account
when judging SEO performance.
Colin
On 10 Mar 2009, at 11:34, Keith Martin wrote:
Finding appropriate content is precisely what Google and all the
rest want to do, and working with them is always a good idea.
Sometime around 10/3/09 (at 11:58 +0000) Colin Alcock said:
the results you can expect locally may not be mirrored on a broader scale.
That’s if there’s unambiguous info on location, for example a .co.uk
domain, or comprehensible address or phone details.
Otherwise - well, my panoramaphotographer.com domain is hosted in
California (and the whois data is masked with the host company’s
details), my vortex.co.uk domain with its hyperactive email and sadly
dusty site is hosted by James in Canada (although that may not be
where the servers live), and I myself reside in London.
It is absolutely a consideration, in part because it won’t happen
unless there’s a clue in there for Google (etc.) to see.
Ok, sounds like some of this is getting figured out here. Sorry, I assumed (make an ass out of me) that since we needed the arrows to “see” the alt text, then so would the blind. I do not have any kind of a “blind person’s” program to do any studying with.
You have heard of Lynx, right? That’s a text only browser, and it can show just how the text on your page is read. It will show alt text and everything.
If you want to hear what a blind person may hear when using a reading app, just copy/paste the Lynxlet content into Textedit and have your Mac read it to you.
Note that it also shows you the text, and the order it will be presented to a search engine.
Search engines tend to shift the goals after a while. If they decide that long filenames are the new method of spamming their indexes, they will stop using them. Filenames are not a reliable indicator of the page’s content - this has been proved in the past with meta tags being over used. It is better to spend your time looking at what is on the page, and how that information is arranged and presented. Freeway is top banana for that.
Quickest thing for Alt Text is to type it out in TextEdit or similar text editor and then copy paste it into the Alt text box. Hit Enter when it is pasted and you are done. Saves messing about with the arrow keys during the writing of the text (ie its much easier to see that the text is correctly spelled and complete when the whole line is visible in an editor).
Sometime around 10/3/09 (at 09:58 +0000) Colin Alcock said:
based on just carefully originated titling and content copy, in a
Freeway generated site - no SEO tricks whatsoever!
Of course, careful consideration of the text that goes into the pages
is one of the most important things to do in good, long-term search
engine optimising. Finding appropriate content is precisely what
Google and all the rest want to do, and working with them is always a
good idea.
But you’re right, this is hardly a ‘trick’ - just good practise.
Probably the one single most factor for SEO, once the site has been crawled is your copy/content and having the correct keywords in place.
True, there are 1001 things that can be done, but that and probably making and submitting an XML sitemap are the two most important.
Ok, sounds like some of this is getting figured out here. Sorry, I assumed (make an ass out of me) that since we needed the arrows to “see” the alt text, then so would the blind. I do not have any kind of a “blind person’s” program to do any studying with.
You have heard of Lynx, right? That’s a text only browser, and it can show just how the text on your page is read. It will show alt text and everything.
I use LynxLet. It’s a Terminal application.
Thanks for this tip, but I am one of those that will never, ever go into Terminal. Terminal is not for the SEVERELY dyslexic, there is no way I can check myself. There is no way I could trust myself. Things could go “Poof!” too easily.
Trying to explain how to use Terminal/Unix is exactly why I never wanted a “computer” in the first place and why I use a Mac.
Quickest thing for Alt Text is to type it out in TextEdit or similar text editor and then copy paste it into the Alt text box. Hit Enter when it is pasted and you are done. Saves messing about with the arrow keys during the writing of the text (ie its much easier to see that the text is correctly spelled and complete when the whole line is visible in an editor).
Yeah, I am starting to do that for the most part. I try to make a text copy of all the “slots” I fill so that I don’t have to maybe repeat myself later. Especially important now is also including in this same list an URL for each of the images I am stashing on my server in a separate folder from my site. Setting up all this is a totally different workflow than GL and for now, a much lengthier, time wise set up.
Heh. I’m not trying to talk you into using Terminal, but it is worth
knowing that you’d have to type your admin password before Terminal
would let you do anything dangerous. Just FYI.
Would there be some type of a GUI version?
Interesting - a GUI for a text-only app?
Actually, Opera can be very useful here. Download a copy from http://www.opera.com/ and choose View > Images > No Images, and then
choose View > Style > Accessibility Layout. It just might be a
revelation!
I’ve just come across this interesting thread and thought I’d check, has the limit been lifted in vers 5.5 - I just put ‘100’ into max filename length and it seems to be Ok !
Also … if the file name is so important why is the ‘home’ page “index.html” - forgive me if this is a really dumb question … Roger
On 9 Mar 2009, 10:58 pm, thatkeith wrote:
Sometime around 9/3/09 (at 22:38 +0000) Keith Martin said:
I showed that you can put as much as you like in there.
However Robert is correct that the file and folder name length is
comparatively short. For people not trying to stuff keywords into
names this is rarely an issue, but it does limit that particular
thing.
BTW, Robert, you can extend the length slightly by going to the
Preferences window, clicking the Output tab, and changing the Max
Filename Length to 31 - the longest that it currently allows.
I’m not convinced that this is quite as crucial as it has been
billed, but I agree that it is certainly more than a minor point -
and I too would like to see the limit raised a long way. (And
Microsoft IIS be damned!)
