Enter jQuery… and voila!

• Word Document
• Excel Document
• PowerPoint Document
• PDF Document
• Zip File Link

The html looks like this:

<ul class="docs">
		<li><a href="#document.doc" alt="">Word Document</a></li>
		<li><a href="#Excel-file.xls" alt="">Excel Document</a></li>
		<li><a href="#Powerpoint-pres.ppt" alt="">PowerPoint Document</a></li>
		<li><a href="#somefile.pdf" alt="">PDF Document</a></li>
		<li><a href="#Archive.zip" alt="">Zip File Link</a></li>
</ul>

The Javascript looks like this:

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
    $('.docs').find('a').attr('href');
	// Word doc
	$('a[href$=".doc"]').addClass('doc');
	$('a[href$=".docx"]').addClass('doc');
	$('a[href$=".docm"]').addClass('doc');
	// Excel
	$('a[href$=".xls"]').addClass('excel');
	$('a[href$=".xlsx"]').addClass('excel');
	$('a[href$=".xlsm"]').addClass('excel');
	$('a[href$=".xltx"]').addClass('excel');
	// PowerPoint
	$('a[href$=".ppt"]').addClass('ppt');
	$('a[href$=".pptx"]').addClass('ppt');
	$('a[href$=".potx"]').addClass('ppt');
	$('a[href$=".potm"]').addClass('ppt');
	// PDF
	$('a[href$=".pdf"]').addClass('pdf');
	// ZIP
	$('a[href$=".zip"]').addClass('zip');
});

Source code :

Dynamic Document Icons (source code)

HTML Code is below

CSS Code is below

body .yt_holder ul li.currentvideo a {
background:#fff; font-weight:bold; color:#e4721c;
}


If you’re looking for a great starter book on SEO check out Shari’s book Search Engine Visibility.

Below are my notes.

Types of Search Queries

• Navigational: 10-26%
• Informational: 62%-80%
• Transactional: 10-23%

Navigational Search

URL most important – reason being number one in search results is near impossible unless domain name matches query

Many people use Google or Yahoo rather than using address bar

Informational Search

• wants information on a topic
• quick answers

Example: what is the phone number of my dentist (use office name and location

Transactional Search

• users want to interact with website (not necessarily buying anything; game, download pdf, etc.)
• have separate splash page for transaction (ex. search for “Adobe CS3″; does not include pricing info yet amazon does

Yahoo siteexplorer is a good way to see refers and how people are aearching

Building blocks of search engine friendly sites

• index text
• follow links – give search engine on-the-page criteria
• measure popularity – 3rd party links pointing to URL

Text (sorted by most important):

1. title tag – #1 tag for search results
2. Breadcrumb links – sense of place; where am I?
3. heading ( h1, h2, etc.) – use CSS formatted text; not images
4. intro paragraph
5. calls to action

Link component

• -site navigation scheme
• cross-linking
• URL structure: too long (users tend to skip to sites with shorter URLs)
  • Good: www.yoursite.com/products.html
  • Bad: www.yoursite.com/pageviewer.aspx?id=128623478236&category=goodproducts&whateverelse=something
• Relevance: information architecture
• Major influence: Number and quality of links to a site

Conclusions:

• presonas and profiles should be based on querying behavior
• Build landing pages based on known querying behaviors
• Semantic markup is critical

• seobrowser.com – shows what the search engine sees
• linkfinder.com ????
• mattcutts.com/blog – SEO information
• adwords.google.com/ - tool to generate keywords
• wordtracker - free tool for keyword suggestions
• scholar.google.com – best resource for SEO

Book suggestion: Chris Sherman: Google Power

import mx.transitions.Tween;
import mx.transitions.easing.*;

// Constants

_global.xPos = 20;
_global.tweenNum = 1;
_global.timeVar = 1;
_global.timeReduction = .15;

function tweenBall():Void {
var nextDepth:Number = this.getNextHighestDepth();
_root.attachMovie(“ballClip”,”ballClip”+tweenNum,nextDepth,{_x:Stage.width, _y:200});
_global.xSpacing = _root["ballClip"+tweenNum]._width+20;

// Set tweens for different properties of object animated

var tweenXpos:Object = new Tween(_root["ballClip"+tweenNum], “_x”, Regular.easeOut, Stage.width, xPos, timeVar, true);

var tweenAlpha:Object = new Tween(_root["ballClip"+tweenNum], “_alpha”, Regular.easeOut, 0, 100, timeVar, true);

tweenXpos.onMotionFinished = function() {

if (tweenNum<5) {

// set new variables for next tween
_global.tweenNum++;
_global.xPos = xPos+xSpacing;
_global.timeVar = timeVar-timeReduction;

if (timeVar<=0) {
_global.timeVar = .1;
}
tweenBall();
}

};
}

tweenBall();

Enough of my rant for now, but in short anyone looking to step up in skill level needs to step down in pride level. This blog will help me to stay honest with myself, and I hope to share with others in the web development profession or just wanting to learn about website design/development.

More to come on my lessons learned at the Voices that Matter Conference…

Later,
Chris