The Web Design & Development Megathread

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«‹›361 »

well why not: Feb 10, 2009

if you bang a site into PageSpeed insights it does give you some clues:

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.somethingawful.com%2F

Gods know if there's actually a good way to stop it whinging about Render Blocking.

I took a site from a 45 score up to 80s - 90s (it ranges based on server speed, so if it's busy the score dips) and it did seem to rank a little better. As others said, it is up to common sense - google naturally wants to serve the fastest pages available.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 14:21

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# ? May 12, 2024 03:14

chami: Mar 28, 2011; Keep it classy, boys~; Fun Shoe

There's a big Black Friday sale on uDemy courses up until the 25th; pretty sweet deal if you're looking to brush up on some topics.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 14:53

velvet milkman: Feb 13, 2012; by R. Guyovich

chami posted:

There's a big Black Friday sale on uDemy courses up until the 25th; pretty sweet deal if you're looking to brush up on some topics.

Stephen Grider's React+Redux courses are really good.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 15:14

Lumpy: Apr 26, 2002; La! La! La! Laaaa!; College Slice

a fleshy snood posted:

Stephen Grider's React+Redux courses are really good.

How do they compare to Dan's free ones on Egghead if you've looked at both? Those are amazing (since he wrote Redux, one would hope!)

# ? Nov 23, 2016 15:43

denzelcurrypower: Jan 28, 2011

Cross-posing from the Java thread..

Does anyone know of a good resource for learning how to create a Spring Web MVC project using Maven? The documentation for this seems to be all over the place and either doesn't correspond to the newest versions or is vague and has unexplained differences in file structure.

I even downloaded the Spring Tool Suite IDE to see if it would help, but it looks like it doesn't even have a way to create an empty Web MVC project.
Instead, I tried using this project provided in the spring.io documentation files as a starting point (https://github.com/spring-guides/gs...master/complete). However, for some reason it is missing important files like web.xml. I can't find any declaration of a view resolver anywhere and if I try to return jsp pages instead of html then I end up with 404 or 500 errors. I then found this sample project (https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-mvc-showcase) which looked more promising as it includes many more basic features and actually has important files/folders like web.xml and WEB-INF. However, when I try to run the project there's like 50 errors about missing files or incorrect references.... fun.

Anyway, if someone can suggest a guide or point me to a basic project structure diagram or something, I'd really appreciate the help. Bonus points for the same, but for Hibernate.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 18:01

putin is a cunt: Apr 5, 2007; BOY DO I SURE ENJOY TRASH. THERE'S NOTHING MORE I LOVE THAN TO SIT DOWN IN FRONT OF THE BIG SCREEN AND EAT A BIIIIG STEAMY BOWL OF SHIT. WARNER BROS CAN COME OVER TO MY HOUSE AND ASSFUCK MY MOM WHILE I WATCH AND I WOULD CERTIFY IT FRESH, NO QUESTION

fuf posted:

multiple <H1> tags, too many navigation links

Pretty sure this one is fine now, with the advent of HTML5. If I'm wrong though I welcome the correction.

# ? Nov 26, 2016 04:51

Heskie: Aug 10, 2002

The Wizard of Poz posted:

Pretty sure this one is fine now, with the advent of HTML5. If I'm wrong though I welcome the correction.

Semantically it is fine, but I think it still matters in terms of SEO which is a shame.

# ? Nov 26, 2016 14:17

Jabor: Jul 16, 2010; #1 Loser at SpaceChem

Heskie posted:

Semantically it is fine, but I think it still matters in terms of SEO which is a shame.

What gives you this impression?

# ? Nov 27, 2016 10:06

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

Jabor posted:

What gives you this impression?

How it was explained to me by a developer whose SEO expertise may or may not be a little outdated:

More than one <h1> : makes it harder for google to answer the question "what is the main thing this page is about?"

Too many navigation links: looks suspect. Normal websites don't have hundreds of links on every page.

It's all basically just demonstrating to google that a site is a normal, well-structured site with useful information that they should send their users to.

# ? Nov 27, 2016 11:06

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

My impression has been that google is pretty drat sophisticated now and that's more old school SEO thought.

There still is a lot of knowledge to learn with SEO, but as said before it's more marketing knowledge and less technical.

# ? Nov 27, 2016 14:55

o.m. 94: Nov 23, 2009

Ugh is multiple H1s ok semantically and accessibility wise now? Some of my clients pay this company loads of cash to identify failure to meet AA and they keep raising poo poo that's just plain wrong or a misinterpretation of the WCAG spec

# ? Nov 27, 2016 17:21

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

You can argue semantics until the end of times and never be right or wrong. To the best of my understanding, using a single H1 is slightly better for SEO. But in terms of accessibility it's all about hierarchy of content. If you had two articles on a page of equal weight and importance you could feasibly use two H1s to label them and be totally fine accessibility-wise.

I am not an SEO or accessibility expert.

# ? Nov 27, 2016 17:45

ufarn: May 30, 2009

I see that Half and Full Bridge TLS termination is available for CloudFront, but I can't find out where the setting is for turning it on - given that I just use a simple static website. Since the whitepaper is a recent one, it should be there, but I can't for the life of me find it in my CloudFront or S3 settings.

Anyone who knows? Seems like a pretty straightforward feature for static origins, and yet it's such a pain to figure out.

# ? Nov 27, 2016 18:31

lunar detritus: May 6, 2009

I thought you were supposed to have one h1 per content "block". If you page only uses divs you get only one hierarchy so you can only use one h1.

<section>, <article>, <aside> and other structural elements should give you one sub-hierarchy each so you get multiple h1, one per each block.

# ? Nov 27, 2016 21:41

well why not: Feb 10, 2009

gmq posted:

I thought you were supposed to have one h1 per content "block". If you page only uses divs you get only one hierarchy so you can only use one h1.

<section>, <article>, <aside> and other structural elements should give you one sub-hierarchy each so you get multiple h1, one per each block.

This is correct as per the HTML5 spec. <header> as well. so,

code:

<header>
<h1>Site Name</h1>
</header>

MDN - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/header

html5 Doctor - http://html5doctor.com/the-header-element/

W3C - http://w3c.github.io/html/#the-header-element

# ? Nov 28, 2016 17:32

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

I have got to believe that Google's algorithms are more sophisticated than to demote a site for having more than H1.

The point for them isn't to have some strict technical rules but to determine if your site is relevant.

SEO has always seemed to me like people are always hanging on to rules that were accurate 10 years ago, but then again, I don't even know if I'm correct about what Google's algorithms are actually doing.

It's all so muddled and frustrating.

# ? Nov 28, 2016 19:13

Skandranon: Sep 6, 2008; fucking stupid, dont listen to me

Thermopyle posted:

I have got to believe that Google's algorithms are more sophisticated than to demote a site for having more than H1.

The point for them isn't to have some strict technical rules but to determine if your site is relevant.

SEO has always seemed to me like people are always hanging on to rules that were accurate 10 years ago, but then again, I don't even know if I'm correct about what Google's algorithms are actually doing.

It's all so muddled and frustrating.

I don't think it's so much Google penalizing sites for their bad HTML, as it tries to use (in part) semantic HTML rules to determine relevance, and if you aren't following them you'll get a lower score than a site that is. Google has been very hush hush about how it's algorithms work because otherwise, everyone would quickly min/max their sites and it's utility as a search engine would be moot.

# ? Nov 28, 2016 19:30

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

Skandranon posted:

I don't think it's so much Google penalizing sites for their bad HTML, as it tries to use (in part) semantic HTML rules to determine relevance, and if you aren't following them you'll get a lower score than a site that is. Google has been very hush hush about how it's algorithms work because otherwise, everyone would quickly min/max their sites and it's utility as a search engine would be moot.

Right, I'm not saying Google cares about your site's HTML in some way unconnected to relevancy.

Im saying HTML semantics are just a proxy for relevancy.

# ? Nov 28, 2016 19:48

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

At this point I would expect google to actually look at your page and analyze the size and weight of objects and determine things based on their visual appearance over how it's coded but ho boy am I talking out of my rear end.

# ? Nov 28, 2016 21:34

McGlockenshire: Dec 16, 2005; GOLLOCKS!

The Dave posted:

At this point I would expect google to actually look at your page and analyze the size and weight of objects and determine things based on their visual appearance over how it's coded but ho boy am I talking out of my rear end.

Well, they already have to think about the page layout in order to boost mobile-friendly sites in mobile search results, so you're probably not very wrong.

# ? Nov 28, 2016 22:18

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

McGlockenshire posted:

Well, they already have to think about the page layout in order to boost mobile-friendly sites in mobile search results, so you're probably not very wrong.

Yeah but we have no way of knowing how the :airquote:

algorithm

works. It could be looking at CSS for media queries, or for high dpi images, or for window width specific JS, etc.

The long and short of SEO is code things so that they're understandable for developers and users and Google will do what it does.

# ? Nov 28, 2016 22:38

Skandranon: Sep 6, 2008; fucking stupid, dont listen to me

kedo posted:

Yeah but we have no way of knowing how the algorithm works. It could be looking at CSS for media queries, or for high dpi images, or for window width specific JS, etc.

The long and short of SEO is code things so that they're understandable for developers and users and Google will do what it does.

It's probably still just a hot-or-not 1-10 rating from Larry, they just keep developing better systems to feed him the info and get his response.

# ? Nov 28, 2016 22:52

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

kedo posted:

Yeah but we have no way of knowing how the algorithm works. It could be looking at CSS for media queries, or for high dpi images, or for window width specific JS, etc.

The long and short of SEO is code things so that they're understandable for developers and users and Google will do what it does.

Then convince whoever is paying you that googling random poo poo they ~feel like~ ought to bring up your work in the top 5 results isn't a good metric. That's also the hardest part of SEO in my experience so good luck

# ? Nov 28, 2016 22:56

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

Here is the entirety of what I tell people when they ask for my opinion on SEO: "Well... it's mostly snake oil. Google has long said that A) providing useful content to your users and B) having other folks link to you are the two best things you can do, so if you have a budget you want to dedicate it to improving your search rank you should spend it on copywriters and marketing."

And then I end the conversation by shouting "NONONONONONONONO" and covering my ears if they keep talking about it. :shrug:

# ? Nov 28, 2016 23:47

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

I think part of SEO is knowing what niche and long tail keywords you can rank for, possibly running ppc ads for them, and optimizing your page for converting on a particular metric. Granted that's more of internet marketing basics than just SEO, they're very closely coupled.

Now if someone is like "hey make sure there's a site map so I rank on the first page!" then yeah they're the worst.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 00:04

Fuoco: Jan 3, 2009

kedo posted:

Here is the entirety of what I tell people when they ask for my opinion on SEO: "Well... it's mostly snake oil. Google has long said that A) providing useful content to your users and B) having other folks link to you are the two best things you can do, so if you have a budget you want to dedicate it to improving your search rank you should spend it on copywriters and marketing."

And then I end the conversation by shouting "NONONONONONONONO" and covering my ears if they keep talking about it.

I had a similar experience with my slightly technically-minded dentist around this time last year. I tried to dissuade him from hiring an SEO company, but he decided to ignore me and give them large amounts of money. The company folded, and thusfar he hasn't been able to recover his money. And no changes were even made to his site.

I think one of the best things you can do for your search rankings is have a quality website in general. As I told him at the time "A website with fantastic relevant content, a clean pleasing design, and that loads quickly across devices is one that users will want to visit, re-visit, and recommend to others.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 12:02

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

Fuoco posted:

I think one of the best things you can do for your search rankings is have a quality website in general.

If you're a small business I think focusing on a good facebook, yelp, google page with good reviews is arguably more important than a website.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 13:49

well why not: Feb 10, 2009

additionally, if you're a brick / mortar business you need to be getting your site into google maps as a #1 priority.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 17:09

Knifegrab: Jul 30, 2014; Gadzooks! I'm terrified of this little child who is going to stab me with a knife. I must wrest the knife away from his control and therefore gain the upperhand.

So I've got a react component that has a select input which is a drop down for different timezones.

On mount my component calls a refresh function to get the current timezone settings.

It then uses the recieved data to setState on currentTimezone.

In my render method I have:

code:

<select
   value={this.state.currentTimezone}
>
 {options}
</select>

I log to console the value of current timezone both before the setstate is called and also just before it is used in the render method, both times it has the appropriate value.

However the dropdown always displays the first element in the list. What's even more bizarre is if I do anyhting to cause the component to re-render (there are other elements within this component) the drop down will update to teh appropriate option.

Any idea why this would be happening?

For clarification, a simplistic view of my flow:

code:

ComponentDidMount() {
   this.refresh();
}
refresh() {
   $.get(mycurrentsettings) 
   .done((currentTimezone) {
       this.setState({currentTimezone: currentTimezone});
   });
}
render() {
return (
   <select
      value={this.state.currentTimezone}
   >
    {options}
   </select>
   {otherInputElements}
);
}

Knifegrab fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Nov 29, 2016

# ? Nov 29, 2016 23:05

Anony Mouse: Jan 30, 2005; A name means nothing on the battlefield. After a week, no one has a name.; Lipstick Apathy

Could be related to setting the HTML property in the render function using state... Try using a ref to set the property instead?

code:

ComponentDidMount() {
   this.refresh();
}
refresh() {
   $.get(mycurrentsettings) 
   .done((currentTimezone) {
       this.selectElement.value = currentTimezone;
   });
}
render() {
return (
   <select ref={(el) => {this.selectElement = el}} >
    {options}
   </select>
   {otherInputElements}
);
}

# ? Nov 30, 2016 00:37

Knifegrab: Jul 30, 2014; Gadzooks! I'm terrified of this little child who is going to stab me with a knife. I must wrest the knife away from his control and therefore gain the upperhand.

Sorry, thanks, I figured it out, its actually a specific bug related to opt groups in 15.0.1

https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/6547

# ? Nov 30, 2016 00:42

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

This lovely domain company I'm dealing with is asking me for the last two characters of the account password in a support email to verify a DNS change. That's pretty sketchy right? Like does that mean they're just storing passwords in plaintext somewhere? How would they be able to verify the last two characters unless they're just looking at my client's password?

It might not be a big deal but I'm kinda trying to build a case for why they're a bad company.

# ? Nov 30, 2016 16:27

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

fuf posted:

This lovely domain company I'm dealing with is asking me for the last two characters of the account password in a support email to verify a DNS change. That's pretty sketchy right? Like does that mean they're just storing passwords in plaintext somewhere? How would they be able to verify the last two characters unless they're just looking at my client's password?

It might not be a big deal but I'm kinda trying to build a case for why they're a bad company.

They might just tbe storing the last two in the clear? It'd be really funny if they stored the last two properly salted just for this purpose, but super fuckin' unlikely.

:sever:

IMO

# ? Nov 30, 2016 16:37

LifeLynx: Feb 27, 2001; Dang so this is like looking over his shoulder in real-time; Grimey Drawer

Is there a thread for the more business end of dealing with web design customers? Is this it even though people are mostly talking about back-end coding stuff here? I don't always know the best way to deal with clients who request odd things or resellers who tell me those requests second-hand.

For example: One reseller I work with sends me a lot of blue-collar type businesses such as exterminators, waste management, plumbers, etc. They all have trucks. They all love their trucks, no matter how dinged up and rusted they are, and always want a giant slideshow full on the homepage that includes their truck. I recently got an image to use that was 396x201px wide (inexplicably with a 5px white border on just the top and right edges). I cropped off the white edges and used it in the slideshow. Great, they don't complain, but how do I stop feeling dirty and disgusting that I've put up an image so blurry and pixelated that you can barely tell it's a truck? Is it when I get the final payment? That seems to help.

What's the best way to ask for a customer's logo and get a usable version? I keep getting sent crappy cellphone camera pictures of business cards taken at a weird angle.

# ? Nov 30, 2016 17:39

Anony Mouse: Jan 30, 2005; A name means nothing on the battlefield. After a week, no one has a name.; Lipstick Apathy

BJPaskoff posted:

Is there a thread for the more business end of dealing with web design customers? Is this it even though people are mostly talking about back-end coding stuff here? I don't always know the best way to deal with clients who request odd things or resellers who tell me those requests second-hand.

For example: One reseller I work with sends me a lot of blue-collar type businesses such as exterminators, waste management, plumbers, etc. They all have trucks. They all love their trucks, no matter how dinged up and rusted they are, and always want a giant slideshow full on the homepage that includes their truck. I recently got an image to use that was 396x201px wide (inexplicably with a 5px white border on just the top and right edges). I cropped off the white edges and used it in the slideshow. Great, they don't complain, but how do I stop feeling dirty and disgusting that I've put up an image so blurry and pixelated that you can barely tell it's a truck? Is it when I get the final payment? That seems to help.

What's the best way to ask for a customer's logo and get a usable version? I keep getting sent crappy cellphone camera pictures of business cards taken at a weird angle.

Just communicate with them. Frame it in a way that they understand and is relevant to their business. "Hey thanks for sending me this image but I noticed that the quality is a bit low. Having a blurry image on your website effects how customers view your business and leaves the wrong impression. Ideally we want nice sharp high resolution images that reflect the quality of your business. Please deliver the same image but at least 1200 pixels wide and in PNG format. If those requirements aren't clear then grab your resident graphic designer to talk about it or I can clarify further."

We do have a thread for design+business related questions. It's more geared towards how to negotiate and get paid and is not super active but maybe a better fit than here.

# ? Nov 30, 2016 18:01

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

Munkeymon posted:

They might just tbe storing the last two in the clear? It'd be really funny if they stored the last two properly salted just for this purpose, but super fuckin' unlikely.

IMO

Thanks. Yeah I think given the rest of their setup it's reeeeally unlikely they're doing anything clever like that.

# ? Dec 1, 2016 10:35

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Like this gem I saw a little while ago.

Yeah no thanks, how about I just go somewhere else

# ? Dec 1, 2016 13:01

Thots and Prayers: Jul 13, 2006; A is the for the atrocious abominated acts that YOu committed. A is also for ass-i-nine, eight, seven, and six.

B, b, b - b is for your belligerent, bitchy, bottomless state of affairs, but why?

C is for the cantankerous condition of our character, you have no cut-out.; Grimey Drawer

What's a good UI practice on linking to external/larger sites from a mobile pages/dashboards?

We have a number of mobile-friendly pages that act as small, fast versions of (much) larger and slower BI/Analysis sites. We've come to a crossroads about the "best" way to navigate from the smaller versions to the bigger versions - everyone has their own ideas about how to get from point A to point B.

I'd love some ideas or pointers about the current Best Practices used. Thanks, I'll hang up and listen off the air.

# ? Dec 1, 2016 16:53

MrMoo: Sep 14, 2000

Been challenged to create a 60fps synchronized video wall in HTML5. Starting with single computer, multiple port, and increasing up towards multi-computer synchronized play for much bigly displays. I may start a project.log as the last time it took 3 months to get news & quote tickers running across 6 displays.

Choice technologies are DASH streaming with WebRTC based sync, I've seen multiple Chrome Experiments using this method quite successfully since 2013

https://vimeo.com/60992231

# ? Dec 1, 2016 17:05

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# ? May 12, 2024 03:14

Anony Mouse: Jan 30, 2005; A name means nothing on the battlefield. After a week, no one has a name.; Lipstick Apathy

Data Graham posted:

Like this gem I saw a little while ago.

Yeah no thanks, how about I just go somewhere else

Bonus points if it's only validated client side :getin:

# ? Dec 1, 2016 18:00

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > The Web Design & Development Megathread

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