I recently attended PubCon 2010 in Las Vegas, NV.  The conference ran 8 tracks with 4 sessions every day. With 32 sessions to choose from eachday, it was a task to choose 1 session to the exclusion of 7 others.  

The frist session I attended was CSS and HTML Today. It was a panel of 4 industry experts moderated by Ralf Schwoebel. Each panelist presented info about different topics related to CSS and HTML. 

First up was Benj Arriola, SEO Director, Internet Marketing, Inc. 

SEO Tip from Benj: If you have multiple links on a page that link to the same page, only the text of the first link is considered by the search engines for ranking.  

Dawn Wentzell talking about Microformats

Next up was Dawn Wentzell, Senior Account Manager, Outspoken Media. Dawn spoke primarily about Microformats.

• Microformats are Structured Markup – Semantic markup
• Google’s rich snippets enhance search results displays
• Google supports microformats, RDFa, Microdata, Good Relations, Merchant Fees, XML sitemaps supported for videos
• hCard
   
  • for people and places – address, phone, name, company – based on a vCard standard
  • Mark up your business address on your website with hCard (for Google) – saying since 2007. Google is actively scraping now for this information.
  • Linked IN is using hCard to to markup each person’s information

• hReview
o Yelp, Amazon use hReview
 Reviews on movies, etc.
 See hReview code smoke in code – displays with stars
o Markup testimonials on your website using hReviews
• hCalendar
o on your website events –
o You actually get more screen real estate on Google search results when using hCalendar
• hRecipe
• hProduct – retail products – Combine with hReview – hProduct  just announced last week.
• When implemented by more sites, people will be able to comparison shop in Google – by the information that Google supplies  in the SERPs
• Use microformats – wide support in technology and Google’s Snippets
• Very easy to implement
• Increase in CTR from SERPs – click through rate increase – if your result has the microformat and others don’t – listing got better click through because listing looked different from the rest.
• Con – other formats – developers like RDFa – which microformat will emerge as the leader?
• Data is easier to scrape
• Only Big Brands have rich snippets displaying in SERPs?? Check this out.

Ted Ulle – HTML5  

IETF – Internet … Task Force  

HTML 4 – 1999  

HTML 5
• Standardizes ERROR handling. All browsers will have the same response.
• Will standardize JavaScript APIs
• Common script functions move to the browser
2006 Google research discovered these standard definitions at websites
o <na>
o <header>
o <footer>
o <section>
o <article>
o <aside>
• Dynamically draw and update graphics with Canvas
• Tags for Magical Forms – Smart tags – autocomplete, placeholder, required, meter, search, email, urls, tel (telephones),
• Media will become browser-native
o Still arguing about format and patents (<audio>, <video>)
• Browser support –
o IE 9 – workaround (JavaScript) for older versions

Panelist Todd Kemp looking to Ralf Schwoebel (moderator) and panelists Ted Ulle, Dawn Wentzell, and Benj Arriolla for confirmation on one of his points.

• JavaScript Library –
• jQuery – easy to use and well documented.
o Code is minimized
o Get source code version
• jQueryUI – User interface for jQuery
• Use tutorials
• jQuery plugin – cycle – rotating carousel/marquee – control button on the bottom right

Woo Hoo! Got a reminder this am from a business colleague. We are heading to the Boston PHP meetup tonight for a presentation about HTML5, the next version of HTML.  This presentation is of very great interest to me because it is the language that the browsers use to display websites. (Even if a website is “written” in PHP, the PHP code generates HTML.)

The presenter is a W3C heavy-hitter, and, I have high expectations.  I am looking forward to learning new tricks and about upcoming capabilities that I can (eventually) incorporate into website and blog projects.

Description of HTML5 Meetup (taken from the e-mail reminder):

HTML5 is being developed as the next major revision of HTML. Along with technologies like SVG, CSS3, and various APIs, the HTML5 Platform aims at enabling rich Web applications, including with video and graphic animation. Major Web browsers are all rushing to implement this new wave.

Many great new features such as:

New HTML elements and attributes
Built in APIs like Drag and Drop, Video, Audio, and Geolocation
CSS3 goodies: New Selectors, Borders, Media Queries, Transformations, Transitions, etc.
Local storage: Web Storage, Indexed Database
Web workers
Video element
Canvas and its 2D API
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
WOFF, the Web Open Font Format
and much more…

This will be presented by Philippe Le Hegaret of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Philippe heads the team responsible for standardizing frontend Web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, SVG, WOFF, or Web APIs. He is a former Chair of the Document Object Model (DOM) Working Group and wrote the first version of the W3C CSS validator back in 1997.

I will report back here about the awesome stuff I learn!

I gave a presentation at my BNI meeting yesterday. My group members wanted to know, ”What are the current trends on the Web?“ While preparing an answer, I reflected on the work that clients have requested during the dozen years that my website design and development business has existed.  Interestingly, I discovered that there have been 4 waves of website trends. They are:

1. Establish a Web Presence
2. Level the Playing Field
3. Get Found
4. Build Community

Establish a Presence
When I started Adventures Online 12 years ago, getting businesses to establish a presence on the Web was the focus, and at the time, many business professionals did not understand what the Internet was, and therefore were not convinced of the potential (positive) impact it could have for their businesses. Other businesses, what I would call ”forward-thinking businesses”,  were looking for new marketing opportunities and quickly took to the idea. For those risk-takers, the trend was to design and develop brochure-type websites.

Level the Playing Field
The next trend developed as a reaction to more and more businesses establishing presences on the Internet. When businesses in the same industry and especially, in the same geography, established presences, the goal of website development tasks shifted to leveling the playing field. Competitors had launched their websites with snazzier designs, more information and more functionality than those who had launched websites earlier. The bulk of the Web work revolved around bringing clients’ websites up to speed with the websites of their competitors.

Get Found
Then we reached the point where there were millions and millions of websites – and – millions of websites representing businesses that offer the same services and who all claim to be the best in their field. The focus of client requests shifted to: “Help me get found on the Internet!”. And, so, for several years the bulk of web work has been search engine optimization (SEO), and, my goal has been to get my clients’ websites higher rankings in the search engines.

Build Community
Recently, the popularity of the social networking websites has created a new trend, and that is to continue the community building begun at the Big 3 (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) at their own websites – and – to encourage visitors to their websites to connect with them and their communities via the Big 3. It’s a closed-circle community-building experience.

Since clients are actively driving traffic to their websites via the social networking websites, they have a heightened awareness of their responsibility to ensure that their websites contain link-worthy content and functionality that encourages conversation and community building. Typical requests these days are to:

1. Add links to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profiles
2. Add blogs to websites of businesses that had previously resisted blogging
3. Add widgets, plug-ins, and functionality to websites and blogs so that the websites and blogs more similar to social networking websites

I am interested in learning what others have experienced – from both the website development and end-client perspectives. What have you experienced?