How to Add Meta Noindex to Your Feeds
Want to make sure that your feeds are not indexed by Google and other compliant search engines? Add the following code to the channel element of your XML-based (RSS, etc.) feeds: <xhtml:meta xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="robots" content="noindex"></xhtml:meta> Here is an example of how I use this tag for Perishable Press feeds (vertical spacing added for emphasis): Continue reading »
Open External Links as Blank Targets via Unobtrusive JavaScript
Beginning with this article, I am serving up a short series of unobtrusive JavaScript functions that I use to enhance the functionality of Perishable Press. In this post, I present a comprehensive JavaScript method of opening external links in new windows (or tabs, depending on the browser). Continue reading »
Prevent JavaScript Elements from Breaking Page Layout when Following Yahoo Performance Tip #6: Place Scripts at the Bottom
By now, everyone is familiar with the Yahoo Developer Network’s 14 best-practices for speeding up your website. Certainly, many (if not all) of these performance optimization tips are ideal for high-traffic sites such as Yahoo or Google, but not all of them are recommended for smaller sites such as Perishable Press. Nonetheless, throughout the current site renovation project, I have attempted to implement as many of these practices as possible. At the time of this writing, I somehow have managed […] Continue reading »
New Mobile CSS Styles for Perishable Press
The amount of time I spend surfing the Web from a mobile device has steadily increased since the acquisition of my new favorite mobile device. Unfortunately, many sites have yet to implement (or even consider) support for mobile devices. Without proper formatting, such sites are virtually useless, requiring unnecessary download times, displaying unreadable pages, and serving unusable content. Given the inevitable ubiquity of mobile access to the World Wide Web, providing reasonable support for handheld browsers is becoming increasingly important. […] Continue reading »
Position Absolute Horizontal and Vertical Center via CSS
Recently, a reader named Max encountered some scrolling issues while implementing our absolutely centered layout technique. Of course, by “absolutely centered” we are referring to content that remains positioned dead-center regardless of how the browser is resized. After noticing the scrollbar deficiency, Max kindly dropped a comment to explain the issue: the div solution works well, only one problem maybe somebody can help: if you make the browser window smaller then the div is -> the scrollbar doenst fit right […] Continue reading »
Bare-Bones HTML/XHTML Document Templates
In this post I have assembled a concise collection of conforming, bare-bones document templates for just about every DOCTYPE for HTML, XHTML, and more. Continue reading »
Rethinking Structural Design with New Elements in HTML 5
HTML 5, also known as Web Applications 1.0, provides new markup elements that will change the way you design your web pages. The new elements replace commonly used divisions in web documents, facilitating an even greater degree of separation between structure (HTML) and presentation (CSS). Indeed, in many documents, the new elements will structure the document while providing enough hooks to render obsolete previously required divisions, classes, and identifiers. Let’s take a look.. Continue reading »
Essential HTML Entities
Virtually every article written here at Perishable Press requires at least one or two “special” HTML characters. Some of these characters — such as quotation marks, hyphens, and dashes — are very common, while others — such as the copyright symbol, bullet, and arrow — happen less frequently. The vast majority of special characters, however, like the latin Ä (i.e., capital letter “A” with a diaeresis), and the mathematical symbol ⊃ (i.e., superset), rarely see the light of day on […] Continue reading »
Wrapping Your Head around Downlevel Conditional Comments
If you think you understand the logic behind Microsoft’s downlevel conditional comments, you are sadly mistaken. Sure, they seem simple enough on the surface, but as you really try to wrap your head around how and why they work, the subtle complexities of downlevel conditional comments may leave you dazed and confused… In our previous article on Internet Explorer’s exclusive browser-detection method, downlevel conditional comments (DCC), we present an introductory exposition, defining expressions and providing several generalized code examples. Overall, […] Continue reading »
The Friendliest Link Targets in the Neighborhood
The target attribute for anchor elements (<a></a>) specifies the location in which the referenced document should load. For example, to open a link in a new window, we would use a target value of _blank. Although this is a commonly employed technique, the target attribute has been deprecated by the W3C and is not valid (X)HTML. Regardless, the target element remains a useful tool for practicing designers and developers. Here, we present the attribute values for the target element: Continue reading »
Perishable Press is operated by Jeff Starr, a professional web developer and book author with two decades of experience.
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