We have developed two forms of Content Management, one for small websites, and one for larger, more involved websites (including member interaction).

Our simple CMS, can be yours from just £600, whereas the Web 2.0 version of our CMS starts at £3,000.

For more information, please contact us.

If like me you've been disappointed with your broadband connection speeds, here in the UK, there may be some help at hand.  Channel Five's The Gadget Show, is starting a campaign to get fairer priced broadband packages from UK suppliers.

Utilising an online upload/download speed tester (it's done with Flash), you're asked to check your actual speed, and complete the form to add weight to their campaign.  It's probably best to run the test a couple of times, and make sure you're not downloading in the background, to get an accurate reading.

With any luck, these misleading 'up to 8mb' labels will soon be a thing of the past...

Simply surf on over to http://gadgetshow.five.tv/jsp/speed_test.htm to get started.

Recently, every time I started my Windows machine recently, I got the following error message:

SmartBridge Alerts:MotiveSB.exe Entry Point Not Found The procedure entry point GetProcessImageFileNameW could not be located in the dynamic link library PSAPI.DLL

This problem has been bugging me for a while, and this evening, whilst rewiring my network, to give Anne-Laure my spare USB wi-fi modem to take with her to France, I thought I'd get to the bottom of it.

I've done some hunting on the web, and found the answer...

Basically, if you download Internet Explorer 7, it also creates a newer psapi.dll file, which takes precedence over all the others. However, SmartBridge is still trying to use the old version that it created when it was installed.

The quick fix is to rename the psapi.dll file(s) that was installed with SmartBridge to psapi.old, forcing it to find and use the version installed by IE7. By renaming, you can quickly undo the changes should anything go awry.

The easiest way to make this change is to perform a search for psapi.dll on your C:/ drive, and rename all occurences that are not in the System folder, ie C:/WINDOWS/system32 - see the following graphic:

A word of caution, there is a website out there called Security Stronghold (the first result in Google for this problem) which offers a free download entitled 'True Sword' that it claims will fix the problem described above. While this might be true, it's actually very misleading as once installed, it will continuously pop up a message at start-up to say that your computer is suffering from other problems and that you need to purchase the full version of the application to remove the problems it has identified.

This hoax is confirmed on the Symantec website, at:
http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-062816-5804-99 and tabid=1

Frecosse Online Solutions was established in early 2005, and has been providing tailored website systems to a wide variety of clients ever since - see our client list for examples of our work.

Specialising in desiging accessible systems, we tend to deliver content managed website solutions for small to medium sized businesses, and have recently been concentrating on community websites, where the members themselves build the content on the site.

Started by Anne-Laure Dupuis and Graeme Attkins, Frecosse has steadily grown from strength to strength, and each new project is seen as an opportunity to expand on the knowledge we already have on tap (see our resources section), and this ensures that no two websites we deliver are ever the same, as we're always looking for that new technique which will make them stand out from the crowd.

If you'd like to discuss your online requirements, please get in touch:

Frecosse Online Solutions
12 Armadale Street
Glasgow
G31 2UX

SCOTLAND

Tel: +44 (0)141 556 1369
E-mail: info@frecosse.com

We'll treat your enquiry in the strictest confidence.

Link to new window

It will even work in the middle of text, for example: this is a link, and then the text continues.

To add this effect to your website, you simply need to add the following code to your stylesheet:

   1:  a[target $='_blank'] {

   2:      padding-right:20px;

   3:      background: transparent url(images/newWin.gif) no-repeat center right;

   4:  }

What this does is look for any occurence of the string '_blank' in links in the content of your page, and if found, applies the style defined above to the tag containing the string.

It also has the advantage that the graphic is incorporated into your link block, without underlining, when you hover over it.

We have worked for a wide range of clients, mostly based around the central belt of Scotland. A sample of clients and the websites we've provided for them is given below.

	Aitkens Working with Voltage Design , we provided the back-end MySQL database and Content Management System for this website.
	Arran Online Running since summer 2004, this portal website was developed free of charge for the Isle of Arran to give the community a voice on the internet. Allowing local businesses to advertise free, local groups to advertise their upcoming events, and much more. This website now has a free recycling section for registered members.
	Arran Voice First published in April 2007, The Arran Voice is Arran's weekly newspaper and this website provides an online alternative to the printed copies. The website is also used to collate all articles for each issue, and a full publishing system, including image management, has been developed for the Voice's production team.
	Bird Semple and mdash; Private Client Solicitors Working with Bird Semple's IT team, we were responsible for designing the look for this website, and integrating it with the Ruby on Rails platform it had been built on. We were also responsible for ensuring that the website was as accessible as possible, and at the time of building this website, many established techniques had not been developed for Ruby on Rails, meaning that we had to come up with various work-arounds. There is also a client-only section on this website, AgeCare, which we again designed and ensured was accessible. The stylesheets for these websites were integrated with the Radiant Content Management System.
	Cattanach Charitable Trust Launched in October 2007, this website, for a registered Scottish charity, allows fund-raisers to apply for grants from the Trust online. An easy-to-complete application form, which can be saved by applicants while they locate required information, provides on-screen assistance, and is self-validating, ensuring that the information entered is in the format required by the Assessor and Trustees to make their final decision. Once applications are entered into the system, a full management system, developed for the Trust, allows all pertinent information to be collated for the next Trustees meeting.
	Classic Expressions This Content Managed website allows our clients to quickly update content as required, adding new products, adjusting stock levels etc. The website also utilises a PayPal shopping basket, with new products easily added through the CMS.
	Diabetes DVD This website had originally been developed by the client using a website design package which had rendered each page as a single graphic. This inevitably meant that search engines were not able to index the website successfully, and as a result, the site was not listed. We redesigned the website, integrating a PayPal shopping cart, and optimised each page for the search engines.
	Food and Health Alliance Working with CIVIC , we developed the Food and Health Alliance website based on provided artwork to run on their proprietary JAVA-based Content Management System.
	Go Start A Business Working with Voltage Design , we developed the MySQL database and Content Management System for this website.
	Letting Web (Blog) Working with Voltage Design , we integrated this PHP/MySQL blogging system into Letting Web's current ASP website.
	Neil Wilson Publishing This online shopping cart was developed to allow population of the shop with data from the client's Filemaker database. Each time the client updates their internal database, a single button press allows them to quickly export their Filemaker data straight to the website. The website also produces a PDF catalogue based on this data, ensuring that the catalogue is up-to-date at all times.
	TherapyNet This online directory allows complementary therapists to advertise their services for a low annual charge. This website was designed to as automated as possible, and has been constantly refined in subsequent builds to provide the building blocks for many of our more recent website builds.
	Small Video Company Ltd This website utilises a simplified Content Management System, designed to make small websites easy to keep up-to-date. We also created a streaming Flash video clip for the client converted from the Quicktime movie provided. This was integrated into the homepage, as part of the overall design, and automatically plays on reaching the website.
	WhichBand This free online directory allows unsigned artists and bands to promote themselves, and supports sample audio clips, forthcoming gig dates etc.
	WhichMotor This online directory allows vehicle owners to advertise their cars, vans, boats etc, for sale for a low quarterly charge.

We have just launched the new website for The Cattanach Charitable Trust, a registered Scottish charity that provides grants for other charities, aimed at helping young children in Scotland.

The main feature of this website is the easy-to-complete online application form, that allows fund-raisers to provide information in the exact format required by Cattanach's assessor and trustees.

Each applicant can store incomplete applications on the website while they look for any information required that they don't have to hand, and during each step of the process, online help is provided to ensure that applicants can complete the form as quickly as possible.

View: www.cattanach.org.uk

Frecosse Online Solutions would like to introduce you to a new concept in website design...

Although we're a competitive website design agency, based in Glasgow, Scotland, we simply have too much work to take on every new project that comes along. So we have decided to make life easier for our visitors by providing online tutorials, hints and tips, and best practice coding solutions, free of charge!

Simply head over to our 'resources' section to find answers to a multitude of web-related questions. Of course, we invite guests to add their own solutions, and full credit will be given where it's due.

So whether you're a keen amateur, or working to an impending deadline, you might find the answer for your particular problem here.

Of course, if you do get yourself into a fankle, we'll be more than happy to provide a solution for you and mdash; for a modest charge, of course and mdash; or to put you in touch with other, track-tested website designers.

There are a few persistent myths when it comes to designing accessible websites - this post looks at 9 of the most popular, and does it's best to dispel them!

Myth #1
The web's getting more Accessible every day

There is an element of truth in this, but it's mostly due to people not coding HTML themselves any more - instead they are using ready-made templates, eg for Blogs, which are more often than not delivered in well-written, strict XHTML.

However, with the emergence of new web technologies, and the return of others (think AJAX), there are more websites than ever using non-accessible elements within their pages.

When it comes to special effects on your web pages, the general rule of thumb is to add these after you've built the underlying core page with content - think of it as the cherry on top...

It's fine, desirable even, to add extra usability features to your site, like validating forms, but just make sure that your web pages still work when all this extra functionality is switched off.

Myth #2
Sites are more Accessible with CSS

It's probably quicker to make an inaccessible website with CSS than with any other method! Badly defined type sizes will render your website unreadable to thousands of visitors across all your pages - unless they are amongst the 5% of users who know that they can increase the type size within their browser...

If you were to try and achieve the same 'bad' effect with a font tags (don't really, this tag has been deprecated!), it would take much longer for you to make it just as inaccessible!

The simple fact is that CSS on its own doesn't do very much at all in terms of creating an accessible website - however, it does give you global control over the look of your website and allows you to apply styles to lists etc, which look good on screen, and can also be read comfortably by search engines.

But remember, it's about 10 times quicker to make your website more, or less accessible by changing your CSS, so make sure you edit it with care.

The single biggest reason for using CSS at all, is that it allows website developers to create websites more quickly by separating the layout from content - as far as that's possible.

Myth #3
CSS allows us to completely separate content from layout

Many people think that CSS allows you to completely separate your content from layout, and on the surface this appears to be true.

You can create a page using standard HTML mark-up, eg h1, p, strong tags, and then spice it up with a stylesheet that controls the appearance of these.

While this does applies to the appearance of individual elements of a page - what about the layout? There isn't a pre-defined tag for header, menu or footer, for example, so you will also need to add a sprinkling of div classes and ids to your pages.

And then there is the whole problem of getting your website to appear as correctly as possible on the wide range of different browsers that your visitors are using - it's not just Internet Explorer and Firefox, there's also Safari, Opera, Konqueror and Camino to name just a few... And there are different versions of each of these - Internet Explorer 5.1 behaves very differently from 5.5, which likewise behaves differently from 6, which is nothing like version 7 (coming soon!).

So suddenly your faced with the prospect of introducing rules for how the website should appear in each of these browsers. These can take the form of additional div tags for specific browsers, conditional comments, CSS hacks etc.

In short, CSS doesn't completely separate content from layout - only a template system can do that. However, CSS does have its place on top of the template system, and greatly simplifies the HTML - if you think there's div soup today, you should see the table soup from 1996... it was much worse, and unfortunately I've seen some site recently that are still guilty of using table-based layouts!

Myth #4
With CSS, you can do the design later

Actually... This is true. You could do all your HTML coding first, and then go back and create your CSS as an afterthought.

However, the real problem is that as you are creating your HTML, it's very difficult to know if your layout is going to work, across browsers, without it being available at the early stage.

For this blog page alone, there are around 45 styles being used to create the layout as you see it (assuming you're seeing the full-graphic version hosted on my own site). And many of the div tags are nested within others - take a look at the source of this page to see for yourself.

It's nigh on impossible to predict exactly how your CSS will need to be applied to your web pages, unless you are building them simultaneously.

Myth #5
We need separate Printer-Friendly Pages

You've seen this feature countless times, a little button or link on a page that redirects you from the styled output of the content to a less-cluttered, printer optimised version.

True you could make your Printer-Friendly Pages as stand-alone copies of your normal pages, but hang-on - that means two pages for each page, and when you update one, you've got to update the other... Does anyone see a problem with this?

Oh, and which version of the page will people link to? Most bloggers will link to the print version of your pages, as they tend to be easier to read, and not split up into multiple pages.

The answer is simple, create a print stylesheet. This is just like your normal stylesheet, except it defines how the page should be formatted for print. With it, you can remove colours, make widths of text blocks more flexible etc.

Both stylesheets need to be referenced by the page - the normal stylesheet is called for 'screen' and the print stylesheet is called for 'print' - and then the browser does the rest.

If you really want the 'gee-whizz' factor of a button that says 'printer-friendy page' we have developed a module that generates one on the fly, but truth be told, this technique is now lest 'gee-whiz' and more 'old-hat'.

Myth #6
Accessibility means always using Alt text

'Alt' (alternative) text, is used as a replacement value for when an image the HTML cannot be seen. There's a variety of reasons why this might happen: the user is bline or visually impaired; the browsing platform does not support images; the user has disabled images for faster low-bandwidth browsing; or a search bot has come round to index your website.

Many people believe that when there's an image, it must be given Alt text. This is not true - Alt text should only be used when it is crucial to understanding the point you're making.

As an example, say you have a web page headed up with 'New HTML techniques', and the illustration that appears directly after this is of a the word 'HTML.' with the alt text set to read 'HTML.' - someone listening to or viewing the alt text on the screen would now get:

New HTML techniques
HTML.

Not very useful, is it? The headline of the page had already informed users what the page was about, so the Alt text of the graphic proves to be superfluous.

However, it is true to say that all your images should define the Alt tag...

"Wait a minute!" I hear you object...

Accessibility checks will point out that images don't contain Alt text, each and every time, but you can beat the system by adding alt="" - making it clear that you don't need Alt text for that particular element of the page.

Myth #7
Accessible websites don't use tables

Time and time again, I hear people wondering aloud about the possibility of creating a table free website.

It's true that you shouldn't use tables for layout - that's a big no-no... However, it's perfectly acceptable to use tables for showing tabular data - as long as you use the correct mark-up within the table summaries etc.

As an aside, when I was still working with the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), I was speaking with the Royal National Institute for the Blind, who advocate proper table usage asked them how I would go about creating an accessible version of the periodic table. I'm still waiting for an answer...!

It just goes to show that there is always an exception to every rule.

You can find out more about creating accessible tables in my post entitled 'Creating Accessible Tables'.

Myth #8
We need an alternative version of our website for Mobile Technologies

Do you remember WML? No? There's a very good reason - this language designed for WAP-enabled mobile phones was killed off nearly as soon as it appeared for being superfluous to needs.

Even before WML was conceived, plain old HTML had been created to be media-independent - not by accident, but by design. Tim Berners-Lee - widely regarded as the father of the internet - was trying to solve the platform-dependence problems when he invented the World Wide Web and HTML.

So, if you need your website to work on mobile technologies, you just need to add another stylesheet that tells these platforms how to interpret your existing website.

Myth #9
CSS hacks are always better

Do you know how to separate styles for Internet Explorer 6 and all the others? It's simple, just use the !important property, like this:

   1:  .content {

   2:      width: 600px !important;

   3:      width: 580px;

   4:  }

Firefox and others will correctly interpret the content layer as to have a width of 600 pixels, because !important overrules any other similar definitions. IE6 on the other hand simply grabs the last value it sees.

Or take this little hack:

   1:  .content { width: 500px; }

   2:  .content { width: 450px; }

This is the 'g-z backslash' trick, supposed to separate between different flavours of Internet Explorer.

There are other hacks as well, which I've grouped under the 'CSS Hacks' category of this blog.

While CSS hacks can be fun, they are still hacks. They are workarounds that are likely to cause problems with every new browser release. You might want to consider using Conditional Comments to load different stylesheets for different browsers instead.

For more information about Conditional Comments, read my post entitled 'Conditional Commenting (an alternative to IE Hacks)'.

However, if you must use CSS hacks, it's best to use them sparingly and accept them as what they are: an often necessary evil.

If you're just thinking about getting into the world of web, then make sure you read this post first - it outlines the dos and don'ts that make a website successful.

1. The Idea...

Make sure the idea behind your website means something to you. Websites are a labour of love, and if you don't care for the website, it'll show on your pages through your content.

2. Get the Name Right...

When you're choosing your domain name, choose something memorable and easy to spell. It's much better to get something like 'mycompany.biz' than 'my-business-scotland.com'.

There are still some good ".com" domain names out there, and everyone in Europe now has a chance to buy ".eu" domain names.

Remember, the best names are advertisements in their own right.

NB Avoid hyphens in your domain name if at all possible - most search engines will take a hypen to mean minus, and perform a search for just the first part of your domain, ignoring everything after the hyphen!

3. Plan Your Website...

It's no good having an idea, buying a domain and jumping right in - you'll end up with a confused layout that doesn't navigate well.

Start the process by drawing up a plan for your website on a piece of paper. Start in the middle with your homepage, and then doodle away to your heart's content, adding new pages, showing links between pages etc.

To get your creative juices flowing, here are some broad titles:

• Homepage/Welcome Message
• What We Do/Offer
• Benefits of our Products/Services
• Company History
• Contact Information
• Testimonials

4. Keep it Simple...

When it comes to navigation, there's a very good reason why menus tend to be on the left of the page, and the content on the right - it works.

Most successful new websites adopt this method, because it means visitors to their site do not have to learn how to use a new navigation technique - they can dive right in and get the content they are after, which is what it's all about at the end of the day.

If you must use some innovative new navigation technique, test it. Get as many people as you can to have a look at your site, while it's still in development, and listen to their feedback. If they encounter difficulties, you can bet that when it's opened up to the world, so will everyone else.

5. Contact Details...

The number one reason that people visit business websites, is to look up contact details. So, don't hide them away!

If possible, make sure your contact details appear on every page, or at least a link to them.

You might also want to consider adding value to your contact page - as well as your postal address, telephone, fax and e-mail, why not add a map or e-mail directory?

Of course, the other benefit of doing all this is that it makes it easier for your prospective customers to get in touch with you.

6. Customer Comments Matter...

Your customer feedback is not just about what is wrong with your products, services or website - it's about how you can improve them. And if you get positive feedback, put this on your website, with the customer's permission of course.

Testimonials from happy customers are especially important on the internet - your online customers are unlikely ever to meet you, so how else can they trust you?

7. Building Trust...

Following on from the previous post, there are some other key areas which you should explore to build a trustworthy website, for example:

• Convey the right image - make sure your website has a professional look and feel
• Tell customers about yourself - if your company has a proven history offline, make sure you tell them about it. Customers are more likely to buy from high-street names, because they know that they can go to a bricks and mortar building - in the world of web, you must convince prospective customers that you're not simply going to disappear with their money!
• If you have any awards, or are a member of any certified bodies, make sure you add these graphics to your website.
• Make sure you supply full contact details, and don't hide them away.
• If you accept credit cards on your website for manual payments, using Secure Socket Layers (SSL), tell the customer that SSL has been installed, is working and up-to-date.
• Make sure you have policy documents that are easy to find, and explain the customer's rights for any purchases they make.

8. Flashy Websites...

You should only use Flash elements sparingly, if at all, to convey your messages - think of them as the cherry on top, not the main information platform.

Most visitors to your site won't have time to watch your beautifully crafted Flash introductions, and will skip right past them.

And Flash is inherently search engine unfriendly. Search engines can't read the text that appears in your Flash files - and if the search engines can't find you, neither will your customers.

9. Interact With Your Customers...

Make sure your website is not a one-way street - and provide visitors with opportunities to interact with you.

Think about online feedback forms, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), bulletin boards, or even a blog like this one.

Frecosse provide a range of modules that add interactivity to websites - check out Our Products.

10. Collect Visitor Information

NB Make sure you tell visitors that you intend to collect information about them in your policy documents.

Through your website statistics, you can find out where your visitors are coming from, what they are clicking on and what keywords they are using in the search engines. Make sure you analyse this information regularly (at least monthly) and adjust your website as required.

Why not think about building a database of your current customers and visitors interested in your products/services. You could then send them an electronic newsletter at regular intervals that details any special offers.

11. Keep it Fresh...

A website's worst enemy is stale content.

You'll soon lose return visitors if your website never changes. A Content Management System provides an easy means of keeping your content up-to-date, and there are methods of automatically updating sections of your website without your involvement.

12. Search Friendly Pages...

After all the work that you've put in creating your website, it's no good if nobody can find you. You need to optimise your pages for search engine submissions.

You should also consider adding as many inbound and outbound links with related websites (not direct competitors) as possible.

Every link to your website is a message of endorsement both to individuals and search engines.

13. Consistent Flexibility...

Be consistent, but flexible with your core message - your success depends on how sensitive you are to your customer needs and a constantly changing marketplace.

14. Choosing the Right Design Company

When choosing a website design company, make sure you look at their portfolio to see how their client websites work. Call them and see if you like them, check their references, and make sure they offer excellent support. You want to establish a long-term relationship.

Why not choose Frecosse?!

Reliable Hosting...

Make sure your website is hosted with a reliable company that keeps your site up and loading quickly. They should provide you with a top level domain (unique IP address), sufficient web space, support the necessary programming languages, and come with webmail and site usage statistics.

Most importantly, make sure that whatever package you consider purchasing is upgradeable - you never know how your website might grow in the future.

For UK customers, I would recommend checking out Krystal Hosting as a first port of call.

16. Appreciate your Website Developers!

They may well be a strange breed that work funny hours, and don't get nearly enough sleep - but they are still human (mostly). Don't forget to thank them for their work - your appreciation keeps them going.

17. Promote Your Site...

Promote your new website everywhere you can - on your business cards, at trade shows, on blogs and any other media that is likely to be seen by your prospective audience.

18. Expect Realistic Results...

Make sure you have reasonable expectations of what can be achieved with your budget.

Running an online business is much cheaper than traditional methods, but it still takes time and resources to design your website, applications and administration functions, optimise it for search engines and promote it.

19. Small Steps, Big Picture...

There may be times when your website seems to falter in its progress - this is most evident with search engine rankings which are notoriously fiddly - but try to keep your cool. Remember the big picture for your website, and continue to take small steps towards achieving that. All good websites take time to build, and you need to build a lasting reputation.

20. Appreciate Your Website...

It's important that you appreciate your website. If it starts to make you money, make sure you invest some of that into improving your online presence, be it with search engine optimisation, additional functionality or just a new look.

Mozilla yesterday announced the launch of Firefox Version 2.0 (RC 1). This is pre-release version of the updated browser is aimed at helping web developers ensure that their sites, code etc, works in the new browser.

As this browser is still in the pre-release stage, you will not be prompted to download this just yet - however, if you want to get your hands on a copy, visit the following link:

• http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/all-rc.html

New features in Mozilla Firefox 2.0 include:

• A new theme that updates Firefox and rsquo;s familiar interface
• Built-in Phishing Protection
• Enhanced search engine management and search suggestions for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
• Improvements to tabbed browsing, including the ability to re-open recently closed tabs
• Firefox will resume from where you left off after a system crash or browser restart
• Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
• Inline spell checking in web forms
• The ability to create bookmarks with "Live Titles" for websites that offer microsummaries
• New Add-ons manager that simplifies management of extensions and themes
• Support for JavaScript 1.7
• Extended search plug-in format
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localisation of extensions
• Support for client-side session and persistent storage
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
• New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System

Google uses two indexes for its search results. The normal index and the supplemental results index.

You need to be in the normal index - but what can you do if you're currently listed as a supplemental result? This post looks at your options...

What are Google's Supplemental Results?

Google defines supplemental results as follows:

A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that it's pulled from our supplemental index. We're able to place fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index. For example, the number of parameters in a URL might exclude a site from being crawled for inclusion in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to our supplemental index.

If you're a webmaster, please note that the index in which a site is included is completely automated; there's no way to select or change the index in which a site appears. Please also be assured that the index in which a site is included doesn't affect its PageRank.

If you find that your web pages are being listed in the supplemental results then it is more than likely that your web pages could not be catalogued properly by Google's standard web indexing bot. You can find out more about search engine bots in my post entitled 'Search Index Robots and Creating Robots.txt Files'.

In a nutshell, the problem with Google's supplemental results are that they are only supplemental. If your web pages are listed in the supplemental results then they won't be found very often when visitors are searching for sites using Google.

Finding out if you have supplemental pages

To find out how many of your pages are listed in Google's supplemental results simply enter the following query into the search box in Google:

site: www.yourwebsite.com ***

Upon completing the search, go to the last page of results, and you'll probably see a message that reads along the lines of:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the X already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

These omitted results, from your site, are supplemental pages.

How to avoid supplemental pages

First of all, don't worry, most websites have pages in Google's supplemental results. It just means that Google had difficulty indexing these pages.

Supplemental pages tend to be made up of non-permanent items (eg search results, database driven content) that cannot easily be made permanent.

However, if your entire site or the majority of pages is being returned as supplemental, the following techniques will help you change this:

• Make sure that your web pages don't contain any spam elements and that you don't use any spam techniques to promote your website. Using spam techniques to promote your website is often the reason why a website doesn't get good rankings. You're better off focusing on ethical search engine optimisation techniques.
  
• Make it easy for search engines to index your web pages. If it's at all possible, don't use web page URLs that contain question marks or the ampersand symbol. If your pages do contain these symbols, read my post entitled 'Rewriting Dynamic URLs'.
  
• Make sure that the HTML code of your web pages includes full and clear meta data, which is what most search engines are looking for.
  
• Make your web pages easy to find for Google's web crawler. The more inbound links to your web pages, the more likely it is that search engine crawlers will find them.

Again, most websites do have pages in Google's supplemental results, but the easier you make it for Google to index your web pages, the more pages of your site will be listed in Google's normal results.

Microsoft have decided to do away with the 'Accessibility' options in their forthcoming Operating System, Vista - and instead provide users with a wizard to gather their individual preferences on initialisation of an account, called the 'Ease of Access Center'.

You can find out more from Microsoft itself at:

• http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/windowsvista/

When preparing graphics for the web, you have several formats to choose from. This quick post details each of the three main ones, and when you should use them.

The three main graphic formats are JPEG, GIF and PNG, and each has a specific use which is outlined below.

JPEG Format

JPEG is a file format designed to provide high compression on photographic images. Files saved in this format will usually have either a .jpg or .jpeg suffix.

This is the format you should opt for when dealing with any larger images where the quality and number of colours are important.

GIF Format

GIFs are a different kettle of fish. They can have a maximum of 256 colours, though for best compression, you would normally try to reduce the number of colours in an image down to the lowest possible before you start seeing pixelation.

You can also create transparency within GIFs, by switching off certain colours (depending on your graphics package).

This makes it the ideal format for creating icons, buttons etc.

PNG Format

Until recently, Internet Explorer did not offer true support for the PNG format and mdash; whereas Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari had built-in handlers that could process them properly.

The PNG format is a sort of halfway house between JPEGs and GIFs: you don't have the same control over compression of PNG images, but the colour palette is much greater, and it still allows for transparency - though in this case it can be much more subtle, and is ideal for images with drop-shadows or opaque sections.

Thankfully Internet Explorer 7 is shipping with full PNG support, and you can expect to see this type of image being used more frequently as a result. It provides graphic designers with an opportunity to use more subtle graphics in their web designs.

Meta Data allows you to define search-engine friendly information in your pages. If you want rankings in any search engine, it is important that you employ Meta tags. This post gives you the low down on how to do it.

HTML lets web page authors specify meta data - information about a document rather than document content - in a variety of ways.

Meta data should always be added to your web pages in the HEAD section.

Meta Data Basics

There are two basic methods for placing meta data on your page:

   1:  <meta name="..." content="..." />

The name attribute identifies the property and the content attribute specifies the property's value.

   1:  <meta http-equiv="..." content="..." />

The http-equiv attribute may be used in place of the name attribute. HTTP servers use this attribute to gather information for HTTP response message headers.

You can also define schemes for your page - but this gets very complex, very quickly and warrants its own post at a later date. However, for your elucidation, the code used takes the following form:

   1:  <meta scheme="..." name="..." content="..." />

The scheme attribute allows authors to provide user agents more context for the correct interpretation of meta data. The name attribute is used to define the identifier.

About Meta Data 'Properties'

First, let's take a look at how we can use the tag in a couple of examples:

   1:  <meta name="author" content="Graeme Attkins" />

The property author basically specifies who the author of the web page is.

   1:  <meta name="description" content="This is a description of the content of your web page." />

The property description provides a summary of what the web page is about. This is commonly used by search engines to provide the summary that appears under the link in search results. If a description is not provided then some search engine will use the first 256 characters that appear on your page, which can include all sorts of nasties like hidden elements, javascript variables etc, to create your summary.

Some Meta Data Properties

There are a number of meta data types, and it is possible to define your own if you are cataloguing your website for use with applications etc. In the main, however, the following meta data types should be added for search engine optimisation:

Please note that the table above does not contain a definitive list, but does contain the minimum values that you should be defining on each of your web pages.

About HTTP-EQUIV Meta Data

Now, let's take a look at how we can use the META tag in a couple of examples:

   1:  <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-gb" />

Here, the property content-language is used to specify the language of the page, in this case en-gb (English, Great Britain).

   1:  <meta name="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

The property content-type explicitly states what type of page you have created, in this case, a standard text and HTML page, which uses the UTF-8 character encoding.

The values available for HTTP-EQUIV are too varied to detail here, but if you are interested in setting up an automatic redirect or refresh on your web page, you can find out more in my post entitled 'Auto-Refreshing Page Content'.

Screen Reader Settings

People using screen reading software may opt to listen to the meta data defined for your web pages... Below I show you a technique for creating a more screen reader friendly method of entering your meta data details.

To specify the author of a document, you would enter the following Meta Data in your HEAD section:

   1:  <meta name="Author" content="Graeme Attkins" />

However, if you are dealing with a multiple language version of your site, you might want to specify the type of pronunciation that a screen reader should use to read the Meta Data if a user listens to it. This can be done by changing the above code to read:

   1:  <meta name="Author" lang="en-gb" content="Graeme Attkins" />

or:

   1:  <meta name="Author" lang="fr" content="Anne-Laure Dupuis" />

Organisations planning to incorporate Web 2.0 features within their online strategy must be aware of accessibility needs or they may miss out on a market worth over £50 billion, warned Trenton Moss, director of web usability and accessibility agency Webcredible, at the Accessibility in 2006 conference on Tuesday, 12 September.

Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX offer organisations the ability to create feature-rich, interactive online environments.

Websites such as Yahoo Mail, Google Maps and Amazon Diamond Search have introduced Web 2.0 to great effect, producing intuitive, user friendly websites.

The rewards for improving usability in this way can be high, with traffic increasing by 150% and sales rates by up to 100%.

However, Moss warns that companies who introduce richer functionality, such as and lsquo;on the page and rsquo; changes to eliminate downloads and video content, should be aware of the risk of compromising website accessibility. The upshot is that organisations must develop alternative versions of these features to meet accessibility requirements.

He states:

Web 2.0 offers amazing potential but, for the first time, this could cause a conflict between accessibility and usability. However, developing alternative versions of web pages to address accessibility requirements does not need to be a costly exercise and the benefits far outweigh the effort. There are over 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK alone, so brands looking at Web 2.0 need to include accessibility in their online strategy in order to tap into this significant market

Webcredible is a UK-based web usability and accessibility consultancy, dedicated to making websites easy to use, accessible to all and ultimately more effective. Launched in 2003, Webcredible has enjoyed year-on-year growth of over 300 per cent and is now one of the most respected consultancies in the usability and accessibility industry.

Webcredible works with a long list of private and public sector clients based in the UK, Europe and North America including T-Mobile, Norwich Union, Yamaha, the BBC and the World Health Organization.

Every website should have something in the way of policy documents - they tell the user how they may use your website, explain your copyrights, and tell the user what you may do with any information they submit.

This post looks at what documentation you must have in place.

If you have a website - and by that I mean any type of website - then at the very least you should have:

• Terms and Conditions of Use
• Privacy Statement
• Accessibility Information

If you run a commercial website - that is, a website that offers products or services for sale - then you must also consider:

• Terms and Conditions of Sale
• Statutory Rights
• Refunds/Returns Policy
• Customs Information

For all policy documents where you outline procedures, I would recommend that you have them looked over by a legal adviser.

Please also note that some online payment handling providers (eg WorldPay) will not activate your account if you do not have these policies in place, and available to the customer from each page of the check-out procedure. You can find out more about different online payment handlers in my post entitled 'Choosing an Online Payment Handling Method'.

We'll now look at what each of the policy documents should contain in more detail.

Terms and Conditions of Use

As the title implies, this is the set of rules governing how people that visit your website should behave. It is normal to include information about:

• Ownership Statement
• Disclaimer
• Copyright Notice

The Ownership Statement should include full contact details.

The Disclaimer allows you to distance yourself from the result of publishing inaccurate information, any links to third-party sites, and the possibility of viruses or trojans being available to download from your site - though obviously, you should attempt to avoid these problems at all costs.

The Copyright Notice allows you to outline any acceptable use of text, images etc, that appear on your site, and what visitors to your site must not do. For more information about copyright, please read my post entitled 'Protect Your Website Copyright and Intellectual Property'.

Privacy Statement

In the United Kingdom, you are bound by the Data Protection Act 1998.

This means that there are certain rules about how you can use information provided by visitors to your site, and in most cases, you must inform them of any intention to use their information for marketing purposes.

It is illegal to sell UK e-mail addresses outwith the UK, and you must always ensure that visitors to your site know that you may pass their information to third-parties, if you intend to do so.

Accessibility Information

This is a more friendly document, which allows you to explain how your website has been made accessible, provide tips for changing text size, colours etc.

You should also list any Access Keys you are using (read my post entitled 'Access Keys' for more information), and any tests that you have performed to check the accessibility standards of your website.

Terms and Conditions of Sale

NB It is normal practice to combine the Terms and Conditions of Use with Terms and Conditions of Sale, and simply call it "Terms and Conditions of Use and Sale".

The Terms and Conditions of Sale allow you to outline how you wish to trade online - but beware, no matter what conditions you set, visitors have statutory rights which may override these - again, it is crucial that you seek legal advice on your policy documents.

Ideally, your Terms and Conditions of Sale will include:

• Contract Details for all Purchases
• Delivery Information
• Pricing and Availability Information
• Governing Law Information
• Your Policy on Selling to Children (16 and Under)
• Full Contact Details for any Disputes

Statutory Rights

Every visitor to your website has statutory rights, whether you like it or not. And these include built-in protection on credit card purchases.

For more information on a customer's right to withdraw from purchase within the seven working day cooling-off period, visit the Department of Trade and Industry's website at:

• http://www.dti.gov.uk/consumers/fact-sheets/page24635.html

For more information about your customers' other statutory rights, please visit the Department of Trade and Industry's Consumer Direct website at:

• http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/

Refunds/Returns Policy

You should have a refunds policy that explains in detail how a customer can claim a refund in various circumstances, eg:

• Items returned because they are damaged, defective or incorrect
• Items returned within the seven-day cooling off period
• Items returned under the 30-day guarantee

There are some exceptions to automatic refunding, eg you've sold an electronic document which cannot be returned without the customer still having their copy - though this is still a loose area in legislation covering online purchases.

My advice is to look at how other organisations deal with the same problem, for example Ordnance Survey, who sell electronic copies of their maps online.

Customs Information

If you're a company based in the UK, selling your products to customers in countries outwith the UK, you need to comply with the export legislation.

For most products, you will need to state the customer's name and contact details on the packaging, along with the value of the contents. You must, therefore, make it clear that you may use their information in this manner.

Hopefully this information has helped clarify what you need to put in place to ensure that you're running a legal website - as usual, if you have any comments/questions, please let me know by completing the form below.

Search engine giant, Google, recently started to include a set of links below some results to pages within the site. These new additional links are called Sitelinks.

It seems that Google displays Sitelinks if a website is an authority site for the search term. The following screenshot shows the first result for a search on the term "BT":

What are Google Sitelinks?

Google explains the new links on its webmaster pages:

How do you compile the list of links shown below some search results?

The links shown below some sites in our search results, called Sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyse the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

We only show Sitelinks for results when we think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow our algorithms to find good Sitelinks, or we don't think that the Sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, we won't show them.

At the moment, Sitelinks are completely automated. We're always working to improve our Sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

How does Google calculate Sitelinks?

Google claims that the Sitelinks are created automatically. If Google uses an algorithm to calculate Sitelinks, there must be a way to influence that algorithm.

There are several theories on how Sitelinks are calculated:

Google might track the number of clicks for different results. If a website gets a lot of traffic for a special keyword then the website will get Sitelinks on Google's result page.

For example, if you use a special trademark term on your web pages that cannot be found on other websites then many people will click on your website in Google's results when they search for that search term. It's likely that your website will get Sitelinks for such a search term.

The link architecture of a website might help. Links at the top of the HTML source of a website seem to have a better chance to be included as Sitelinks. I'll post a entry on creating appropriate links in the HEAD section of your web pages shortly.

Google might also use the Google toolbar to determine Sitelinks. The more often a page is bookmarked the more likely it is that these pages will be used as Sitelinks. Google's toolbar can collect a lot of information about a website.

At the moment, it's hard to tell exactly how Google calculates the new Sitelinks. It's probably a combination of click data, toolbar data and other factors. If you see Sitelinks for your website, then Google has probably classified your website as an authority site for the search term.

How does this affect your website?

It seems that Sitelinks are only used for trademark searches or searches that are similar to trademark queries. Most search engine result pages on Google don't show these additional links.

This means that it's probably better to concentrate on getting listed in Google's normal result pages than trying to get listed with additional Sitelinks.

Adobe Acrobat has been doing the rounds for years, and is a well-established cross-platform format for presenting information. With the launch of Acrobat Professional 8, the built-in Accessibility features make it a must-have tool in your web development tools.

Before I go any further - you can find out more or even purchase Acrobat Professional 8 online from Adobe.

As usual the Acrobat Reader continues to be available as a free download - but if you wish to make Portable Document Files (PDF files), you should consider purchasing the full package from Adobe.

There haven't been a huge raft of changes in the version 8 release, it integrates with all the same applications as before and the collaboration feature launched in 7 is backwards compatible. For a full list of new features, read the What's New page on the Adobe site.

However, there are some cracking new features for creating accessible PDF documents that are worth a mention...

New accessibility features

New accessibility features in Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional include:

• Form fields in are now automatically recognised, created, and tagged for accessibility.
• Accessibility for PDF forms that are noninteractive has been added.
• A Table Inspector for improving the accessibility of tables in PDF files has been added to the Touch Up Read Order tool in Acrobat 8 Professional.

Improved accessibility features

Improved accessibilty features in Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 include:

• The speed and accuracy of automatic tagging of PDF files has been improved.
• Read Out Loud text to speech has been improved in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader to allow users to highlight the paragraphs being read. Users can now reverse direction while using Read Out Loud.
• The Accessibility Checker in Acrobat 8 Professional has been improved, and additional tests for Section 508 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines have been added (WCAG 1 and WCAG 2 Draft).

This last feature is ideal for people that are new to creating accessible documents, as it provides a hit list of what you need to do in order to ensure that your document is accessible.

Acrobat 8 products also integrate with a broad range of assistive technologies, including:

• Windows based MSAA-compliant screen readers
• Screen magnification software
• OCR/scanning software
• Voice recognition software

If you do publish documents online regularly, you really cannot afford not to have Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 in your arsenal of tools. Remember, as of 2007, it is likely that all websites will need to comply with Accessibility legislation (read my post entitled 'Accessibility Law Update' for more information) - documents available to download from a site constitute part of your website, and also need to be accessible.