I have a documentation page, and an example paragraph may look like this:
For more information on retailers, please see our Retailer section, and to see an example retailer, click here.
What is a good way to differentiate the two links for an end user, the first link being within the documentation, and the second link going to an external site. I thought about using the "link to external site" icon -- https://fontawesome.com/icons/external-link-alt?style=solid --
-- but to me that feels more like a "open link in new tab" icon, which has nothing to do with the above (both will appear in the same window the user is currently in.
What would be a better way to communicate that?
You could add the font awesome 'link' icon on external links. https://fontawesome.com/icons/link?style=solid
And just leave all other links as is. It makes sense to me but I think this is just a matter of opinion. :) This is more of a business/design decision than a technical issue. From what I've seen most sites don't specify between the two.
How these sites gather all the data - questionhub, bigresource, thedevsea, developerbay?
Is this legal to show data in frame as bigresource do?
#amazed
EDITED : fixed some spelling issues 20110310
How these sites gather all data- questionhub, bigresource ...
Here's a very general sketch of what is probably happening in the background at website like questionhub.com
Spider program (google "spider program" to learn more)
a. configured to start reading web pages at stackoverflow.com (for example)
b. run program so it goes to home page of stackoverflow.com and starts visiting all links that it finds on those pages.
c. Returns HTML data from all of those pages
Search Index Program
Reads HTML data returned by spider and creates search index
Storing the words that it found AND what URL those words where found at
User Interface web-page
Provides feature rich user-interface so you can search the sites that have been spidered.
Is this legal to show data in frame as bigresource do?
To be technical, "it all depends" ;-)
Normally, websites want to be visible in google, so why not other search engines too.
Just as google displays part of the text that was found when a site was spidered,
questionhub.com (or others) has chosen to show more of the text found on the original page,
possibly keeping the formatting that was in the orginal HTML OR changing the formatting to
fit their standard visual styling.
A remote site can 'request' that spyders do NOT go thru some/all of their web pages
by adding a rule in a well-known file called robots.txt. Spiders do not
have to honor the robots.txt, but a vigilant website will track the IP addresses
of spyders that do not honor their robots.txt file and then block that IP address
from looking at anything on their website. You can find plenty of information about robots.txt here on stackoverflow OR by running a query on google.
There is a several industries (besides google) built about what you are asking. There are tags in stack-overflow for search-engine, search; read some of those question/answers. Lucene/Solr are open source search engine components. There is a companion open-source spider, but the name eludes me right now. Good luck.
I hope this helps.
P.S. as you appear to be a new user, if you get an answer that helps you please remember to mark it as accepted, or give it a + (or -) as a useful answer. This goes for your other posts here too ;-)
I got stumbled upon this issue once and I guess I need some expertise in getting through this .." some links that one likes to bookmark ." I tried browsing and got confused. is bookmarking just means the use of CTRL + D. Or is ti something like the one in this link .
"Bookmarking" comes from marking a page in a book with a bookmark, i.e. a piece of paper or something you put between pages to remember that page. In the same way you can mark web pages to return to them later. This usually just means saving the URL of the page in the browser.
So called social bookmarking is a technique where the URL is not saved in the user's local browser, but on a service such as del.icio.us, so others can see what you have bookmarked.
The basic idea is to remember a page you were on for later reference, that's all it means.
Bookmarking is storing the links somewhere. It can be a bookmark on your browser or even online something like StumbleUpen or Read It Later or even social bookmarking like sharethis.com
It can mean both, bookmarking generally means to add it to your favorites. Although, times they are a changing!
It is same as with "plain old bookmarks": You somehow keep a reference to a certain page. But instead using some physical indicator (what is obviously not possible with the computer ;)) you store the URL somewhere for fast access (in a way it is writing down the page number of a book).
When you go to Google and perform a search, it will return either one of two type of results:
just the title of your webpage, or
the title of your web-page plus, lists subpages it found on that web site
Here is an example of option #2: http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/svn/grub-ellis-googlelisting.png
My website on a google.com search only lists my web page title (option #1), how do I get google to list my subpages on the search results (option #2)?
Is is an HTML issue? How do I get Google to know what my subpages are so that it can also list those on a google search.
Those are called "sitelinks" and are automated but you can partially configure them in Google's webmaster's tools. In webmaster's tools, click "sitelinks" in the navigation menu on the left. From the sitelinks page:
Sitelinks are links to a site's interior pages. Not all sites have sitelinks. Google generates these links automatically, but you can remove sitelinks you don't want.
Here is another Google page explaining sitelinks.
You should add a site-map using the Google webmaster tools site, or by maintaining your own. For explanation check out Sitelinks page.
Google has not generated any sitelinks
for your site. Sitelinks are
completely automated, and we show them
only if we think they'll be useful to
the user. If your site's structure
doesn't allow our algorithms to find
good sitelinks, or we don't think that
the sitelinks are relevant to the
user's query, we won't show them.
However, we are always working to
improve how we find and display
sitelinks.
You can also directly enable sitelinks (you don’t have to get lucky) in Google’s Pay-Per-Click platform (AdWords), and it will have a similar very positive impact on your clickthrough rate.
You need to create XML sitemap. Here is all you need to know. Check if your open-source CMS has plugin/add-on/module to do this automatically, there must be generators somewhere too.
http://www.google.lv/search?q=XML+sitemap
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184
You are describing "Search Engine Optimization" with your question. If you have a small site, the best thing you can hope for is to ensure every page has a unique title, links back to your home page, you have a good "site map" so search engines can easily discover ALL of your pages, and most important, your pages are THE definitive place for information about whatever you're selling.
Content is king and once you become the authority, your page will pop up in the 1st 1-2 links.
Contact some local SEO folks in your area and ask for a site evaluation. Many will do it for free with their automated tools. You can use the webmaster tools from bing or google if you're on a tight budget.
When are appropriate situations to use the target="_blank" attribute on your hyperlinks?
Edit:
To clarify, I know the syntax will open a new browser window. What I am asking is when is it appropriate to do so?
Whenever you want to annoy users.
More seriously, since this opens a new window/tab, it should be used sparingly, in my opinion.
Most modern browsers have some option (ie: middle-click on hyperlink) to do this for you, so I personally prefer allowing the user to handle this themselves.
However, if you are working on something where there is a non-technical reason for this, such as a sales-oriented site, it's often desirable to open a product brochure in a new window, or something along those lines. However, just be aware that overdoing this leads to my pseudo-joke response above....
When ever you want to leave the current page as-is.
I've got a feeling your question should be 'When is it appropriate to open a new tab or browser window?'
If so, the answer might be :
The current form may be in edit mode, and you want to be able to open
another page without either
disregarding or saving the current
one.
You have a data stream like Twitter which you want to leave active while
you go off and look at X.
There is a specific business requirement to do so.
Your users have weak navigation abilities and won't find their way back to the main page.
It is most appropriate when you're linking to outside resources that people may want to go to for additional information, reference, etc.
It lets them leave your site without losing their place on your page or have to use the back button.
It also makes sure they have to look at it one more time if they want to close it ;-)
(that last one is a joke and I don't advocate such despicable practices of course...)
Generally I avoid it like the plague. However, perhaps a good example of why you'd want to use that would be if you're building a cart module or something, and you have the "click for bigger picture" link. I think it's ok in that sense.
Keep in mind that whenever you do it, you're assuming you know the user's workflow better than they do (they can always open the link in a new window without you forcing it). In the case of the "bigger picture" link, you'd most likely be correct in assuming that's what they want, but in most cases I wouldn't jump to conclusions.
When you want the link to open in a new window, I would assume. I think the time to use this is when people might click on a link that'd destroy what they were doing on the page currently, such as a "help" link on a form.
Though some would argue that you should never use target="_blank".
One thing to be aware of here is accessibility. Built in features to help blind users (text to speech for example) may act weird (or just in a way that's confusing to the user) when you open a new window or tab.
Also, you're breaking the most used feature of every browser...the back button.
Only if it, with outmost certainty, prevents the user from having to repeat something.
I think that you should probably not ask a user experience question in a developer forum, because you will get developer answers.
That said, and as a developer, I open new Windows when I expect (or want) the user to come back and continue working on the site where the link originated.
The only time I would consider it is if you have multimedia on the page.
Best example I can think of - the StackOverflow podcast... I can't tell you how many times I've rushed to click a link in the blog post only to take me off the podcast page!
Also, on YouTube when I click "View Comments", it takes me away from the video page.
Whatever you do, don't use JavaScript to open a new window. That's definitely the worst. Nothing worse than a middle-click only to open a new tab with javascript::garbage in the address bar.
The target="_blank" is deprecated in XHTML 1.0 strict, and since I only write in strict I use JS if I really want to open a new page (or tab) and I only do that for external links (like a wiki or so).
More info:
http://www.ajaxblender.com/open-links-new-window-w3c-valid-target-blank.html
NOTE: Although it is deprecated in XHTML 1.0 strict, target="_blank" been brought back in HTML 5.
Stydying your audience will help you decide on this. Casual websurfers will appreciate target=_blank while tech-savvy people are more likely to get annoyed.
As for XHTML 1.0 strict, it is never appropriate. The target-attribute is deprecated in XHTML 1.0 strict.
Never. If I want to open your link in a new window I will do so.
When you open the link in a new window.
There exists practice to open in new window links that refer another/external domain (wiki for example).
I use it for product brochures and the like as I think it is useful for the customer to stay on the product page. I always indicate [new window] next to the link to keep the customer informed. Often the product brochure is a PDF, so I also note that the link will open a PDF.
Use it as you need it, but keep your users informed so as not to annoy/confuse them.
I prefer to avoid it, because most users can figure out on their own how to open a link in a new window, even if unsophisticated. My preference is to use an explicitly named destination, e.g. target="somename" if you have a good reason for opening a new window on your own.
I only use it when the client insists.
Otherwise I prefer to let the user decide.
I might be in the minority here but I like using target="_blank" for my links ONLY when they're meant to be reference links. In most cases, you shouldn't be using it for regular links around a website.
I really don't like it when I click on a link in a blog post or an article and it loads on the same page and I need to navigate back to the original source page.
When you are creating an email for mobile users and are linking to external content. That way, when they click on the link they will open the page in their browser.
When you want to open any particular link in new tab on current window then you can use target="_blank" in html.
<div class="restrunt-menu-list">
<ul>
<li>
<span>
<a target="_blank" href="www.example.com">View Menu</a></span>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
But It might affect your system performance because all browsers takes a lot of memory when it open a new tab or new window.
So less opened tab means less memory uses, less memory uses means better performance.
You can also see that which tab using how mach memory in chrome:
Press shift+Esc , Then you can see Task Manager- Chrome with list currently using memory by each tabs ( in chorme ).
For all external links...