Google just recently posted an article talking about their opinion on dynamic vs. static URLs. In short, Google is saying that dynamically created URLs from a content management system, i.e. URLs that contain information talking to a database such as:

/media_review.php?user_id=25&article_id=315

should be left as is instead of rewriting them to look cleaner (static):

/media-review/bruce/dnc-ratm-concert/

Here’s a direct quote from their blog post on the topic:

Does that mean I should avoid rewriting dynamic URLs at all?
That’s our recommendation, unless your rewrites are limited to removing unnecessary parameters, or you are very diligent in removing all parameters that could cause problems. If you transform your dynamic URL to make it look static you should be aware that we might not be able to interpret the information correctly in all cases… …if you’re using URL rewriting (rather than making a copy of the content) to produce static-looking URLs from a dynamic site, you could be doing harm rather than good.

The problem is that Google seems to be making a recommendation on what is best for their search engine crawling and not what is best for the user or web usability in general. There is no debate, URL rewriting makes websites easier to use. It makes people understand what they will be looking at when they visit a link, and in general provides clearer information than dynamic URLs. For instance, here on our blog you can see all of my posts by going to http://blog.imulus.com/bruce the url is clear and easy to understand. If you want to see all my posts for a certain category you can do this http://blog.imulus.com/bruce/css. This functionality makes logical sense. Websites with extremely complicated URL calls can utilize rewriting to help their viewers better understand where they are on the site. And in regard to marketing materials — the time I see a company willing to use a url with ?id=237 at the end for a marketing or advertising campaign will be my first.

The fact is this, URL rewriting is an extremely useful tool (ironically Google’s blog post about dynamic rewrites uses rewriting for the URL). And while certain rewrite schemes may hide data that Google would like to parse, that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t use rewriting. The idea that a usable standard should be changed just to make Google’s web crawling better is ludicrous. Google throughout their history of search has continuously accommodated for changing website methods. By stating that URL rewrites are improper Google is taking a strike at one of the best standards to come out of Web 2.0. They’re suggesting a machine’s readability is more important than a human’s. And guess what: they’re dead wrong.

It seems that the notoriously tightwad ICANN is now relaxing domain naming conventions. Now any combination of letters, numbers and non-Latin text will be able to resolve to a Web site. Personally, I think this is a serious mistake.

There already are plenty of domain name suffixes to select from but time and time again .COM is the most selected suffix. It’s what people know and they are used to. I remember a few years ago there was a huge stink over whitehouse.com going to a porn site rather then to a government site. Those who understood domain names would have gone to .GOV. At the time there were only a handful of suffixes to choose from, this new direction by ICANN will change all that.

Personally, I think this adds more confusion to domain names. I already see plenty of challenges, even with technical folks understanding the differences in subdomains such as blog.imulus.com vs imulus.com vs www.imulus.com. Usually there is a 50 / 50 chance that if I give someone a domain name containing a subdomain they will usually add www to the URL; for instance bet.rmi.org then becomes www.bet.rmi.org.

This will surely benefit search engines more then the average user. I guess the lawyers benefit also because it sure will be interesting to watch the copyright and trademark lawsuits for all the domain name variations which will be gobbled up by the name registers.

Nice move ICANN!

Months ago when working on development for RMI | BET’s video website I needed a way to do image rollovers but I didn’t want to have a reliance on javascript. So, I set out to a create a reusable image rollover solution that was completely CSS based. Basically the concept was to have a universal class that could be called at any time in the HTML to create a rollover image.

Since first creating this code I’ve integrated it as a standard into all of our starting CSS templates.

Here’s how this works:

Start out with a basic anchor tag and give it a class of “hover-box”. Then inside the anchor tag add both images, your original and your hover version. Place the hover image first in the tag, and then add the original one second. Add a class of “hover” to the hover image. It should look like this:

<a href="#" title="Link title..." class="hover-box">
   <img src="rollover-image.jpg" class="hover" alt="Rollover"/>
   <img src="original-image.jpg" class="original" alt="Original"/>
</a>


Now, make sure this CSS is included in your document.

a.hover-box img.original { /* required for IE6 */
    float: left;
    position: relative;
}
a.hover-box img.hover {
    display: none;
}
a.hover-box {
    position: relative;
    float: left;
    display: block;
}
a.hover-box:hover {
    display: block;
    font-size: 100%;
    z-index: 1;
}
a.hover-box:hover img.hover {
    display: block;
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    top: 0;
    z-index: 1000;
}

Okay, basically this is hiding the hover image to begin. Then, once the anchor tag is hovered over the image with class “hover” displays itself as block and is positioned absolutely directly on top of the original image. This is accomplished because the hover-box class is set with relative positioning, meaning that the hover image is tied to its boundaries.

Bang! There you have it, a simple CSS hack-free solution that works in: Firefox, Safari, IE 6 & 7, and presumably all other standards compliant browsers. Check it out in action…

P.S. This is especially sweet because the image is preloaded and then hidden, meaning the hover effect is instant for the viewer.

Edit: After some testing I found out my original version wasn’t always working in IE6. It seems that for some reason IE6 needs a class applied to the original image that floats it and positions it relative. I tried every possible way and this is the only thing making it work without a * hack. Not a huge deal though. Also, IE6 requires the original image to come second in the HTML, unlike I originally thought.

Looks like today at the SXSW conference in Texas the Internet Explorer team made a surprise announcement that IE8 beta 1 is available for public download. Right now.

That’s right, the standards compliant, new version of IE is out for public testing and use as we speak.

I really have to say, over the past few months of reading the Microsoft IE blog I’ve been impressed with their change in attitude. This release of IE8, ahead of schedule just goes to further my appreciation of their new approach regarding developers and users.

I’m also personally excited to see continual development and advancement in the Microsoft browser space. The sooner IE8 goes live via Windows update the better. Hopefully within a year or so IE6 will be a memory of the past and developers can finally start to utilize PNG graphics and advanced CSS to the fullest.

About a month ago I posted a blog about Internet Explorer 8 (which recently passed the Acid 2 web standards test) requiring a special tag to utilize its new web standards rendering method.

In essence, this meant that sites and developers who had been using web standardized code would have to “turn on” standards in IE8 with a specific html META tag. Otherwise IE8 would render exactly like IE7. While this might have helped a few sites maintain backward compatibility, clearly it was not the way to force web developers and users to respect standards and adhere to them.

Case in point: IE’s development team agrees. Internet Explorer 8 will now automatically render sites in “standards mode” without needing to be told to do so. Sites that I built years ago with web standards in mind will finally fully work in Internet Explorer for the first time, this is great news!

I really want to extend my gratitude to Microsoft’s IE team for thinking through this one and listening to the community. It goes to show that things really have taken a change for the better regarding IE. And to be honest, I’m extremely happy that I can give Microsoft a pat on the back for a really trying to do what’s best for their developers and their users.

Good stuff.