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Of course, as far as the "skip to content" link goes - you might want to add a "Skip to main menu" link in the source for screen readers above the content as well. :)
But I actually put my menus at the bottom of the source code on my sites too. So I don't nessicarily see anything wrong with it.
I suppose it all comes down to user preference really.
-------Original Message-------
Date: 06/23/05 19:34:50
Subject: Re: [WSG] Page structure - navigation
Hi Ian,
I dont think its a massive issue to do that (put the navigation at the end of the source and position it at the top of the page visually). Theres probably some people that would say this is potentially better for screenreaders, in that they aren't confronted with a massive navigation list at the top of every page load (if you have a massive navigation list and no 'skip to content' link).
on a kinda related note - when we designed http://www.smh.com.au/ we decided to put the left hand navigation last in the source order (although there is still some ad tag and site stat stuff after it) so that the center column would load first - hopefully speeding up the load time over dialup of the content you want to read. there were never any problems or concerns that came from that decision.
the search engine optimisation argument probably does have some weight behind it - in that if your content is higher up the page (above a load of navigation code) then you may be index'd better than a very similar site that had its content lower in the source. thats starting to split hairs though - and to a large extent not worth worrying about too much - in my opinion anyway :)
pete ottery
On 6/24/05, Ian Main <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Good morning group, I have a question regarding page structure and hierarchal order. I have a client who insists making me place the site's navigation at the bottom of the page structure and than positioning it at the top via CSS. His reasons of doing this is for search engine optimisation? Quite frankly, this doesn't make sense to me as I thought indexing the site's pages is pretty important stuff. Also explaining the issue about screen readers and CSS off didn't persuade is discussion. Does anyone have any links to this subject or help me explain to him the right way of doing this? P.S. Hope this isn't off topic, I'm asking help on page structure not SEO. Thanks guys, Ian Main http://www.e-lusion.com****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
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