Firebug Extension for Firefox

I just downloaded the Firebug Extension for Firefox on my work computer (I downloaded Firebug at home a few days ago and I've been loving it). You can see the Firebug homepage here. Unlike a lot of extensions and widgets, which are mostly useless, Firefox has had a lot of great extensions developed for it.

At first glance Firebug isn't completely overwhelmingly amazing. I mean, yeah, viewing the source code is useful, but that comes standard in ever web browser. But the Firebug extension also lets you view the CSS in a convenient way. Again, this is doable without the extension (look in the page's source code to find the CSS stylesheet link file - it's usually styles.css or something). But the Firebug extension makes it really, really convenient.

With Firebug installed, you can view the source code of the page and the style sheet side by side in the bottom of your Firefox browser window.

My favourite part, however, is the "Inspect" feature. When you click "Inspect" in Firebug, you can then hover your mouse over any part of the page and the HTML and CSS at the bottom of the page will show the relevant code. In this image, the Firefox logo has the mouse over it:


At the bottom, you can see Firebug showing the HTML code on the left, and the CSS styles on the right. Firebug highlights the relevant portions.

Why do I like this? Well, if you're new to web design, or if you're just dabbling in it (perhaps you're editing a Wordpress theme or blogger template) Firebug let's you find out how others are coding any features you want to incorporate.

If you're learning web design, the Firebug extension gives you a good idea how the best designs are created, and it saves you a tonne of time going through the code to find the portions you're interested in learning about.

Of course, I'm still getting into Firebug. Looking at its homepage, I can see a few features I haven't tried. Visualizing the CSS looks really useful. You can see the layout of the border, margins, and padding. And if you "Inspect" a section and then mouseover the layout, you can see rulers and guidelines right on the page. These screen shots are from one of the actual Firebug extension pages:

From the bottom right layout view of Firebug:

The actual page with its rulers and guidelines:

(This is the Firebug page I was viewing)

Neat, eh?

Thankfully, there are a bunch of resources to get your started with the Firebug extension. The Firebug page I just linked to as an example has a bunch of links to Firebug resources.

• Introduction to Firebug
• 10 Things You Didn't Know About Firebug
• Video: Editing HTML Live with Firebug

Again, I would start with the list of resources from the Firebug extension's development website.

SEO should improve your website, not ruin it

If you manage to get your website to the top of Google and it's filled with spam links and a poor user experience, what have you accomplished? Nothing, really. There's some money in it if you're one of those spam blog filled only with Google adwords suckering in folks who are new to the web, but this doesn't seem to be a very solid or sustainable way to make money. If you're doing your best to go behind Google's back, eventually they're going to figure out a way to dock your website to the bottom of the rankings. That's kind of their thing, y'know?

But that's not my point. My point is: if you get to the top of the rankings but your website is poorly optimized to do it's job (i.e., sell your products and/or services) then you've wasted your time. SEO isn't an ends, it's a means.

Besides, good SEO will actually improve your website's conversion and user experience. Good SEO means that you use a site map that conforms to what search engines and what people expect. If you build your site according to standards, people will know how to use it. If you make up your own insane navigation scheme, the search engines won't know what to do, and neither will your users.

If you help out the search engines by deep linking to various back pages on the website, you'll also help out your users. Search engines don't want to "click" more than a few times to get to the "meat" of your website, and guess what? Neither do your users.

Good headers tell the search engines what your page is about. It also tells your users what your site is about. Same with page titles, links, and every other aspect of navigation.

Don't suck up to the search engines at the cost of user experience, because in the end you'll be hurting both causes. For example, if we spammed our own website, MarketingBreakthroughs.com, with only one or two keywords, the entire site wouldn't make any darn sense! But we still keep our keywords in mind and make sure they show up in the text. We put them into page headers where appropriate. We try to describe out inbound links as accurately as possible.

It's not simply about balance, because serving one end often serves the other.

It's 2009 ... So Why is Your Website Still Stuck in the '90s?

Here were are the dawn of a new year. Out with the old, in with the new, right? And yet here we are, in the year 2009, and the Internet is still littered with websites that look like they were written and designed during the mid-90s heyday of Geocities and Alta Vista.

While an old book in a library might be a comforting sight, on the Internet, old is bad. Take a look at websites such as the aptly-named Web Pages That Suck -- does any of it look familiar to you? If your company's site looks anything remotely like the ones posted there, it's time to make a new New Year's Resolution and get with the times -- and fast.

Your website is your "virtual storefront", the place where first impressions are made and sales won or lost. And if you have a poorly designed website -- or even one that was a state-of-the-art "online brochure" 10 years ago -- people will quickly leave your site and never come back.

For whatever reason, bad websites can happen to the very best of companies (for more information on this topic, I recommend reading the series of posts at EvoBlog). However, that's not an excuse to just let your website slide into obscurity.

Yes, you'll need to invest in a reputable

web design firm

to do much of the work on your behalf. But there are so many easy ways to improve your site, and you don't need to be a programming guru to make thing happen. For example, writing

search engine optimized web content

is easier than ever thanks to

Google Analytics

and its plethora of SEO keyword tools.

With a few clicks of a mouse, you can find out what exactly people are searching for, how many people are searching for it, and what they are doing once they finally reach your website. Having this information at your fingertips makes it extremely easy to revise your copy, as necessary, on a regular basis. So what's stopping you?

Of course, if you need help getting the most out of your website, or simply don't have the time to write copy, well, that's where web marketing companies like Marketing Breakthroughs come in. Our staff of Web 2.0 and web marketing specialists has turned around numerous websites, providing extraordinary results to our clients.

The pages of the calendar have turned. You owe it to yourself and your clients / customers to make sure your company's website isn't stuck in the past.

Is the Web About to Get a Whole Lot Flashier?

Big news this week from Adobe. TechCrunch is reporting that (Flash files can now be found and indexed by the Google and Yahoo search engines.

Michele Turner, Adobe VP of Marketing, had this to say:

"We are releasing technology to Google and Yahoo that enables them to crawl and index SWF files. They are now searchable. This will open up millions of Flash files to search."

This definitely has the potential to change the way we think about web design and search engine optimization. As general rule, Marketing Breakthroughs has steered its clients away from Flash-heavy sites for the very reason that they are much harder (if not impossible) to optimize for Google.

But now that Flash can be indexed? Well ... even so, I wouldn't expect to see every new page on the block to be chock full of Flash. Yes, they look pretty (and people love shiny stuff), but one of the biggest things we stress when working with our web development partners is ease of use and overall usability in the website design and navigation.

The use of Flash is often just a way to satisfy the creative urges of the web developer, instead of focusing on the actual web browsing needs of the end user. And to me, nothing is more frustrating then going to a Flash-heavy site and having no idea where to click or where you'll end up once you actually find something to click on.

The author of the TechCrunch article makes another good point:

"Becoming visible is one thing, actually ranking highly is another ... until Adobe makes it easy for the average Webmaster or blogger to link deeply into those Flash files, they are not likely to appear at the top of many search results."

Remember, SEO is all about your content and your links -- and most people will backlink to your web page, not the Flash file itself. In the end, it seems that optimizing your site's Flash files will be as effective as the Google Image Search tool -- yes, if used right it can help users find you, but it will hardly be the new standard for SEO.