Rogue capital A with a circumflex accent appears

[Zygoma]

Good Morning from medieval York UK :-)



Shortly after publishing content for www.davidclick.com (as the above screen grab illustrates) a rogue capital A circumflex appeared in various spots. Ive looked at the HTML but i cant see anything that would explain its appearance via Safari Version 5.0.6 (5533.22.3) but not in firefox 9.0.1 :-(

So my question is please: "How can i get rid of it"

Any insights welcome :-)

[Stevie D]

It looks like a character-encoding issue. I don't know what editor you've used, but I never quite trust them to save correctly in UTF-8, so I always use entity references for non-ASCII characters. In this case, you would need to replace the £ with £.

[Black Max]

It's also possible you're viewing the site with a "rogue" font from, say, FontYukle, that purports to be the "real" font but instead is a terrible knockoff. I once had a Helvetica knockoff that displayed letters in headings in Cyrillic lettering. Maddening. If it appears correctly on another machine's Safari, then check your fonts for authenticity.

It looks like a character-encoding issue. I don't know what editor you've used, but I never quite trust them to save correctly in UTF-8, so I always use entity references for non-ASCII characters. In this case, you would need to replace the £ with £.

Absolutely.

[Stevie D]

If it appears correctly on another machine's Safari, then check your fonts for authenticity.

Nope, it's giving the Ä on Safari for me too (and Chrome), but works on Opera and IE8.

[deathshadow60]

I don't know what that site is supposed to look like, but it appears to be one of the most BROKEN illegible designs I've seen in quite some time. Apart from the character encoding issues, you've got fixed height design elements so all your content is blowing out of them, illegible color contrasts (black text on grey or red background, red text on grey), redundant/pointless use of title attributes, long URL's for nothing, calling something an aside that isn't, pointless classes on multiple elements, multiple HTML tags, google specific tags when you didn't declare THEIR XML extension, your doctype saying you are in 'transition' from 1997 to 1998, scripting before the head or body tag are even open, pointless meta's, inlined static scripting, paragraphs around non-paragraph elements, nonsensical heading orders... 1.3 MEGABYES (including 345k of scripting) to deliver 1.5k of plaintext and seven content images...

You've basically got a laundry list of how not to build a website here. My advice is throw it out and start over -- there's nothing worth even TRYING to save here... Except maybe that red heart background -- that's not too bad, just don't repeat it.

Though if you are relying on some sort of 'tool' to design and 'publish' it, <mythbusters>Well there's your problem</mythbusters>

[logic_earth]

...but I never quite trust them to save correctly in UTF-8...

Sounds like you use crappy editors then. Any good one will never have any trouble saving as UTF-8.

[xhtmlcoder]

I assume it only just happen near U+00A3, i.e. the £ symbols, if so it looks like a mismatch of encoding to UTF-8.

[Black Max]

Jason, what's that company that advertises a program you can buy that will Build You a Terrific WebSite in 30 Minutes and Guarantee You Instant Business Success, Drive Away Pimples, and Attract SuperModels? They have a TV commercial featuring someone's ice cream store that gets #1 ranking on teh Goggle within moments of uploading. Maybe that program can help the OP and the rest of us benighted souls.

[deathshadow60]

Jason, what's that company that advertises a program you can buy that will Build You a Terrific WebSite in 30 Minutes and Guarantee You Instant Business Success, Drive Away Pimples, and Attract SuperModels?

If there was such a thing, it wouldn't be called work anymore, it would be called "Happy Happy Fun Time"

Unfortunately, there's a reason it's called work -- and the less you do, the more your result sucks. As a rule of thumb most ALL of the 'web development tools' that allegedly make life 'easier' tend to defecate all over the work... leading nubes into THINKING they can design and deploy a website, and further promoting the "Lets get it now, NOW, NOW!!! Who cares what it costs us in the future" mentality; which is why the majority of people are bankrupted on credit and don't even realize it.

[Black Max]

Happy Fun Web Time Make Big Money Fast LOLZ.

[deathshadow60]

Happy Fun Web Time Make Big Money Fast LOLZ.

Had someone recently ask me about their site built in that.... my response...

FONT tags? REALLY? REALLY?!? really...

[Black Max]

Makes money Web sites in FrontPage I do, yesss precious lolz.

They're not asking you or me, Jason. This is aimed at the doofus market, or more generously, the low-information person/org/business who needs a site and, well, that's all they know. It isn't quite as bad as do-it-yourself liver surgery, but it's almost as clueless.

Not saying that folks who need a site Must Hire a Pro, just saying that if you're going to design and construct a site, it's like designing and constructing a treehouse -- you'd better learn something about the task at hand or you're likely to fall on your rumpus.

[Zygoma]

If there was such a thing, it wouldn't be called work anymore, it would be called "Happy Happy Fun Time"

Unfortunately, there's a reason it's called work -- and the less you do, the more your result sucks. As a rule of thumb most ALL of the 'web development tools' that allegedly make life 'easier' tend to defecate all over the work... leading nubes into THINKING they can design and deploy a website, and further promoting the "Lets get it now, NOW, NOW!!! Who cares what it costs us in the future" mentality; which is why the majority of people are bankrupted on credit and don't even realize it.

Ok kean let me say to your post.... this site has "successfully" delivered wedding bookings to me for the last 5years and I dont want anymore bookings so whilst it doesnt get your golden globe for semantic markup with respect you are over egging the situation.

[Zygoma]

Thanks Stevie for answering my question:

[Zygoma]

Death Sadow you need illumination: Buts its number 5 for wedding photographer york from no ranking three years ago to page 1 and benefits my business. So whilst your techno diatribe sounds quite impressive your recommendation to scrap the whole thing is foolhardy & reckless, I really hope you are not giving small business owners site advice as you jump in without garnering facts!

[deathshadow60]

you jump in without garnering facts!

You know, I'm pretty used to people who know NOTHING about HTML/CSS getting their panties in a wad when I post the truth... But "not garnering facts" -- EXCUSE ME?

You want facts? FINE. Your site uses color combinations illegible to a large swath of the population... on top of a disastrously broken layout. Honestly, I'd applaud the attempt at using dynamic fonts on the page, if the layout was designed to scale with them; but what you have is the typical "what do you mean %/em or even PT automatically enlarges for large font users"...

Here is EXACTLY what I saw, without using any extra zoom features on my system apart from the OS setting.
http://www.cutcodedown.com/for_others/zygoma/broken.jpg

This is caused by my using the accessibility "120 dpi" windows setting, and your using %/em fonts in a layout designed for a fixed HEIGHT. That 'auto enlargement' is the entire REASON for using %/em fonts -- but the layout you put them into isn't designed to handle it.

You want FACTS, read the WCAG about color contrasts! Are you HONESTLY telling me you find that large red text in your content column LEGIBLE? The black text beneath it SAME? Eyesore at best, illegible at worst. Red on black only has a 33% contrast difference, red on a sum of that gray ends up LESS than that.

Honestly, I'm SHOCKED you're listed in google at all - since the keyword stuffing gibberish below the picture break in that same area should be getting you slapped down for... well, keyword stuffing... though at least it's not content cloaked, likely WHY you've not set off the radar.

From an accessibility standpoint your heading orders are GIBBERISH. Is "Weather resistant" a subsection of "wedding photography testimonial"? Is "Wedding photography prices" a subsection of "weather resistant"?!? Of course not, so why are you saying they are with lower-order headings? (H3,H4,H5)

the page comes in at 1.3 MEGABYTES -- meaning most likely a lot of people don't even bother waiting for it to finish loading; on a page that to be frank even WITH the fancy pics likely doesn't need to exceed 256k 'as is'.

Those ARE facts... that I 'garnered' -- and if you're going to put your head in the sand like an ostrich about it -- lah-lah-lah like the Vancome Lady... Oh well. Stay in 1997.

[ralph.m]

Off Topic:


@deathshadow60 ; You are missing all the poetry and symbolism here. This is a site about weddings and marriage!

[deathshadow60]

BTW:

Buts its number 5 for wedding photographer york from no ranking three years ago to page 1 and benefits my business.

Don't give me that search engine snake oil. I just checked google.com, and it's NOT on page one. Ok, so it's a UK site? google.co.uk then... Nope, not page one there... or page two... hey look, it's at the top of page THREE.

... and seriously, what's the bounce rate? With a 40 second page load from a 22mbps connection, broken layout and illegible color contrasts, I bet it's pretty high.

[kohoutek]

Let's keep this thread civil, everyone.

Dankeschön!

[Stomme poes]

Honestly, I'm SHOCKED you're listed in google at all - since the keyword stuffing gibberish below the picture break in that same area should be getting you slapped down for... well, keyword stuffing... though at least it's not content cloaked, likely WHY you've not set off the radar.

It's gone from something Google used to actually do, to plain fear-mongering: they're busier closing off .cc domains than caring if someone has a long list of random nonsense words somewhere on their page. I have a sometimes-client whose site I would LOVE to remove about half of the "content"... but because his product is popular, he's worried that removing the garbage would somehow hurt his rankings, even though according to Google's own rules that junk could not have possibly helped his rankings. His product and customer service did. People tell each other that you can get good stuff there. Social reputation contributes to rankings.

Obviously this is happening with Zygoma's site: the junk is just being ignored and does not affect rankings, but if his site is drawing in customers then he probably has good word-of-mouth going on, and a decent reputation for his service. And frankly, the amount of junk the average person sees on web pages while they randomly surf, it likely doesn't turn people away here. Esp if they heard from a friend "hey this guy did so-and-so's wedding".

[deathshadow60]

It's gone from something Google used to actually do, to plain fear-mongering: they're busier closing off .cc domains than caring if someone has a long list of random nonsense words somewhere on their page.

That makes sense. Sometimes it often seemed a bit petty -- like I've noticed a number of sites I'd have expected to be booted clean off for 'duplicate content' aren't being slapped down as much anymore either.

Obviously this is happening with Zygoma's site: the junk is just being ignored and does not affect rankings, but if his site is drawing in customers then he probably has good word-of-mouth going on, and a decent reputation for his service. And frankly, the amount of junk the average person sees on web pages while they randomly surf, it likely doesn't turn people away here. Esp if they heard from a friend "hey this guy did so-and-so's wedding".

... which can often offset most anything wrong with a site... so yeah. Content of value people want can often make them put up with most anything.

In any case, just to kill some time I did a quick redesign/recode of his page to show EXACTLY what I mean on how it could be cleaned up and made more accessible for a minimum of effort. Took about 20 minutes. You guys know me and my famous rewrites.

Took a lot of liberties on the design BECAUSE it was so broken and illegible... It was also annoying the beautiful B&W picture of the bride being covered up by so much content -- you couldn't even see her face, much less most of the photo...

http://www.cutcodedown.com/for_other.../template.html

as with all my examples the directory:

http://www.cutcodedown.com/for_others/zygoma

... is wide open for easy access to the bits and pieces. Tested working perfect in the latest flavors each of Opera, Saffy, Chrome and FF, Works to a degree (loses the text-shadows) in IE9, degrades losing a lot of shading and rounded corners in IE8 and lower (OH noes, not that!), and remains usable all the way back to IE 5.5 -- though I shove the minimum width at IE6/lower these days instead of wasting time on a evaluation. Would be valid XHTML strict if not for the 'pretend' tags google and facebook basically 'pull out of their backsides' for no good reason.

Semi-fluid layout for accessibility, color contrasts WELL within accessibility norms and tightened up the color spectrum to be less harsh... re-optimized all the images bringing the page size (not counting the scripts I disabled for testing) down to 145k from the original megabyte (1.3m - 300k scripts).

I also tweaked the content so that it's not CONSTANTLY changing between first and third person, removed a good number of redundancies that served no purpose (apart from risking getting slapped down for duplicate content), tweaked up the meta tags to be a bit more useful/meaningful... and yanked the nonsensical/redundant items from the menu.... and of course padded the text away from the edges of it's boxes to also help on the legibility front.

A more complete version would have a media query for a narrow-screen stylesheet (probably only needs one), and of course a print.css as well.

[ralph.m]

Wow, amazing work, Jason.

[Stomme poes]

I'm curious to know if Zygoma likes the rewrite (as far as, how it looks)?

That makes sense. Sometimes it often seemed a bit petty -- like I've noticed a number of sites I'd have expected to be booted clean off for 'duplicate content' aren't being slapped down as much anymore either.

What has been working, apparently, are these Panda tweaks they do. Plenty of complaints from site owners hit by that. Then again, I often wonder if only people who use content spinners and other garbage are the ones who pay attention to stuff like Panda updates... everyone else getting hit, has no clue what happened.

[Zygoma]

Thank you Death shadow, have a nice weekend ;-)

[Zygoma]

Ok Death shadow muy site does look totally ***** in your screen grab, th eproblem is I'd tested it in IE9 IE8 and firefox maybe i have missed something. War of words aside maybe i should download IE tester, but may i "Politely ask" waht browser & operating system are you seeing my site in, please dont flame thrower me, I'm genuinely asking a polite question and I respect your advice.

Thanks in advance,
David