We strongly recommend the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). To increase accessibility, however, always organize documents so they may be read without style sheets.
Font sizes and accessibility: Most browsers support resizing of fonts. Fonts should be set via style sheets rather than deprecated HTML. When sizing text, the use of percentage values is recommended over fixed point sizes, to support re-sizing. Use of HTML heading tags such as <h1> and <h2> also helps text reading devices to interpret the structure of the page.
Different versions of browsers print Web pages differently. The newest versions of Internet Explorer (5.0 and up) and Netscape (6.0 and up) will fit a printed image to the size of the page, but older browsers will allow images to be cropped to fit page width (532 pixels in A4 letter size).
PDF: If you want to make certain pages consistent for printing across all browsers, you can convert them to Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). A PDF helps maintain a page's design and content integrity by making the page into an inalterable image. It is useful for documents specifically intended to be printed, such as forms. HOWEVER, PDF is not the preferred format for typical informational pages. It requires the user to have Adobe Acrobat Reader. Contact Academic Technologies (847-467-4357) for more information about the PDF format.
Search engines regularly catalog page content and other relevant information into an index for easy retrieval when a user initiates a search. Meta tags show information about the content. You, the content owner, can make it easier for users to find what you have by using both of these methods to help define and describe the content of your pages.
Search Engine Indexing: Place a "<!--startindex -->" tag below the head tag and a "<!--stopindex -->" tag below the META information. This is for the search engine's indexing feature.
The startindex and stopindex tags are used to indicate a section of the page that should be searched, such as the title, meta tags, or page content. At the end of the indexed section, the tag "<!--stopindex -->" tells the search engine to exclude content such as menu bars and footers that will be the same on many pages. This "universal" content should never be indexed.
Correct use of startindex and stopindex tags ensures that only the relevant content of a page is indexed. All menu and title bar graphics that appear on multiple pages should be excluded. The <title> tag and META information should also be included in an indexed section.
Meta tags help search engines find and index your web pages. Meta tags provide:
Northwestern's search engine generates search results by comparing search terms against a pre-made index of the content of every page in the www.northwestern.edu domain. Using meta tags increases the likelihood that people searching for your information will find it. Please note that meta tags are required for home pages; optional (strongly encouraged), for interior pages.
Northwestern University community members can use the Northwestern University Dublin Core Meta Tag Generator <http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/mtg/> to generate meta tags.
Write a unique description for each page. The meta tag generator will produce HTML code based on the information you submit. Paste this code into your documents within the <head> tag. Dreamweaver template users should note that the meta tags are pasted inside the "doctitle" section of the page, directly underneath the title. If you paste the meta information anywhere else in the document, Dreamweaver templates will erase it.
When redesigning a site, try to avoid changing the URLs of existing pages, as this will "break" links for those who have added links from their site to yours.