Here’s something useful – repository of logins and passwords for many different sites: www.bugmenot.com
It’s very handy for sites such as Stock Xchng (royalty free stock photos), Youtube, or the New York Times. Or really any site which tries to glean personal information for no real reason.
They also have a ‘disposable email’ feature for creating temporary email address. This enables you to sign up to sites you know will send you spam, without divulging your personal email address.
This is something I get asked about from time to time. The aim is to have some text which is there in the code, but is hidden when viewing the page.
You may be wondering why replacing images with text could be useful. The reasons are twofold. The first reason is to improve your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Having a <h1> title makes it easier for spiders to correctly categorise your page, and a relevant and well-worded tag can improve the page’s ranking. However, for reasons of aesthetics, it’s often nicer to have an image as the header, perhaps with a unique font, or your company’s logo. Rather than have this potentially comprise your page rankings, it makes sense to use CSS as an easy way of having a nice looking page and good SEO.
The second reason is to enable accessibility, to maximise the amount of users who are able to make full use of your site. Pages which rely entirely on images for headers and menus are hard to navigate in text-only browsers. This may mean those with screenreaders have difficulty accessing your content. (more…)