To Find or Not to Find

This is a rather odd time. I find myself in a class on the topic of findability at the same time I’m trying to build an application that will hold sensitive data that specifically needs NOT to be found. Using the maxim that often one learns the most about a thing by trying to figure out how to avoid it, the posts in this blog will meander around in both territories: to find, or not to find. And if, perchance, I happen upon some outrageous fortune along the way (preferably without the slings and arrows), so much the better.

That said, a logical place to begin seems to be with a discussion of Web standards. Without this common foundation, neither findability nor unfinadability has much of a chance. The following steps are essential for good Web standards:

• Include the correct doctype: Doctype stands for Document Type Declaration (DTD) and its purpose is to tell the browser which version of (X)HTML was used in coding the page. It must appear at the top of each page and be exact in both spelling and case. The W3C has a list of recommended doctypes.
• Keep the following elements separated from one another:
  • Structure (HTML, XHTML, etc.)
  • Presentation (CSS)
  • Behaviors (JavaScript, PHP, etc.)
  • Content
  • This practice includes avoiding inline styles and inline JavaScript event handlers as much as possible. (The latter is called unobtrusive JavaScript.)
• Validate all code. Make sure all code you write is well-formed and passes the W3C’s validation tools.
• Use meaningful terms for id and class names. For example, using divs for the layout of the various sections of your page and giving them ids of header, leftNav, mainContent, and footer makes the structure of the page clear, just from reading the names of the ids.

This list is only a beginning but it’s an important one. Following these rules is essential to content that can be found as well as content that should remain hidden.