Rhonda's Recipes

XML sitemaps typically provide information of importance to servers. XML sitemaps can improve discoverability and ranking of pages via search engines. XML sitemaps contain machine readable metadata about the website URL. This information includes when and how often the page is updated. The XML sitemap also includes linkages with other pages in the sitemap. If the search engine does not find an XML sitemap, it may not find or rank the website. On the downside XML sitemaps can be timeconsuming to maintain when there are website changes. They may also expose security weaknesses or private information.

HTML sitemaps often provide better information for human users. This includes accesibility assistance eg for users of screen readers. HTML sitemaps improve user experience by helping the user to more easily navigate the site and find other internal links. A well structured HTML sitemap could increase the likelihood of successful transactions and repeat visits from human users. As a disadvantage, HTML sitemaps are more likely than XML sitemaps to require manual updating and can be problematic for very large websites. Also, HTML sitemaps don’t help with search engine rankings or indexing.

Visual studio is a free Microsoft program that is widely used by developers. It encourages sharing information between users. Although it was previously for both Windows and Mac, Microsoft has recently discontinued support for Mac devices. Previous installations to Apples devices are now unstable and prone to uninstalling. Xcode is an IDE for developing Apple iOS apps. It has a large developer community, a streamlined workflow and developer tools. It cannot be run on Windows, unless virtualization software is installed. AWS Cloud9 is a cloud based IDE that allows users to use an IDE online without downloading software. It enables online collaboration with project team members and other developers. It is reported to prone to slowness for large projects. It also has compatibility issues with non-Amazon Web Services cloud based services. All three of these IDEs are suitable for entry level code developers. They are low cost, widely used IDEs, that offer user support information as well as active user communities.

In the 1990s, the first popular and widely distributed browser was Mosaic. It later became Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox. Microsoft introduced the popular Internet Explorer browser that was distributed with Windows software with new PCs. It is now Microsoft Edge. In the early 2000s Safari became the Apple browser, but is not typically used with non-Apple computers. Google later introduced Chrome, which is available on their Chromebooks, but is also a popular. Other browsers like Opera, Vivaldi, Tor and other Linux browsers are available but tend to be used by independent hobbyists, open-source advocates, and users with either personal or professional requirements for private browsing. A major problem in the 1990s was different browsers had different features. This meant that some websites were not optimised for different browsers and operating systems. Users often had to have a range of different browsers on standby. In 1993 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded with the aim of standardising internet protocols so that the internet would operate more efficiently. In 1998 the Web Standards Project (WaSP) was formed to lobby browser developers to abide by the agreed but enenforced W3C standards. Since 2003 web designers have become more professional designers of and advocates for websites that abide by W3C standards.

Website testing methodologies ensure that website work correctly, regardless of browser, device and operating system. Cross-browser testing is conducted to ensure compatibility of different browsers, particularly the major browsers of Edge, Firefox, Safari and Chrome, which ideally would have uniform site functionality. Functional tesing ensure sthat the site works as required, including link navigation, forms and navigating around the site. Security tesing is also essential in case the site or user are vulnerable to security attack or data loss.

The Northern Territory Government aims to have all of its online content compliant with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). All non-text content should have a text alternative. Images should have alternative text that describes the image content. This includes text that has been integrated into images or banners. Machine readable text is better able to be accessed by screen reader and read aloud software for users who have difficulty accessing text visually.

All files should go in the project or root folder. The xml sitemap should also go in the root folder, so that it can be accessed by browsers and search engine crawler bots). There should be separate subfolders for each of cascading style sheets (css files), images (eg jpg, gif or png files), javascript (eg js). All other files and folders should go in the root folder.