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The title is not a design element

Whoever you are that support the trend to add "::" to the title of a web page, please stop it. It's not clever or original, it doesn't look good, and it certainly won't help your SEO. The title is not a design element, so don't treat it as such. If you're struggling to understand the basic usage of a page title or other microcontent, please view this: the most important element of a quality Web page.

Latest case in point: the City of Cape Town's (partly) redesigned official site.

I say partly because most of the site is still in the old design, and some in a new design incorporating an XHTML Doctype, but using tables for layout. Needless to say, Firefox doesn't like it much either. And of course, the Feedback form doesn't work in any web browser so there's no way I can inform them of this.

"This City Works For You" is their strapline. Pity their web site doesn't.

 

4 Comments

07 March 2006
09:02 pm

Inspired Dziner

Hmm and somewhat of an embaressment for us Capetonians… even more so if you look at another SA city’s official site!

07 March 2006
10:10 pm

Chris M

Interesting read, I bounced on over to the website and you are dead correct, they left out tags :P~

Keep criting coda.

*peace*

08 March 2006
09:57 pm

sploosh

I believe that some programmer or designer at Mweb is solely responsible for this…once had a client that had bought a “web design” solution from Mweb, which inserted the double colon into the navigation and title automatically. It:: is:: so:: lame.

10 March 2006
11:49 pm

RobC

“Stad Kaapstad” is superflous… every afrikaans speaker knows Kaapstad is a bloody city… it was the first one this side of the Limpopo for goodness sake… and it sounds crap when you say it out loud! :-)

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