Jared W. Smith

At Tuesday’s co-working session, I talked about a few of the basics of HTML and CSS (as best as I could within two hours, that is). One of the focal points of the session was the importance of laying a strong foundation for a well-built Web page via semantic HTML that strictly separates content from presentation. We also walked through building a quick-and-dirty page with HTML and CSS while keeping focused on the importance of semantics and standards.

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It’s been around a month since I pulled the trigger and made the Google Chrome beta channel (which I’ve since upgraded to the dev channel for extension support) the default browser on my Mac. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to where I can’t go back to Firefox now as my daily driver.

The three big reasons why Chrome reigns supreme? Speed, more speed, and WebKit. And now that extensions have come over to the Mac, there’s not too terribly many reasons to stick with Firefox anymore.

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Last Friday, I got the opportunity to speak as part of a panel at AdFed U, a series of educational seminars for businesses and marketing professionals put on by the Advertising Federation of Charleston. The panel included Caroline Nuttall, the publisher of CHARLIE Magazine who spoke on online advertising, and Lyn Mettler, Web strategist and fellow SMC Charleston steering committee member who spoke about leveraging social media. My presentation focused on SEO — but rather than talk about ways to bolt SEO techniques onto sites, I really focused on the need for well-structured, well-written content combined with standards-compliant code and a content management system to keep things organized and straight.

We had ten minutes to talk (and I know I went over!), so this presentation scratches the surface of the surface on the topic. It’s geared — as best as I can! — to a non-technical audience, so the geeks of the audience may be disappointed. If you have any questions or comments about my presentation, please feel free to leave a comment on this post. Thanks to AdFed Charleston for the opportunity to be a part of what is an excellent series. Follow AdFedCharleston on Twitter to keep up with future seminars and events.