Sunday, May 23, 2010

David's Video Game Insanity!! Version 6.0 Goes Live

This is an official announcement that David's Video Game Insanity Version 6.0 has been launched.  There aren't any big changes really, everything has to do with behind the scenes updates that do not effect normal browsing of the site.  Essentially the main difference is how each page is titled.  As DVGI is a site that is heavily dependent on its frames, I never intended any of the pages to be accessed away from the main index.  However, as we all know, that's not how search engines work.  Because of this nearly every page that was not part of the main index was titled "Get outta here!" - what CLU tells his Bit at the beginning of TRON after his Game Tank is disabled.  (I'm sure most browsing this site will get the reference)  Years ago I added a pair of links at the bottom of each page that acts as top index to each section.  The links provide access to the main DVGI index as well as access to the main ClassicPlastic.net index, along with some text pointing out that if the page was accessed through an external source, it is actually part of a much larger site.  Yet gaining access to the information at DVGI via a search engine, unless searching for specific terms, was still greatly hampered by the pages not having unique titles.  That's primarily what the new version addresses, every page has been given a proper title just in case they are accessed outside of the main index and their frames.  I hope it will continue to boost traffic and get the information here into the hands of the people who would like to read it.

The second change has to do with ALT and TITLE tags for mouse over text on images.  For years and years I used ALT to provide popup text when the mouse pointer is left over an image.  Of course this is an incorrect way to do things but as nearly every browser continued to support it, many of us never changed.  When a couple years ago most modern browsers finally cut away using ALT tags in that way, instead wanting the proper TITLE tag for the popup text.  I've gone through the entire site and changed all the tags on the pages where they actually matter.  I know there are still some ALT tags on the RTM archive pages but they serve no purpose so I'm not going to bother.