Title Junk: Solve it with Javascript

There is some back and forth by John Gruber and others, about HTML <title> tags, with Gruber complaining (and rightly so) that for SEO reasons the titles are filled up with junk having little to do with the real page content.

The writers of cam.ly suggest to use the SEO title in the HTML and have something proper be displayed in Google by using an OpenSearch description. But this still doesn’t solve the problem of bloated window titles and bookmarks.

So my solution to that: use JavaScript. If you want to satisfy your readers with a good title and present a nice title to Google, simply set the title to something nice after the page has loaded with JavaScript:


document.title = "Title Junk: Solve it with JavaScript";

Everyone happy. Except those who have JavaScript disabled maybe.

I have also created a tiny WordPress plugin that does just that: title-junk.zip

Discussion on Hacker News

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Colorillo: Draw on an LED Wall

Colorillo currently powers a collaborative drawing event in Vienna: At Adria Wien there is a temporary LED wall on which you can draw with the help of Colorillo.

Take your mobile phone (iPhone or Android, also iPod Touch, iPad or Laptop works) out of your pocket, enter the URL that you find there, and on your screen you will see what’s on the LED wall. Then you can paint on that. Of course with the technology of Colorillo, multiple people can draw at the same time.

The resolution is a little limited, as the LED wall had been built by hand by students of architecture, so in my experience it’s a little more like splash painting with colors, but we’ll see how it turns out tonight.

Tonight (July 22, 2010) at 8:30pm there is a special drawing event with John Megill of FM4 as a DJ. If you’re around, come by! It will be fun!

The whole event is hosted by the Ärzte ohne Grenzen (Doctors without borders) beach that has been set up for the duration of the AIDS conference that is being held in Vienna this year.

You can also join the event on Facebook and check out more info at the Colorillo blog post.