Five Lesson from Text Strings in View Source for Chicago Aldermanic Candidate Web Sites

“View Source” is one of the under-appreciated browser functions available. By doing a simple function (CMD-U on Firefox, for instance), you are transported into a world of text that can tell you a lot about what’s going on in the mind of the person making the site. Over the last few weeks I’ve spent a goodly amount of time inspecting the source of hundreds of candidates here in Chicago, and I’ve developed some thou

1. Boilerplate is the enemy

Some of the text can be unfortunate boilerplate, like this snippet from 7th Ward Alderman Sandi Jackson’s Web site:

2. SEO is the over-rated

There are a number of opponent candidates in the meta keywords field of the Web site of Lionel Martin in the Seventh Ward Really not worth the trouble. It’s way better to spend the time on your own message.

3. Frames are bad

The Web site of James Balcer in 11 was a mystery. Here’s the entire source for the Web site:
So the entire Web site is being served as a frame on another Web site (http://www.wardheeler.org/11thward/). Odd.

4. CSS is your friend

Take a look at the gymnastics necessary on the Web site of Michael Finney of the 15 Ward just to render a bolded, centered, Times New Roman list of a certain font size:

The time has come for CSS, people.

5. Embeds are amazingly powerful

On the other end of the spectrum, here we’ve got one line of code that pops in a controller that allows the user to choose from among 50 videos from the 34th Ward’s Michael E. Mayden (The Coach):

Let the tools do the work!