ASCII Chart (Alphanumeric Characters)
Below is a chart of the ASCII character set:
| 33 | ! | 45 | - | 57 | 9 | 69 | E | 81 | Q | 93 | ] | 105 | i | 117 | u |
| 34 | " | 46 | . | 58 | : | 70 | F | 82 | R | 94 | ^ | 106 | j | 118 | v |
| 35 | # | 47 | / | 59 | ; | 71 | G | 83 | S | 95 | _ | 107 | k | 119 | w |
| 36 | $ | 48 | 0 | 60 | < | 72 | H | 84 | T | 96 | ` | 108 | l | 120 | x |
| 37 | % | 49 | 1 | 61 | = | 81 | I | 85 | U | 97 | a | 109 | m | 121 | y |
| 38 | & | 50 | 2 | 62 | > | 82 | J | 86 | V | 98 | b | 110 | n | 122 | z |
| 39 | ' | 51 | 3 | 63 | ? | 83 | K | 87 | W | 99 | c | 111 | o | 123 | { |
| 40 | ( | 52 | 4 | 64 | @ | 84 | L | 88 | X | 100 | d | 112 | p | 124 | | |
| 41 | ) | 53 | 5 | 65 | A | 77 | M | 89 | Y | 101 | e | 113 | q | 125 | } |
| 42 | * | 54 | 6 | 66 | B | 78 | N | 90 | Z | 102 | f | 114 | r | 126 | ~ |
| 43 | + | 55 | 7 | 67 | C | 79 | O | 91 | [ | 103 | g | 115 | s | 127 | _ |
| 44 | , | 56 | 8 | 68 | D | 80 | P | 92 | \ | 104 | h | 116 | t |
Alphanumeric Rankings In The Open Directory Project
The majority of the time the Open Directory Project ranks its directory listings alphanumerically. However I have noticed that in many categories the editor has decided to ignore all the characters preceding the first alphabetical character.
For example, "#1 Free Clip Art" is a listing title in the directory. But the '#1' part of the title is ignored in ranking the listings. The rank is based on the first letter of the revised title, 'Free Clip Art,' which is 'F.'
Alphanumeric Rankings In The Yahoo! Directory
Unlike the Open Directory Project, Yahoo! takes into account all characters in the listing title in its rankings. Therefore, the listing, "#1 Vacations, Cruises & Giveaways" ("#" is #35 in the ASCII chart) ranks above, "1 Above All Resorts.com" ("1" is #49 in the ASCII chart).
Once upon a time Yahoo! extracted its web search results from its web directory. This is no longer the case after Yahoo! replaced its old search results with Google powered listings, which are ranked by relevance, not alphanumerically.
As a result, the Yahoo! Directory now refers far fewer visitors than before. So I think web marketers who register domain names to take advantage of alphanumerical ranked listings in Yahoo! are now mostly wasting their time.
How To Optimize JavaScripts In HTML Documents
JavaScript codes in HTML documents are usually placed near the top in between the HEAD section. This pushes your body text containing your important keywords further down the page and increases the size of the document, thus the download time. It could also affect the number of keywords search engines index, especially if the page contains a lot of text, images and multimedia elements.
There are two ways to move the JavaScript code away from the top of a HTML document.
- Move the JavaScript code into a separate file.
- Move the JavaScript code to the bottom of the HTML document.
1. Move The JavaScript Code Into A Separate File
The first solution is to move the JavaScript code into a separate file and link to the file from the HTML document.
To do this place the following code in between the HEAD section:
<HEAD>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="file-name.js"></SCRIPT>
</HEAD>
This procedure also reduces your file size, and therefore your download time. In addition, it allows you to reuse the code on other pages by simply adding a link to the JavaScript file in the HTML document.
Some servers may not recognize the ".js" file type. If that is the case with your server, contact your hosting company and ask them to add the following line to the "mime.types" file in the server's config directory, and then restart the server.
TYPE=application/x-javascript exts=js
2. Move The JavaScript Code To The Bottom Of The HTML Document
The other solution is to move the JavaScript code to the very bottom of the HTML file, immediately above or below the closing HTML tag. Although it is considered good programming practice and nearly all JavaScript sites recommend you add your JavaScript to the HEAD section of a page, it is not necessary.
The first solution is probably more convenient to use. But both solutions work just as well.
