My web site looks screwy? What's up?

Epsilon

Epsilon

Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
430
Okay... I'm hoping to get some better educated ideas about what is up with my web site.

I am on my girlfriends computer right now and my web site tables and fonts are overlapping and fonts are not the ones I selected???!!! It looks fine when I'm on my computer and when I make a publishing update on it.

Is it her web browser maybe? Perhaps I made an error in Front Page? But why would it look OK when I type in the address in Internet Explorer on my comp? Version out of date on hers? Other sites look OK on her comp.

Click http://www.blacksheepforge.com anyone and tell me if its screwed up on your end, please. :rolleyes: I'm an idiot.

-Jason
 
Jason,

On the home page I notice something not right. At the right part of screen you have: At The Forge. Then there is a block of text below it. The "At The Forge" seems to run into the first sentence of: te last updated December 19, 2002. etc., etc.. It seems to over lap.

I am running Explorer 6.0.

I wrote my site in HTML using only a simple editor. I am not familiar with Front Page. However, as I initially wrote my site (a couple years back) I had my Uncle check it on his computer. He was using a different browser - Netscape. Some parts did not display properly on his. He had no advise as to what I should do. I decided to download various versions of Netscape and Explorer onto my computer. That way I could view it for myself and trouble shoot in real time. Sure enough, using his version of Netscape I experienced the same problems he had described. I tinkered about with my code until I was able to correct my anomolies. All browsers do not necessarily interpret HTML exactly the same. And especially as HTML standards have changed, earlier browser versions are now lacking in that respect. You might check to see if your code requires Java Script or some other restrictive standard that might inhibit other visitors from veiwing your site properly without downloading the plug-in. However, I do believe I have my Java Script running and it looked like there was a slight problem on the home page - as I stated above.

Sorry I can not give you an easier answer. Probably, you will find it is a simple change that will correct the problem. It may require editing much of your code, depending on how often the anomoly is repeated. Even though you are writing your site in a high level language (Front Page) you are none the less generating software. Welcome to the world of fixing one thing just to cause something else to go wrong.:eek:

Roger
 
Jason, if you want to build a website everyone can access, do not use Front Page. Front Page applies proprietary Microsoft HTML code that can only be viewed on current versions of Microsoft's browser. This is one of Microsoft's tools for creating and maintaining its monopoly - it won't play with others, even itself unless you use the latest and greatest... I despise Microsoft with every fiber of my being. We don't use any M$ products in this house, but that's another story...

I'm running Mozzila 1.0 on Mac OS X. Your site displays okay for me but none of the links work. There are plenty of sites built using Front Page, and no Netscape browser ever can access them successfully. These sites never get into my bookmarks. Too bad, some have content I'd like to see and some were written by my friends.

Why don't you think about buying a Mac or running Linux, and do everyone a favor by using standards we all can share. Sorry. I'll try to climb down off this soapbox...

Dave
 
wow, i think its just the spacing, try setting up your website again, adjust the spacing of the tables and titles etc.

and for your kaiken knife, what did you do to the handle to harden it? and is there a website where i can see how to wrap handles like that?
 
Jason - I want to add a big second what Dave said. I also run a Mac with OS 9.2 and O.S. X and two diffrenet browsers -Front Page is nothing but trouble. A lot of web hosting services do not support it. I use Adobe GoLive V 4.0 (older version). It's not perfect, but it's a decent WSIWIG editor for those who run out of patience after the first 30 pages of the manual (me).

Bob
 
Jason,
This particular situation is not a Microsoft / FrontPage proprietary code issue. I'll cover the positioning problem you have, which is CSS (Cascading Stylesheets), and the font problem.

Positioning Of Elements
For one thing I'd drop the CSS (Cascading Stylesheet) absolute positioning, and the z-index stacking order poop, which is also CSS. Not all browsers can handle this.

e.g.
div style="z-index: -3; width: 756; height: 186"
The z-index property sets the stack order of an element. An element with greater stack order is always in front of another element with lower stack order.

Netscape 6 (or higher) and Internet Explorer 4 (or higher) can handle this.

For the sake of compatibility, use nested tables for your layout instead of using CSS positioning. It's not as sophisticated, but with a little experimenting you can have your page look pretty much the same to all browsers.

Fonts
This one's easy. When you specify a font, only those folks who have that font on their PC will see it. Otherwise it will display as whatever the default font for their browser is.

e.g.
For your Black Sheep Forge logo, you are specifying face="Berylium". You see it on your machine because the "Berylium" font exists on your machine. In my case, I don't have that font, so it displays in "Times New Roman" which is the default font for my browser.

If you absolutely want everyone to see the logo in Berylium, then create an image in Berylium and display the image.

For the main body text, there is a pretty good workaround. Let's say that you want the text to be of "Verdana". Most Windows machines have the Verdana font, so you're covered for a very high percentage of your viewers. But what about those who don't have the font?

Choose multiple common fonts in order of precedence. Verdana is a font without serifs. Another common font on Windows machines without serifs is Arial. A common font without serifs on Macs is Helvetica. Finally, to cover all the bases the generic font family name for fonts without serifs is sans-serif.

So by using the following ...
face="verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif"

... the font is going to display without serifs. Most Windows machines will display the text in Verdana. Those that don't have the font will use Arial. Mac machines will probably display Helvetica. The sans-serif specification is a generic family name, so any machines which don't have any of the "named" fonts will use whatever is the default sans-serif font.
 
you'll get a lot of garbage put in with front page too.
I design and maintain a few web sites and use the
arachnophilia PROGRAM it is HTML writing
if you keep using that one, you be adjusting it for every browser
out there and as the guys are saying not good...
I'm a long way from the best webmasters but it works for me well.
I can hack them up real good. :(
 
::frustrated sigh:: :(

Well. I think I got some work cut out for me. Thank you all very much for taking the time to view the site. And thank you all for your opinions on making it run better.

Basically, I needed a web site. All I had was Front Page. I do not know how to write HTML. I just clicked around. I figured if it looked ok on my machine it would do so so on others. Especially, since I NEVER have trouble viewing a site. I don't get it. I'd rather be forging. :p

Well, Primos, I will have to go over your info better as soon as I get some time. But, I would like to say thanx. I will try to do some of what you suggested.

For now all, I'm put it under construction and just display some basic pics and what not.

Geez, I'd rather someone else did this crap. :cool:

-Jason
 
I use frontpage and don't have many problems. I just keep my html pretty basic without any special effects. Keep playing around with it and you will get it. The html actually starts to make sense after a while.:)

When I had a web page (non knife related) I was selling reloading supplies and some other misc stuff, but left off all the special effects and animated giff things. All they do is slow down the loading of the page, which IMHO is annoying.

Anyway, persistance pays off, you will get it. Don't know if you know this but, when you are at a website and you want to know how they did something, right click on the page and select the "view sorce" option from the menu. That will bring up the html code.
 
One way to save some compatibility issues is to remove "wipes" and "fades." Those are proprietary transitions that only work in Internet Explorer and can cause problems with other browsers.
 
7@ Mac with O.S. X. I work on the multimedia industry and I use only Macromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe Golive. I also teach dreamweaver in a school.

Dreamweaver is good to make clean code. Like he was said, remains far from special tags or proprietary features or code. I do not advise either the use of layers feature in HTML, that made a lot of problems...

You can download on the site of Macromedia, a demo version of Dreamweaver which is perfectly functional for 30 days

Good luck !

Alain M-D
 
I use Dreamweaver as well and do okay with it. I'm not an expert or anything, but I do know it's a helluva lot better than FrontPage. And it's usually a good idea to view your page on another machine (and with different browsers) to check it out.
 
ZENGHOST,
The idea of viewing your site in various browsers while constructing is very sage advice.


Alain M-D,
I had the opportunity to evaluate Dreamweaver. I found it to be a very good product, and you're right, it does do a better job of generating clean code that most (all?) of the WYSIWYG products. If I could justify the cost for just maintaining my own site, I'd buy it.

I also agree with you that layers should be avoided. I don't care for things like Flash either. In my opinion, a good website stands on it's own without a lot of trickery.

Content is the single most important factor obviously. Easy navigation always a big plus as well. Layout and color schemes can play a big role in the success of a site too. Another thing often overlooked is speed. Getting the knack of compressing those images down for fast loading withoutout sacrificing image quality is mucho important.

What I'm getting at I suppose is in response to Jason's lament of:
"Geez, I'd rather someone else did this crap".

A lot of folks feel this way, and for good reason. There's a whole heck of a lot to learn, a lot of research, and a of work to create successful website. That's why folks who design websites get good money for them.

  • You really need to know some HTML even if you use a WYSIWYG editor so that you can get in there and tweak things.
  • In order to keep a site managable you need to create a hierarchical-type structure and have an understanding of the hierarchical directory structures of Windows, Unix, etc.
  • If your site has any size to it at all, and gets updated with any freqency, a good understanding of FTP for file transfers, and ASCII and Binary formats is important.
  • Since the type of sites we deal with depend on quality images, you need to have a bit of knowledge in photography and image editing. As mentioned before, you need to learn how to crop, resize, and compress JPEG's without jaggies and artifacts. You also need to learn when use .GIF as opposed to .JPG format.
  • There's those things we seldom think about like learning how to be seen and get picked up by the search engines -- and not just on page 185 of 228.
  • Then there's the cost of a good camera, good photo editing software, good HTML editing software, possibly a good scanner, etc., etc.

If you are going into this for the long haul and want to play with the big boys, for some folks it actually is best to pay a professional take care of all this stuff, and leave yourself time for the knifemaking business.

I have no idea why I'm rambling like this. :D I just started talking and couldn't shut up.
 
For those who don't have deep pockets and want a WYSIWIG editor try NAMO Web Editor 5. Tucows and CNET amongst others gives it a grade A for the middle of the road webmasters. It has a 45 day free demo. Does clean HTML and more. In fact it does about 90% of what Dreamweaver and GoLive do for about $300.00 less (check out bizrate and some of those I've seen Namo as cheap as $95.00).

Like Terry Primos said if you're going to manage a site you need to learn some basic HTML and the other stuff he mentioned in order to twek your site. I'd also include Java scripts and I wouldn't do without SSI. I'm no super master web designer, but I currently manage 9 sites so I do have some experience.

And no I'm not a big fan of MS business practices, but they are the 800lb gorilla and I doubt very much that is going to change soon (just look what the courts decided), so we're going to have to live with that fact. Also the fact that 90%+ of your audience is using Internet Explorer is nothing to sneeze at. Doesn't mean you have to pander to MS's power trip, but you do have to be aware of it. And no I do not like Front Page at all and three of the site I manage were originally written on it so I have first hand experience with it's problems.

For a decent and inexpensive ($49.95) yet powerful Image editor check out ArcSoft Photoshop 5.0. I use Adobe 7.0 extensively, but I like Arcsoft a lot and it's learning curve is much easier than Adobe (just ask muy wife).


Anyway that's my two pesos worth-
Chuck
 
Originally posted by primos
If I could justify the cost for just maintaining my own site, I'd buy it.
Click to expand...
The good thing about my Dreamweaver was that I got it at my University Bookstore for ~$100. There was even someone selling it in the exchange forum a couple of months back for around that price as well.

You really need to know some HTML even if you use a WYSIWYG editor so that you can get in there and tweak things.
Click to expand...
I agree with this. Even though I use Dreamweaver, the little code that I do know always comes in handy for tweaking and for spotting problems that my not show in the normal view.

You also need to learn when use .GIF as opposed to .JPG format.
Click to expand...

When do you need to use .GIF as opposed to .JPG?

Then there's the cost of a good camera, good photo editing software, good HTML editing software, possibly a good scanner, etc., etc.
Click to expand...

Very good advice--good (quick loading) pics can make up for lack of design skills. Still working on getting a good camera, but it's definitely on my shopping list this year.

Lots of good advice here--never expected to get so much web design advice in the shoptalk forum... :D
 
Boy are we off topic, but ....

Dreamweaver is the way to go. PHP for server-side programming.

For graphics the sister product to Dreamweaver is Fireworks. Hands down THE product for web graphics. Yes I like it better than Photoshop and it's half the price.

Now to get knife-ish: I use Fireworks to do my knife designs:

japan.jpg

hunter.jpg

Just my opinion,

Steve
 
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