Help Needed

B

Brian

I am pretty much a neophyte HTML/XHTML person but I am finally away from
using FrontPage.

I have made several functional but ugly web sites, one of which is
www.cornerstoneassembly.net and our Pastor would it to look like kind of
like www.cag.org (just a coincidence that it has same name.) He would like a
"family" motif but we both don't want to "copy or borrow" code. Looking at
their start page, how was a lot of this created? Should I get some pictures
and make a collage of them in Photoshop, etc?

The site as it is now is just so plain...any suggestions (and please be
critical) are appreciated.

Thanks,
Brian
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Brian said:
I am pretty much a neophyte HTML/XHTML person
Click to expand...

What's HTML/XHTML? Wait... is makes 1/X, doesn't it? Or is it just
division by zero.
I have made several functional but ugly web sites, one of which is
www.cornerstoneassembly.net - -
The site as it is now is just so plain...
Click to expand...

Are you just trying to get hits, or what? I hit the Stop button when I
saw that my browser was loading some large images on a page with little
textual content. But it managed to download some slideshow. Oh my,
thanks for reminding me that I had carelessly left scripting enabled.
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Brian said:
Sorry..I was expecting objective, constructive help from this
newsgroup.
Click to expand...

Welcome to Usenet. Thank you for implicitly giving your definition of
"constructive" with the upside-down fullquote. Also thank you for
confirming my initial impression. HTH. HAND.
 
D

Dirk Kruisheer

Brian said:
I am pretty much a neophyte HTML/XHTML person but I am finally away from
using FrontPage.

I have made several functional but ugly web sites, one of which is
www.cornerstoneassembly.net and our Pastor would it to look like kind of
like www.cag.org (just a coincidence that it has same name.) He would like a
"family" motif but we both don't want to "copy or borrow" code. Looking at
their start page, how was a lot of this created? Should I get some pictures
and make a collage of them in Photoshop, etc?

The site as it is now is just so plain...any suggestions (and please be
critical) are appreciated.
Click to expand...

Your site isn't really that bad, I think. And the one you are referring at
is full of tricks you should not try to emulate, such as slicing graphics.

Why not:

- Change font-family: times, helvetica, arial; to font-family: arial,
helvetica, sans-serif; in your style sheet;

- Reedit the graphics in order to make them 1) lighter (in weight) and 2)
fit in the area assigned to them;

- Cut the XML decaration <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> (some
browsers choke in it) and place instead <meta http-equiv="content-type"
content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> in the <head> element;

- Validate your site at http://www.htmlhelp.com/ and/or at
http://www.w3.org/;

- Buy an inspiring book such as _Eric Meyer on CSS_
(http://www.ericmeyeroncss.com/);

- Use your own site as a starting point;

- And keep coming back!

Dirk
 
B

Brian

Thanks for your suggestions. Printing out now. I MAY look into Fireworks
eventually, but I want to learn most of this "by hand" first.

Thanks again and I WILL be back!
 
D

Dirk Kruisheer

Sorry,

The meta-tag should be closed in an orderly XHTML fashion of course:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />,

i.e. with space-backslash.

See you around,

Dirk
 
D

David Dorward

Dirk said:
- Cut the XML decaration <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> (some
browsers choke in it) and place instead <meta http-equiv="content-type"
content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> in the <head> element;
Click to expand...

No, don't.

If you are going to use a meta tag to make statements about the content
type, then use HTML. If you want to use XHTML then put the content type
directives where they belong (in the http headers) where you can more
easily have them correct (appliction/xhtml+xml) for supporting browsers and
in HTML compatability mode for older ones.
 
D

David Dorward

Toby said:
Surely:
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/xml; charset=utf-8" />
Click to expand...

No, well, probably not. Its certainly sub-optimal.

For XHTML, application/xhtml+xml is correct.

.... but MSIE doesn't support XHTML ...

See my previous post: <[email protected]>
 
D

Dirk Kruisheer

David Dorward said:
No, don't.

If you are going to use a meta tag to make statements about the content
type, then use HTML. If you want to use XHTML then put the content type
directives where they belong (in the http headers) where you can more
easily have them correct (appliction/xhtml+xml) for supporting browsers and
in HTML compatability mode for older ones.
Click to expand...

This is where I got my wisdom (especially "1. Open with the proper DOCTYPE &
Namespace"):

http://www.nypl.org/styleguide/xhtml/guidelines.html

Dirk Kruisheer
 
T

Talc Ta Matt

And the one you are referring at
is full of tricks you should not try to emulate, such as slicing graphics.
Click to expand...

Slicing graphics is not a trick. It's a very basic part of web design. Due to
how that cag.org page is laid out they had to be sliced. I'm not quite for sure
why someone would say not to do this, as there are no valid reasons not to.
 
T

Talc Ta Matt

Looking at
their start page, how was a lot of this created?
Click to expand...

You are (in part) asking this in the wrong group. Alt.HTML is somewhat
anti-graphics. The regulars to this group like to concentrate on text and
general page content. Very simple looking stuff. Not heavy graphics. Do not let
this lead you to believe this is how all web designers feel. There are many
different design styles from all text to mostly graphics to mostly video.

Head over to a computer graphics group for actual graphics help.

How did they do that page?

It was most likely designed in Photoshop first, and then measurements were
taken from that for the page layout. Then you cut out the graphics and just
stick them within your layout.

That takes care of the graphics end. Now you've got the designated text areas
to work with as you normally would.

As for cag.org.... They seem to be using mostly this layout...

http://www.cag.org/evangelism/knowjesus/

But they've also got this layout on some pages, which is better in terms of it
having more potential...

http://www.cag.org/evangelism/knowjesus/t3/index.shtml
 

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