Noob asking for help!

[Curt Zimmerman]

Let me preface this request by stating that I know barely enough about
HTML to get myself into trouble, so please bear with me. If you look
at my code, you'll know what I mean.

I'm writing a web page for my (very small) company, and seemed to be
making good progess until I tested with different browsers. It works
perfectly with Netscape and FireFox. I haven't tested with Opera and
Mozilla yet. If you use one of these, please let me know if it
appears correctly. The Flash modules go out of alignment with the
background and buttons in IE when window size changes. Here is the
link:

http://www.staxowax.com/new/index.html

I know there is a lot of motion going on, and the page is gaudy by
most business standards. We're in the entertainment business, so
flash sells, so to speak. Not all of the buttons work yet. Some of
the pages have not been made. Our goal is to "spruce up the
storefront" of our existing web site while keeping most of the current
content. New background and link colors, same text.

On the advice of a friend, I tried putting the page into a single cell
table, but this didn't help. Would my problem be corrected using CSS?
I'm not sure where to start. Could someone point me in the right
direction? Thank you!

Curt

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Let me preface this request by stating that I know barely enough about
HTML to get myself into trouble, so please bear with me. If you look
at my code, you'll know what I mean.

I'm writing a web page for my (very small) company, and seemed to be
making good progess until I tested with different browsers. It works
perfectly with Netscape and FireFox. I haven't tested with Opera and
Mozilla yet. If you use one of these, please let me know if it
appears correctly.

Sure thing...I'm using Opera 7.23, if that's good enough.

<clickety click to the site> ...

<snip>

....oops. After about 200KB, I got tired of waiting for the page to
finish up being rendered, and bailed.

 

[Arne]

Let me preface this request by stating that I know barely enough about
HTML to get myself into trouble, so please bear with me. If you look
at my code, you'll know what I mean.

I'm writing a web page for my (very small) company, and seemed to be
making good progess until I tested with different browsers. It works
perfectly with Netscape and FireFox. I haven't tested with Opera and
Mozilla yet. If you use one of these, please let me know if it
appears correctly. The Flash modules go out of alignment with the
background and buttons in IE when window size changes. Here is the
link:

http://www.staxowax.com/new/index.html

I know there is a lot of motion going on, and the page is gaudy by
most business standards. We're in the entertainment business, so
flash sells, so to speak. Not all of the buttons work yet. Some of
the pages have not been made. Our goal is to "spruce up the
storefront" of our existing web site while keeping most of the current
content. New background and link colors, same text.

On the advice of a friend, I tried putting the page into a single cell
table, but this didn't help. Would my problem be corrected using CSS?
I'm not sure where to start. Could someone point me in the right
direction? Thank you!

You have a very havy page there, takes over two minutes to load on
dialup there is still many of them out there. But it worked Ok on my
broadband, so took a look in my Mozilla browser

The content is not centered on the screen, even if you have the
<center> tag in the top of the body part. That's because you (as I
see) are using "position: absolute;" on probably everthing, so the
centering have no say in this matter. The absolut positioning push the
content out of alignment (or causes a horizintal scrollbar) in smaller
windows, also because the width of the content is almost 800 pixels.

I would try to center the world.gif (convert it to .jpg and resize it
first!), the header and bottom flash, and without absolut position.
Then try to positioning the rest "around" them.

--
/Arne

Top posters will be ignored. Quote the part you
are replying to, no more and no less! And don't
quote signatures, thank you.

 

[John W Cavoulas]

Let me preface this request by stating that I know barely enough about
HTML to get myself into trouble, so please bear with me. If you look
at my code, you'll know what I mean.

I'm writing a web page for my (very small) company, and seemed to be
making good progess until I tested with different browsers. It works
perfectly with Netscape and FireFox. I haven't tested with Opera and
Mozilla yet. If you use one of these, please let me know if it
appears correctly. The Flash modules go out of alignment with the
background and buttons in IE when window size changes. Here is the
link:

http://www.staxowax.com/new/index.html

I know there is a lot of motion going on, and the page is gaudy by
most business standards. We're in the entertainment business, so
flash sells, so to speak. Not all of the buttons work yet. Some of
the pages have not been made. Our goal is to "spruce up the
storefront" of our existing web site while keeping most of the current
content. New background and link colors, same text.

On the advice of a friend, I tried putting the page into a single cell
table, but this didn't help. Would my problem be corrected using CSS?
I'm not sure where to start. Could someone point me in the right
direction? Thank you!

Curt

Besides the page doesn't center, the top and bottom pictures linking back to
index.html cover up buttons, probably due to the absolute coordinate
locations you set them to. I'm using IE6.

 

[MagicFreebiesUK.co.uk]

Besides the page doesn't center, the top and bottom pictures linking back to
index.html cover up buttons, probably due to the absolute coordinate
locations you set them to. I'm using IE6.

I'm on broadband and it took a huge amount of time to load up and also
caused my comp to slow up.

On IE and site worked fine despite taking ages to load

HTH

 

[Uncle Pirate]

Curt Zimmerman wrote:




Sure thing...I'm using Opera 7.23, if that's good enough.

<clickety click to the site> ...

<snip>

...oops. After about 200KB, I got tired of waiting for the page to
finish up being rendered, and bailed.

You didn't expect that? He said it was full of Flash. Since I don't
even have the plugin installed (and don't want to), I didn't even bother.

--
Stan McCann "Uncle Pirate" http://stanmccann.us/pirate.html
Webmaster/Computer Center Manager, NMSU at Alamogordo
Coordinator, Tularosa Basin Chapter, ABATE of NM; AMA#758681; COBB
'94 1500 Vulcan (now wrecked) http://motorcyclefun.org/Dcp_2068c.jpg
A zest for living must include a willingness to die. - R.A. Heinlein

 

[William Hamby]

I'm writing a web page for my (very small) company, and seemed to be
making good progess until I tested with different browsers. It works
perfectly with Netscape and FireFox. I haven't tested with Opera and
Mozilla yet. If you use one of these, please let me know if it
appears correctly. The Flash modules go out of alignment with the
background and buttons in IE when window size changes. Here is the
link:

http://www.staxowax.com/new/index.html

Since you are, by your own admission, in the early stages of learning,
I would advise that you go to the bookstore and find books on web
standards. While they will not help you avoid every browser bug, using
them will help make your site look the same regardless of the browser.

 

[Travis Newbury]

Since you are, by your own admission, in the early stages of learning, I
would advise that you go to the bookstore and find books on web
standards. While they will not help you avoid every browser bug, using
them will help make your site look the same regardless of the browser.

Actually just the opposite. If you stick to them you are assured of
breaking in IE. Until all browsers adhere to the rules (read that as
never), it is best to use them as a guide rather than a rule. So get
the book, learn the rules, then learn what you have to do in the real world.

 

[Barbara de Zoete]

Actually just the opposite. If you stick to them you are assured of
breaking in IE. Until all browsers adhere to the rules (read that as
never), it is best to use them as a guide rather than a rule. So get
the book, learn the rules, then learn what you have to do in the real
world.

And then still, 'look the same regardless of the browser' is never
achieved, regardless the efford. With graphical UA in mind: different OSs
have different sets of font families for example. Also it is getting more
and more difficult to know what size viewport the site is shown in
(anything from a new and fast PDA to a just as modern wide screen goes).
Different browsers have different interpretations of several features of
css, all within standards as suggested by w3c mind you. Colours are
different in the old fashioned 'tube screen' versus an LCD screen. Et
cetera.

What one can try to accomplish is a site that 'looks _good_ regardless of
the browser' and make the same impression on your visitor, whether s/he
visits with WinXP IE5.5 or MacOS FireFox. And that still workes okay in
all sorts of non graphical UA (lynx, screen readers, aural browsers et
cetera, except WebTV as i understand it - never tried that one though, so
really don't know).


--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

 

[Travis Newbury]

And then still, 'look the same regardless of the browser' is never
achieved, regardless the efford.

If you are talking about absolutes then yes, it will never be achieved.
If you are talking about real world usage, then it can be achieved
most of the time. The question that needs to be asked is, does "most
of the time" meet your sites needs?

 

[William Hamby]

Actually just the opposite. If you stick to them you are assured of
breaking in IE. Until all browsers adhere to the rules (read that as
never), it is best to use them as a guide rather than a rule. So get
the book, learn the rules, then learn what you have to do in the real
world.

Actually, just the opposite. The browsers are moving toward conforming
to those standards, so to sacrifice your markup just because they might
still suck is no excuse. Browsers interpret markup all the same. If you
use proper CSS (and tweak them to accomplish the same thing in
different browsers - which is possible and common), you'll be doing the
right thing.

 

[William Hamby]

And then still, 'look the same regardless of the browser' is never
achieved, regardless the efford.

That's not true. It's completely possible to make any website look the
same in any browser, albeit using some hacks. As for different fonts on
different O/Ss, it's easy - image replacement.

 

[Travis Newbury]

Actually, just the opposite. The browsers are moving toward conforming
to those standards, so to sacrifice your markup just because they might
still suck is no excuse. Browsers interpret markup all the same. If you
use proper CSS (and tweak them to accomplish the same thing in different
browsers - which is possible and common), you'll be doing the right thing.

Well we disagree about browsers ever conforming to the specs, and we
also disagree about what the standards are good for. You seem to think
they are an absolute. I think they are a guide.

 

[Travis Newbury]

That's not true. It's completely possible to make any website look the
same in any browser, albeit using some hacks. As for different fonts on
different O/Ss, it's easy - image replacement.

Nope got to go with Barb on this one.

 

[William Hamby]

Nope got to go with Barb on this one.

Then I challenge both you and her to post any markup of your choice,
and I'll show you a page that displays identically in any graphical
browser.

 

[Toby Inkster]

That's not true. It's completely possible to make any website look the
same in any browser, albeit using some hacks. As for different fonts on
different O/Ss, it's easy - image replacement.

OK -- here's an easy test.

Show me a page that looks identical in Internet Explorer 5.0 for Windows
and w3m 0.5.1 on Linux.

 

[Travis Newbury]

Then I challenge both you and her to post any markup of your choice, and
I'll show you a page that displays identically in any graphical browser.

Just the fact that I have my browsers open full screen and Barb doesn't
eliminates the possibility that, that will happen. Also, font size
could be different, I could use my own personal style sheet changing
your colors, way to many variables even if we use the same browser for
it to appear the same on both of our computers.

Back to what I said earlier, if we are talking about absolutes (and your
challenge is) then you can not be sure it will appear the same. If you
are talking about what happen in the real world, then these differences
may be acceptable.

 

[William Hamby]

Just the fact that I have my browsers open full screen and Barb doesn't
eliminates the possibility that, that will happen. Also, font size
could be different, I could use my own personal style sheet changing
your colors, way to many variables even if we use the same browser for
it to appear the same on both of our computers.

Browser size makes no difference. Even if you one uses a fluid layout
(which I never do), the rendering of the page is still the same, it
simply fills your screen.

Image replacement would not be affected by overriding the stylesheet.
Besides, users who choose to do so don't expect a page to be rendered
properly - they expect it to render their own way. It's their choice,
but I don't know why anyone would want to since they won't see what the
author has produced.

My challenge still stands.

 

[William Hamby]

w3m

is a text-based browser. If you'll actually read what I posted, I said
graphical browsers.

 

[Steve Pugh]

Image replacement would not be affected by overriding the stylesheet.

Oh yeah? A user stylesheet with

h1, h2, h3 { background-image: none !important;}

h1 *, h2 *, h3 * {display: inline !important; text-indent: 0
!important; margin: 0 !important; position: static !important;}

plus the normal user CSS for colours, font sizes, etc. is likely to
defeat a large number of cases of image replacement.

Besides, users who choose to do so don't expect a page to be rendered
properly - they expect it to render their own way. It's their choice,

Quite right.

but I don't know why anyone would want to since they won't see what the
author has produced.

Because often what the author has produced is hard to read and use for
some portion of the audience.

Steve