What about validating a web site?

[Paul]

I have tried to validate my web site, and it has a lot of errors.
Now, the site works fine in IE and Mozilla Firefox without problems.
I don't know if there are problems using other browsers.
I am asking to you if it is really so important the correct validating when I work very well with my site as it is now.
Recently I have improved it using your experience, thank you very much.
As you can see, I am only a self-made-html-man )
Paul

 

[Jeff]

I have tried to validate my web site, and it has a lot of errors.
Now, the site works fine in IE and Mozilla Firefox without problems.
I don't know if there are problems using other browsers.
I am asking to you if it is really so important the correct validating when I work very well with my site as it is now.
Recently I have improved it using your experience, thank you very much.
As you can see, I am only a self-made-html-man )
Paul

Just forget the validation for the time being. You have serious
useability issues.

You can start with navigation. You should have clear consistent
navigation on all pages. Make it nearly the same on every page and put
it either at the top or along one side, never in the middle. You should
never have pages that have no way of getting to the rest of your site
without backing up.

Then reduce the clutter, and finally emphasize what you want to sell.
Why should a clock and figurines take up most of the initial visible
space on a page about cakes?

Start over. Christ, you're an Italian. Think elegant design. Don't
think MySpace.

Ciao,
Jeff

 

[Paul]

Start over. Christ, you're an Italian. Think elegant design. Don't think MySpace.

Ciao,
Jeff

Thank you very much, Jeff )
It is very useful reading about points of view different than mine, and you're wright.
It helps me thinking and design the site in a different way.
Ciao
Paul

 

[dorayme]

I have tried to validate my web site, and it has a lot of errors.
Now, the site works fine in IE and Mozilla Firefox without problems.
I don't know if there are problems using other browsers.
I am asking to you if it is really so important the correct validating when I
work very well with my site as it is now.
Recently I have improved it using your experience, thank you very much.
As you can see, I am only a self-made-html-man )
Paul

Its very nice Paul. But the engine can be tuned a bit. How about
a doctype to begin with?


(I know you are not Luigi, he was careful to have doctypes...)

 

[Paul]

Its very nice Paul. But the engine can be tuned a bit. How about
a doctype to begin with?
(I know you are not Luigi, he was careful to have doctypes...)
dorayme

Thank you dorayme, you are right, I must begin to study and apply doctype. I'll try to find the time, as I am very busy
with my (main) work about favor cakes....
Paul

 

[cwdjrxyz]

I have tried to validate my web site, and it has a lot of errors.
Now, the site works fine in IE and Mozilla Firefox without problems.
I don't know if there are problems using other browsers.
I am asking to you if it is really so important the correct validating when I work very well with my site as it is now.
Recently I have improved it using your experience, thank you very much.
As you can see, I am only a self-made-html-man )
Paul
--http://www.tortebomboniere.com/bomboniere/favourcake01.html

Some of those cakes look good enough to eat. However the air express
to the US likely would cost far more than the cake these days. I used
to order a torte from Demel in Vienna for the holidays, but the air
express increases have prompted me to not do so for the past few
years.

I will comment only on the validation problem. I have been called many
things, but being a good artist is not one of them . First there
must be a Doctype and Character encoding. If you let the w3c validator
default, the page can not be validated at all. However, even using
likely docytypes and character encoding, there still are many
validation errors. There are some huge commercial sites that are full
of validation errors. Many of these look as if they were written by a
committee(or html template program) over several years with portions
of code written in html 3.2, various versions of html 4.01, and
sometimes various versions of xhtml. Because many browsers will
respond correctly to such a mixture, the page may appear satisfactory
from a practical viewpoint. However one must check the page on most
common browsers to see that it works properly, and when a browser
updates there is no certainty that it still will work properly. Thus,
if you do not bring the page up to some w3c standard (html 4.01 strict
likely would be ideal for your page), you need to check it on browsers
likely to be used for it. In addition to recent IE and Firefox, I
would suggest Opera and Safari at a minimum. Opera is a free download.
For those with a Windows OS, there is now Safari for Windows which
also is a free download. Since Seamonkey uses a basic Firefox type
browser with many extras, it likely will respond the same as Firefox,
but it is also a free download if you wish to check.

Even for someone who knows html well, your page could take quite a
while to update to some W3C standard, because many changes would be
required.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Thank you very much, Jeff )
It is very useful reading about points of view different than mine, and you're wright.
It helps me thinking and design the site in a different way.

Jeff have a very good point. Since you are authoring your own site the
cost to you is not per page. This is when less is more. Put less on each
page and have more pages...put the focus on your product. Keep your
navigation consistent.

 

[Harlan Messinger]

Just forget the validation for the time being. You have serious
useability issues.

You can start with navigation. You should have clear consistent
navigation on all pages. Make it nearly the same on every page and put
it either at the top or along one side, never in the middle. You should
never have pages that have no way of getting to the rest of your site
without backing up.

Then reduce the clutter, and finally emphasize what you want to sell.
Why should a clock and figurines take up most of the initial visible
space on a page about cakes?

I was wondering about the clock. What's the point?

The OP takes up an awful lot of space giving us *four times* the same
litany of occasions for which they bake cakes, and in one instance
breaking the list up every couple of items with another chorus of "Favor
cakes and Bonbonniere for". And that's before getting to the links for
the individual styles of favor cake.

Don't get me wrong, OP. My mouth is watering. But you could cut out at
least one-third of your page, and maybe a half, and accomplish
everything you need to.

Start over. Christ, you're an Italian. Think elegant design. Don't
think MySpace.

Harsh!

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Harsh!

http://www.firelily.com/opinions/mistress.html

 

[dorayme]

http://www.firelily.com/opinions/mistress.html

"After ten seconds, human beings lose focus on whatever they were
paying attention to."

Sad isn't it?

 

[Jeff]

I was wondering about the clock. What's the point?

The OP takes up an awful lot of space giving us *four times* the same
litany of occasions for which they bake cakes, and in one instance
breaking the list up every couple of items with another chorus of "Favor
cakes and Bonbonniere for". And that's before getting to the links for
the individual styles of favor cake.

Don't get me wrong, OP. My mouth is watering. But you could cut out at
least one-third of your page, and maybe a half, and accomplish
everything you need to.


Harsh!

I'm a little surprised by that. Didn't we have a long argument over
<br />?

And yet nested tables and font tags are OK?

I looked through the HTML and I did not see a fix or even a quarter
of a fix that wouldn't be harder than rewriting the page. YMMV.

Jeff

 

[dorayme]

I'm a little surprised by that. Didn't we have a long argument over
<br />?

And yet nested tables and font tags are OK?

I looked through the HTML and I did not see a fix or even a quarter
of a fix that wouldn't be harder than rewriting the page. YMMV.

Well, it is right that different people's mmv. It can be a
learning experience to clean up such a design bit by bit. With
greater experience one would go a different way. Much time and
effort probably went into OPs site and it is the easiest thing in
the world to sit here and say things that do not take into
account the OPs busy situation. Many business people, especially
one man businesses are very pressed for time.

 

[Paul]

Put less on each page and have more pages...put the focus on your product.
Keep your navigation consistent.

Thank you to all of you. All your suggestions make me feel miserable, and I
realize that I have poor culture in these arguments.
I know that this isn't my work. I haven't had any serious study about html,
but autodidacte.
I had a commerce and wanted to have an e-commerce. So I tried to build a
website reading books and tutorials. Well, my website went indexed by Google
and we started having orders from everywhere. It really was amazing!!
My website was really ugly but it worked, lots of orders, more than we can
sell, probably because people liked our products. We receive letters from
customers with compliments (about products and, yes, about the "beautiful"
site....).
Now I desire to make the site less ugly and more usable.
Today after having read your messages I have started on making some
modifications.
I have "cleaned" the home page and put the favor cakes in their own pages.
And yes, I like these variations. The fact is that our items are too much,
so it is difficult organize them in a rational way.

Most of you can say that many of my html codes are wrong, This will be my
second step and I'll try to learn more. I don't want assign this work to
other people. It costs money (rightly) and I should lose the pleasure of
"working" (or playing) with the computer..)
Paul

 

[Jeff]

Well, it is right that different people's mmv. It can be a
learning experience to clean up such a design bit by bit. With
greater experience one would go a different way. Much time and
effort probably went into OPs site and it is the easiest thing in
the world to sit here and say things that do not take into
account the OPs busy situation. Many business people, especially
one man businesses are very pressed for time.

Well, it looks like the OP has been busy. And although not a piece of
beauty it is an improvement.

Jeff

 

[dorayme]

Well, it looks like the OP has been busy. And although not a piece of
beauty it is an improvement.

Good, I hope everyone keeps giving him bits and pieces and
remains patient. His site may end up as yummy as his cakes. But
if he is overwhelmed and tries from scratch, he might do what I
do with a cake that is hard to make: throw the thing and all the
kitchen utensils onto the floor in a terrible tantrum that grows
to a general and violent spree on the whole kitchen - like Johnny
Cash in a backstage room in 'Walk the Line'.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Jeff wrote:

Harsh!

But, yet......a compliment.

 

[Harlan Messinger]

I'm a little surprised by that. Didn't we have a long argument over
<br />?

And yet nested tables and font tags are OK?

Who said that? What are you talking about?

 

[Harlan Messinger]

Well, it looks like the OP has been busy. And although not a piece of
beauty it is an improvement.

Indeed. I'm impressed. Actually, I think it was useful to have the two
sets of links and photos. Now he only has the links to separate pages
based on occasion. Before there was another set that linked to pages
with the cakes categorized by design. I think that was worthwhile. I
would have made two changes to the earlier arrangement: Make the
distinction clear, by placing a heading to the effect of "Cakes for Each
Occasion" and "Our Cake Designs" in front of the respective sections;
and, for each cake design, remove the list of occasions for which the
design can be used (because a person that concerned about the particular
occasion will be using the link for the occasion rather than the link
for the design anyway, and because that information can and should
appear on the page to which the link leads).

As for other changes: the table of boxed links above the images should
be replaced by floating boxes so that they don't overflow the browser
horizontally. Likewise for the boxed images. (I realize the OP may not
know anything about floats.) And while the clock is gone, the date is
still there. It doesn't serve any purpose, and the Italian flag and link
could sit to the right of the main heading instead.

 

[Harlan Messinger]

Thank you to all of you. All your suggestions make me feel miserable, and I
realize that I have poor culture in these arguments.

I'm so sorry, I don't think any of us who responded to you meant you to
feel miserable! It's clear that you worked hard on it, and there's a lot
of great material on your page and website. Please don't be discouraged.

I know that this isn't my work. I haven't had any serious study about html,
but autodidacte.

We would say "self-taught".

I had a commerce and wanted to have an e-commerce. So I tried to build a
website reading books and tutorials. Well, my website went indexed by Google
and we started having orders from everywhere. It really was amazing!!
My website was really ugly but it worked, lots of orders, more than we can
sell, probably because people liked our products. We receive letters from
customers with compliments (about products and, yes, about the "beautiful"
site....).

The photos are gorgeous, and there's a lot that I like about your site.

Now I desire to make the site less ugly and more usable.
Today after having read your messages I have started on making some
modifications.
I have "cleaned" the home page and put the favor cakes in their own pages.
And yes, I like these variations. The fact is that our items are too much,
so it is difficult organize them in a rational way.

It's true, it can be a challenge.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I'm so sorry, I don't think any of us who responded to you meant you to
feel miserable! It's clear that you worked hard on it, and there's a lot
of great material on your page and website. Please don't be discouraged.


We would say "self-taught".

There is no shame in that! Same here, having a son in computer science
in college I have seen what they "teach" for web design and and most is
either obsolete (1996 vintage) or just plain wrong.

The photos are gorgeous, and there's a lot that I like about your site.

Agree with Harlan here. It is difficult to get good images that work on
the web.

It's true, it can be a challenge.

Very much so, and will always be evolving. That said, to split pages up
and maybe divide your cake into smaller sub-category galleries would
improve the site. It would allow your customers to focus on a smaller
collection of cake without limiting the total about of cake that you can
feature on the whole site. Putting them all on one page can be
overwhelming like walking into one of those mega-stores (Wal*Mart) with
a wall-o-stuff!

My advice is go and do the tutorials on HTML and CSS on www.htmldog.com
that I have found to be the most accurate for the most up to date
practices of web authoring. It will give you a good base to start...