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Could anybody help with my web page troubles?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Spike, Nov 4, 2004.

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  1. Spike Newcomer, in training

    Well, my first website, created for the promotion of somebody elses book, is nearly ready to be passed around by the authoress (there's nowhere to buy the book from quite yet and I've been told to wait for that information before spreading the site around (so please don't link to it or give the addy to anyone if you think about doing so), and she's more than pleased with the site.

    I have struck on a slight puzzle (well, to me anyway! lol)

    I don't want the web address spread around at the moment, as per my instructions from the person I built it for, butI'm confused and hoping that someone could please explain why the navigation/title bars top and bottom stretch accross the whole visible page in the browser for the 4 html pages like here ( http://www.minervapendragon.com/index.html ) but on the php guestbook page they stop just short of the edges - http://www.minervapendragon.com/ardguest.php - which I acctually prefer but can't duplicate on the other pages.

    If you do visit the site, any constructive criticisms are welcome. I have to learn somehow!
    Spike, Nov 4, 2004
    #1

  2. Spike Newcomer, in training

    I can't upload the php file, and from the link it seems it can't be saved... so, here's the page code in a txt file if anyone cares to look at it should they need to....
    Spike, Nov 4, 2004
    #2

  3. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    The magic word is <center>
    Code:
    <title>MinervaPendragon.com - Guestbook</title></head>
   <body bgcolor="#555555" background="index/grad_text2-2.jpg" link="blue" vlink="blue" alink="active_link" topmargin="0" marginheight="0">
   <center>

   <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4">
    If you leave that out there, the appearance should be the same on both pages. (or add it to the other pages to get the ".php-look")

    You should change the bgcolor="000000" in the nav-table where you show the menu-links to the other pages. Black BG with darkblue text shows up very poorly.

    On the preview-page you should give people a chance to skip the preview if they are on dial-up. Put in e.g. a "click here" to continue or "click there" to skip, in whatever way you want to solve that.
    The music is neat.
    Nice result for a first trial.
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 5, 2004
    #3

  4. Spike Newcomer, in training

    Thankyou very much for your kind comments RBS :) I've taken them on board and I'll think about them and work at it a little later.

    I've added that center tag to the rest of the pages, and closed it at the end of the body, but it seems to have had no effect. Could there be something else on the guestbook page causing the difference? I really would like to get all the pages looking like the guestbook one. :confused:
    Spike, Nov 5, 2004
    #4

  5. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    I have to go now, will D/L both pages and let you know later today or tomorrow morning.
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 5, 2004
    #5

  6. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    It took me a while to figure it out, but here it is:

    in ardguest.php you find:
    <body bgcolor="#555555" background="index/grad_text2-2.jpg" link="blue" vlink="blue" alink="active_link" topmargin="0" marginheight="0">
    <center>

    whereas in index.html you find:
    <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" background="index/grad_text2-2.jpg" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
    <center>

    The bgcolors for the isis-picture on the left are different, black and grey, causing an optical illusion of smaller when grey.
    The link parameters do nothing optically.
    But the extra margin-parameters cause the wider "look" in index.html
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 6, 2004
    #6

  7. Spike Newcomer, in training

    OK. I'll give that a go then. That body line in the php page was acctually partt of the questbook script before I set out to work with it and build a page.

    I looked at the source for each page for ages, but STILL did'nt see that! Thanks RBS :D
    Spike, Nov 6, 2004
    #7

  8. Spike Newcomer, in training

    I just made the modification to the rest of the pages. Finally, that little bit is finished. Thanks agin RBS. Now, to create a link to stop that flash loading... could be interesting. I've never done it before.
    Spike, Nov 6, 2004
    #8

  9. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    The easiest way would be to create an in-between page with two buttons, one to continue on to your current preview-page, the other to e.g. the guestbook, or back to index.html.
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 6, 2004
    #9

  10. Spike Newcomer, in training

    Yes. Very true. I am planning on doing something else on the preview page, a sort of menu for a number of peices of streaming media or something similar, and the current page will be linked to from that.

    In the meantime though, in the knowledge that a 4.5 MB flash file isn't easy on your avaerage dialup modem, there's a downloadable powerpoint presentation at the bottom of the page in an sfx archive.

    I'm still waiting for more content from the authoress to put on the site, and she's waiting for the same from the publisher. Untill I get that info, I've nothing to fill another page with. I suppose I can always put a link in the page at the top to reload the page with an image instead of the flash.

    Thanks again!
    Spike, Nov 6, 2004
    #10

  11. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    Create a slide-show instead of a big flash. All you need is the for someone to D/L the music, and the slides (.jpg with text) sail by as per timed interval.
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 6, 2004
    #11

  12. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    If you use Firefox (and I assume you do, install an extension by the name of "Web Developer 0.8", extremely useful for, well, web developers.

    Also, you MUST do something about your menu-links. That black background makes a visited page (dark purple) nearly invisible, and the other (unvisited) links in dark blue are almost just as bad.
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 7, 2004
    #12

  13. Spike Newcomer, in training

    Yes. I'll get onto that link issue tonight. After sorting out the page apearance in terms of consistancy - thanks to your help, I took a little bit of a break.

    The problem now is that I really like that black! lol I guess I have some thinking to do.

    I do use Firefox. I'll install web developer 0.8 now. Thanks for the tip :)
    Spike, Nov 7, 2004
    #13

  14. Spike Newcomer, in training

    I've had a little play with the index.html page on my machine.

    I'm open to a colour suggestion, but as far as I can see, any colour change to the top and bottom nav bars drastically alters the feel of the page, to the extent that in order to get everything to tie in properly, the entire page would need to be changed. I just can't get it to look right.

    The answer to the problem seems to be to change the link colour on the top and bottom nav bars to grey for normal and visited, and cyan when the mouse hovers over them.

    The trouble is, I have no idea how to do this for the nav bars only, as the only method of forcing link colours that I know is inserting the - link="blue" vlink="blue" alink="active_link" - attributes into the body tag. This of course alters the links on the whole page, and doesn't account for the cyan when hovering over a link.

    I'm afraid I only know what CSS does, and know nothing about using it (I'm just not that clever yet). Is there a way to do this with HTML?
    Spike, Nov 7, 2004
    #14

  15. Spike Newcomer, in training

    The links are a little better now. I did it with CSS after all.

    I couldn't build a table in CSS yet, but the language does look easier than I thought it was!
    Spike, Nov 7, 2004
    #15

  16. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    Invest some well-worth pounds in 2 books:
    HTML for the World Wide Web, by Elizabeth Castro.
    5th Edition (includes XHTML and CSS)
    Peachpit Press, ISBN 0-321-13007-3, £16.99

    If you want to go on into Java:
    Javascript for the World Wide Web, by Tom Negrino and Dori Smith
    5th Edition
    Peachpit Press, ISBN 0-321-19439-X, £16.99

    Both books have proven invaluable to me. Very easy to follow, and everything comes with full examples and pictures. Very good index in the back as well.

    It is not good practice to have different link-colours in different areas of a web-page.
    In your CSS (best place for them), always define them in this sequence: Link/Visited/Focus/Hover/Active to avoid overriding properties.
    Give Visited a different colour.
    You could have different CSS files for different pages if you so wish.
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 8, 2004
    #16

  17. Spike Newcomer, in training

    Not that I'm one to argue, but I'm curious. Why is it bad parctice when the links in question are well, and obviously, confined to specific area's of a web page.

    Even this page has different colour links in different places. In fact, it's probably the reason I thought of using grey for them looking at it. lol.


    Thankyou for the reminder about organising the properties in the correct order. very important, as an hour of trying to work out what was going wron is testament to. :)

    I think you could be right about visited needing to be a different colour though.
    Spike, Nov 8, 2004
    #17

  18. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    The links themselves are not limited to any area on the page at all.
    It is just that all links, wherever they are, "should" have a uniform look preferably, but definitely the same colours, organised in the .CSS

    A forum like this is such a mish-mash, that functionality has overtaken standard rules.
    There are not many webpages, with as many buttons to click, as a forum-page.
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 8, 2004
    #18

  19. RealBlackStuff Newcomer, in training

    Certain firewalls and ad-blocking software consider a 100x100 picture as "ad".
    Use 100x99 or 99x100 or whatever.
    The Kilveymap e.g. is suppressed in my browser by Agnitum Outpost Pro (my firewall).

    PS: Last night I sent an email to your AOL-address with files for your "buttons".
    RealBlackStuff, Nov 10, 2004
    #19

  20. Spike Newcomer, in training

    Thankyou very much!!!

    I've uploaded the files, and modified the pages. The "buttons" look really good! I'll have to look at the copyright attribute side of the bottom nav to see if I can change those links too while preserving the javascript. It shouldn't be too hard (at least, I hope not!)

    I've also taken your advice and used 100x99 on the kilveymap image.

    I may think about re-styling the top nav now though. I'm not sure yet. It may just be because I'm tired, but I'm not sure if it looks quite "right". It certainly doesn't look bad though.

    (also, I've copied and pasted your comments into each page too. :) )
    Spike, Nov 10, 2004
    #20
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