Hiya,
I would suggest a couple things.
First of all before you go much further, I strongly recommend that you
download and install FireFox if you don't already have it installed. Your
pages have some issues in FF, and you should tweak your design so that the
pages look good in both IE and FF. Do that, and your pages will look good in
almost every browser.
FireFox (5.7 MB):
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
When you install it just make sure to opt out of making it your default
browser, and you should have no problems. Then to test your site, when you
Publish to the Web, direct your web files to a folder on your hard drive
where you can easily find them...I typically use the Desktop. Then go to the
index.htm file that you produced and right click, open with, FF to see how
the page will look in FF. You can also just open FF and go to File > open
and browse to the index.htm file. Also open the index_files folder you
created and test the other .htm files...the other pages in your site.
When you do that you will notice that you have a few issues. For one, it
appears that you have put much of your heading on a Master Page, as you can
not see it in FF. Unfortunately you cannot use the Master Page in Pub 2003
with a web page. Move all that content onto your main pages.
Pictures. The pictures in FF are not as good as the ones in IE. I think that
part of the reason you are still getting PNG files after disabling that
option is that you appear to be using a lot of transparent GIF files. I have
found that some of the transparent GIFs that look fine in Pub 2000 do not
work well in Pub 2003 and 2007. So, if you are using transparent gifs, I
would actually suggest that you enable the png option. The transparent GIFs
will be converted to transparent PNGs, and you should get better pictures in
FF.
I could be wrong about that because it also looks like you may have grouped
all the images on the home page together, because in FF, they have been
combined into one big image:
http://www.justmints.co.uk/index_files/image1786.gif
You might try ungrouping those images first, Publish to the web and looking
at the page in FF and see if that helped.
As per your navbar, yes it needs some work. It appears from looking at the
home page that you created individual text boxes for each link? If true, I
would suggest that you go with one text box instead. There are some other
options that I can describe, but before I do, please describe exactly how
you are making the navbar.
And speaking of navbars, I see that on some of your pages you have moved the
navbar to the right side of the page, and in other cases you actually have
it on both sides. Keep the navbar at the same place on each page...leave it
on the left. You don't want people to have to figure out where it is on each
page...be consistent.
I also notice that on
http://www.justmints.co.uk/index_files/ClicClacMints.htm you have "price
includes" underlined. That is not a good practice. The underline tells
people that it is a hyperlink...and it isn't. This is one of those print
format practices that should probably not be used in a web.
One final comment at this point, it seems that you are putting the bottom
navbar at exactly the same place on each page regardless of how much content
is on that page. I would suggest moving it up to just below the last design
elements on any particular page. When you Publish to the Web, Publisher will
truncate the page right after the last element on the page. Having the
bottom navbar near the last of your content would make it easier for a
person to click to another page without having to scroll down or back up to
access the navbar.
A general comment: You have a lot going on with your website. I can see why
the files are large. Over all I think you are doing a pretty good job and
should be proud of your work. If you put some energy into building a better
navbar and tweaking the design so it works in both IE and FF, I think you
will be happy with the results.
DavidF
