Website Display

[Dianne]

I had just created my first website, an ePortfolio located at
http://users4.ev1.net/~diannealdridge/eportfolio/index.htm and am
having trouble getting it to display correctly on other computers.
First of all, you should know that I initially designed this website
using my laptop using a 1280x768 screen resolution. I've since been
told that this was my first mistake, that you should always use 800x600
so that your pages will be compatible with others computer settings.
Anyway, I had a friend, who is a webmaster, help me to adjust my tables
to remedy the problem. On my computer, everything looks correct no
matter what resolution I view under - except that when cached pages are
pulled up grayed-out areas appear in the nav bar, but this problem goes
away when I refresh. ???

However, I've asked several friends to view the site and I'm getting
mixed responses. On one computer the home page has text running close
together (the phone numbers at the top) and the 'Portfolio' graphics
appears in the second paragraph. On another computer, everything looks
goods good, but when, for example, the Resume page is accessed for a
second time, the graphic bar under word 'Resume' and the entire text of
the resume are shifted to the right and looks a bit askew. My husband's
computer, using 800x600, also shows the resume page misaligned.

I'm beginning to think that I may need to recreate this site from
scratch. Although I'm new to FrontPage, I have years of experience with
other apps, such as Word and Excel, and know that the more you play
with something the more likely it will just not look/work right no
matter what you do. And I've piddled plenty with this website.

I would really appreciate any advice or suggestions --

 

[Nicholas Savalas - http://savalas.tv]

Dear Dianne,
Different browsers give different results, operating systems other than
Windows may or may not have the fonts that your page specifies
(Trebuchet MS), and so on, so is a good idea to design websites with
the lowest common denominator in mind.
If you want things to line up correctly, use tables. Never, never,
never, use the space bar to space things. For instance, I notice at the
top of your home page the following code:

<TD
style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-LEFT:
medium none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none"
width=287 colSpan=2 height=8><!--mstheme--><FONT
face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica">
<P style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><FONT face="Trebuchet
MS"
size=2>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; (H)
940.798.2443&nbsp;&nbsp; (C) 817.613.6233</FONT><FONT
size=2><BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <A
href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A></FONT></P></FONT></TD>

Specific style declarations like BORDER-RIGHT, MARGIN-BOTTOM, etc. are
not handled by all browsers. Try not to use them. Do you see all the
examples of &nbsp; in your code? Those things mean non-breaking
spaces. If you want things to line up correctly, stick things inside
of cells in your table instead of using the space bar. I would suggest
that you download the free browsers from Firefox, Opera, and Netscape,
and use them as well as Internet Explorer when checking your web pages.
To give you some idea of where some of your problems might lie, please
go see this page:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbo....ev1.net/~diannealdridge/eportfolio/index.htm
When your page passes there, it passes everywhere. Good luck, Dianne.
Keep us posted.

 

[Dianne]

Nicolas,
Thank you for your detailed response. It gives me a lot of food for
thought. I should have known better about the font and even the spaces;
I guess I need to split cells more often to try and get the alignment
I'm looking for. I also viewed the errors on my pages generated by the
markup validation page via the link you sent me. I understood some of
it, but I'm not familiar with HTML code so I'm hoping that if I use
FrontPage correctly these errors will be kept to a minimum.

I'm going to rebuild the entire site from scratch in 800x600, using set
pixel tables (instead of the percentage tables I used before), stick to
my favorite font - Arial - and never, never, never use spaces.......


That's a great idea to view the website in various browsers. Even
though I'm fairly sure that the potential employers viewing my site
will be using Internet Explorer, it certainly wouldn't hurt to check
out the others.

Thanks again ---

 

[Nicholas Savalas - http://savalas.tv]

A pleasure, Dianne. Stay in touch.