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03 Nov 03 - 03:16 PM (#1047010) Subject: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Alice Do you have a minute to help me with some HTML? I'm trying to make a table on the left side of a page with two graphics to the right of the table, but the graphic keeps going below the table. Any suggestions on how to fix it? I did have the two graphics on the right in a table, too, but it didn't help in the alignment. http://my.montana.net/aliceflynn/home3.html Alice |
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03 Nov 03 - 05:21 PM (#1047089) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Bill D it is 'possible' this site could give you a quick idea of the problem |
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03 Nov 03 - 05:24 PM (#1047091) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Bill D (there are various places which do this sort of thing as in this one I used one once, but don't remember where....I just did a search on "validate HTML" |
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03 Nov 03 - 05:59 PM (#1047106) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: NicoleC Likely your graphic is wrapping to the next line since it isn't small enough to fit on the same screen with the table. You can test this by making the graphic really, really small (or the table skinnier) and seeing what happens -- does stay on the same line now? The easiest way to position graphics on a page with tables (IMO) is to create cells for the graphics, then insert the graphics inside. The cells won't wrap, they'll just extend to the right off the screen, and you can merge cells together to get the right mishmash of grid shapes. (Like 4 cells on one side and 2 on the other.) Working with tables in raw HTML stinks -- this is one area where having a program like Frontpage or HomeSite can really speed up your work. |
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03 Nov 03 - 05:59 PM (#1047108) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Mary in Kentucky Alice, you need a table within a table. Put your navigation table within a cell of a larger table. This can get confusing, and it is recommended that you never use more than three nested tables. Also, when you use a large table (like I suggested), it sometimes slows down the loading of the whole page. Sometimes it is better to use several tables on a page and close each one, than to use nested tables. I'll take a quick look at rewriting your page, and I'll PM it to you. |
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03 Nov 03 - 07:06 PM (#1047165) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Alice Thanks all, including the help with personal messages (Jeff, Mary). Mudcat is wonderful! Much appreciated. Alice |
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03 Nov 03 - 08:02 PM (#1047210) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: The Fooles Troupe HTML Screen Wrap can be frustrating, but was one of the intentional design criteria of HTML. What can make it difficult to understand is that not all screen sizes of the viewers of your page are the same. So the original intent was to allow the text content to flow to fill the viewscreen. Later attempts to turn HTML into a psuedo Word Processing and Screen Layout language confused things, as did the addition of graphics. This can be too lengthy to dicsuss here. If you specify the width of your page in pixels (a straight number), then somebody is likely to have probelms displaying the page in the restricted way you designed it. If you do things in the percentage way (25%) for width of particular columns, you do have to try things out on differnt screen sizes to see what happens, until you get used to visualising things. Many of those nice page generation programs seem to make teh job easier to do, but can create tangled (often incorrect enough to confuse web browers) code, but I've discussed this elsewhere. Of course you can geberate HTML code that is syntacticly correct and that will pass validation, but that still doesn't mean that it will display things the way that you thought it would. I can rememebr hours of frustration myself when I was learning... :-) A lot of the "guide books" weren't all that helpful either... Mary seems to be relatively inexperienced with HTML, so what I can suggest is that she looks at what Alice generates, and try to take the time to understand the basics of what the difference in the coding is. Unfortunately, becoming proficient in anly creative skill takes time - learning to sing or play any musical instrument do too - we don;t expect someone learning their first instrument after a couple of weeks to be as proficient as someone who has played for forty years... :-) Hang in there and don't get too frustrated. Robin |
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04 Nov 03 - 12:07 AM (#1047379) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Stilly River Sage You need to confine the information and images within a given space. Making a table "100%" doesn't work well. It can look strange on a lot of monitors. I try to keep tables to no more than about 750 pixels because of the many smaller older CRT monitors that are out there (and the new LDC flat panel monitors don't have very high resolution unless you pay megabucks for them). I am not sure if you've incorporated any of those changes suggested above into your page as it stands now. It strays way to the right on my large monitor (I do web design, so have a large fine-detailed monitor, but most people can't see the page in the way the designer sees it--too bad!). I've tinkered with it but I can't make any of your links work to find an email to send you a text file with the revised html. A validator isn't really going to help make the page display properly in the way you're looking for help. It's going to tell you if you closed your tags and if you have any extra stuff floating around on the page that needs to be removed or tell you what links need completing. It won't say a thing about how the tables work or how the whole thing displays. SRS |
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04 Nov 03 - 01:23 AM (#1047412) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Bev and Jerry Validator. |
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04 Nov 03 - 07:51 AM (#1047565) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: The Fooles Troupe Stilly River Sage said: 'Making a table "100%" doesn't work well' Perhaps this statement is a little cryptic - I don't see what you are getting at - unless you mean some browsers can't fit things to a page well? I do find that pages designed to only spread 750 pixels are a thorough pain, as they won't flow. Robin |
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04 Nov 03 - 09:32 AM (#1047612) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Alice my email alice at aliceflynn.com |
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04 Nov 03 - 10:04 AM (#1047635) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Stilly River Sage When you tell a table to present at 100% you're telling it to display in 100% of the browser space available. On some very large browsers this means reading a line 15 inches across--very difficult to to. And it plays havoc with any images suspended in the page. Look at this Mudcat page. The HR (horizontal rule) between each message is set to 100% so if you have a large window opened on a big monitor it goes from one side of the page to another. But the blue table above the message form is a fixed size, it won't get larger or smaller as you play with the window size on your screen. It is set at 600 pixels. The response message form is set up a little differently, without a number I can easily tell you, but it also is static and looks like it is about 700 pixels. If you let your page squish around at 100% then it is always going to look a bit funny to some of your viewers. Go surf the web and look at advertising sites. Those developed professionally don't leave the page display to chance, they lock it in as tightly as possible. SRS |
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04 Nov 03 - 10:19 AM (#1047643) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Stilly River Sage Clarification--I should have said "browser windows" in that first paragraph. Some people open them by default to fill the screen, especially on monitors with low resolutions. My monitor is used for web design and has high resolution so I can open multiple windows while I work. If I opened by browser window to fill the screen, the lines would be difficult to read because of their length. |
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04 Nov 03 - 11:12 AM (#1047679) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: The Fooles Troupe "On some very large browsers this means reading a line 15 inches across--very difficult to do. And it plays havoc with any images suspended in the page." Not if the page was _designed_ to auto flow - as per the HTML specs. Most problems of this type are caused because the page designer rarely if ever looks at the page on anything but their own screen. Another problem is when people can see the graphics on their own PC, but nobody else can - know why? :-) Well, if you have all these nice links to the graphics on YOUR HD, and don't upload the graphics to the web server, and modify your code to point to there - no none else can reference the graphics on THEIR HD.... :-) "If you let your page squish around at 100% then it is always going to look a bit funny to some of your viewers." Only if you had a very limited fixed idea of how the page was going to display - the HTML specs DEMAND autoflow - most people forget that... as per my PMs to Mary ... >:-> "Look at this Mudcat page. The HR (horizontal rule) between each message is set to 100% so if you have a large window opened on a big monitor it goes from one side of the page to another." The bottom one of the pair is - the other one above the little table there is set to a lesser percentage. "the lines would be difficult to read because of their length." I prefer to have wide lines - I'm an exceptionally fast reader and can read whole long lines at a glance - but I suppose there are others who can't... I go crazy trying to use other people's screens that are set so small - my current desktop has no background image - there are nearly 400 icons on it... :-) My screen is set to 1000+ pixels x 700+ (I lose a bit for the tool bars) - I often have open a dozen or so browser screens cascaded as well as Eudora, Mailwasher, the Mushclient, System monitors... etc Robin |
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04 Nov 03 - 11:16 AM (#1047681) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: The Fooles Troupe From a PM to Mary "If you are trying to get 2 items on the same line without wrapping i.e a table and a separate graphic (naked - NOT already inside another table!) - I don't think you CAN do it under the HTML specs - it's SUPPOSED to wrap - the "table in table" would be the only way - without letting Word hack and slash at it... :P" It's called Autoflow... read the HTML design specs if you don't believe me... Robin |
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04 Nov 03 - 11:24 AM (#1047684) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: The Fooles Troupe One final point of clarity - confined to a seperate post for extra clarity. From a PM to Mary "Sorry if I upset you - didn't mean to imply that you didn't have as much experience with HTML as I did... that sort of misunderstanding happens all the time on the net......" Also sometimes what we type isn't what we mean to say - the send button often gets pushed fater than the speed of thinking about what one actually typed - and for someone with a mild MMD, what I THINK I see on the screen isn't always what I THOUGHT I typed - you will ALSO see littel typos from me occassionally for this reason as I missed correcting them... Robin |
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04 Nov 03 - 12:56 PM (#1047770) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Stilly River Sage Alice, take a look at pages on the web and decide which ones you like. Some are filled with javascript and fancy dynamic elements that you won't be able to understand in the source code, but when you do find pages you like, you can go into the View menu on your browser and open the source and look at it in a separate text screen that will pop up. Another trick, if you have a program like FrontPage or Dreamweaver is to have the page you liked highlighted and do "control A" (to select All) then "Control C" (to Copy what was selected) then in a new page of your html editor, do a "Control V" or select "Paste" in the menu. You'll have pasted the general format and text (sans graphics) into your page. From there go to the html view and poke around to see how they did it. A nice example of a page that has it's contents confined to a table is an online newspaper I read each day from my home town--the Herald in Everett, Washington. It appears to float because once you've opened your browser window beyond the table margins it is set to float in the center of your window, but it won't get any larger than the table the designers established, keeping it a nice size to read and everything stays in place. It was designed so that someone with a low-resolution monitor will see this on their entire screen, but hopefully not have to scroll sideways to read any of it. Good luck! Robin, I'm not sure what your pages must look like when you finish, but I'm working in a university library environment where we aim for clarity and easy-to-view and print pages. I do this for a living, and my pages work fine. The various web folks who work with me on this agree that in general confining the content within tables keeps it looking better. I'm not actually sure what all you said you're doing--clearly there are different terms to describe the task at hand. As to reading long lines, that's a personal preference on your part, and if someone designs a page that you can view a yard wide, you're welcome to it. I find viewing those long lines a fruitless exercise--I can't keep track of what I'm reading. As a web designer I assume 1) that people want to read my pages easily and they 2) don't have your visual acuity. I also assume that there are a great number of browsers out there, so I test my pages in several browsers and on several computers, and I design them to be viewed widely. SRS |
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05 Nov 03 - 01:28 AM (#1048222) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: The Fooles Troupe I don't mind if you (or anybody else) wants to read the pages in a narrow view - I don't - and I prefer pages designed that allow me to do either. The Herald page mentioned above uses some nice JS which is used to open a new window - it just basically overloads the default built-in method with a new JS method which is mostly indistinguishable from the default. I scratch my head and say why? It just wastes space. The worst instance of this tyoe of thing I have seen is the JS code which allows you to click on it to put the bookmark of the page in the browser into a link on your PC. I don't know of any browser that doesn't have that facility built in - once again I scratch my head and say why? These sorts of tricks are all very nice at demonstrating the wonderful properties and powers of the scripting language - but why do them? The herald floating trick is just a centered table in an overall table - looks very nice and is a good example of "rigid design" - or just copying the format of the pre-printed page on a screen. Because of their style of content, the left and right columns work well as fixed width, but the two center ones could easily autoflow because of their content style, as could the whole page - only minor changes to the design are needed. If this part autoflowed, I wouldn't need to step down three times to see the contents of the whole page. SRS: "The various web folks who work with me on this agree that in general confining the content within tables keeps it looking better. I'm not actually sure what all you said you're doing--clearly there are different terms to describe the task at hand. " I haven't seen your work, and I will take for granted that it looks good for your purposes. Why do people always assume they are being personally attacked when someone passes a differing or dissenting opinion? I confine most of my stuff in tables for formatting purposes: if you don't use frames - there is no other real way to do it - unless you use Word :-P But my stuff is still designed to autoflow within almost every one of the row/coloumn matrix cells. Occassionally I need to hold something rigid, especially in width, everything else flows. The pages are easier to design if you don't fight the design concepts of the tools you work with. I once needed to design a layout of several graphic images to mock up people standing in front of a theatre curtin - all done in an autoflowing table within a table - it conforms to the screen size automatically - as does the brick fireplace complete with animated fire I built for another page using graphics and tables. I can dig up the links to these if asked. These graphics tricks of course fall flat for the visually impaired, but my page design has been favourably mentioned by those with visual impairments who use text speech readers. I hack my HTML by hand with EditPlus - I use the browser to see what happens if I do anything tricky - but now I can mostly visualise it mentally. I first played with phototypsetters back in 1978/9 for printing the UoQ Computing Club Magazine. They are designed to autoflow text - but there was no physical preview facility - you put the codes in your text file, fed it in, and looked at the resultant printed page, which you paid real money to get printed. One quickly learned to think what the effects would be in advance. Wordperfect came along, and - hey! used most of the same concepts - even similar codes - and then HTML arrived and I said - I've seen most of this before... The HTML use of tables was a technical hack to assist layout - people's use of the technology outstripped the original simple design concept. Another trick was using single pixel graphics, expanded to whatever size block you wanted to pad out text in tables. Frames seem to have fallen into disfavour nowadays - many older browsers couldn't handle them in the early days of frames being available, so the table format became the done thing. I gave up using anything other than hand hacking years ago when I loaded my pages into some of these early editing tools and watched in horror as the code expanded to 3-4 times its original size, and often looked worse. If working in an organisation which uses a certain editing tool as policy - I am quite happy to use that tool, even if I may not always like the look of the results. Robin |
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05 Nov 03 - 09:45 AM (#1048404) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Stilly River Sage Why do people always assume they are being personally attacked when someone passes a differing or dissenting opinion? Not assuming personal attack--but I am assuming that you're hotdogging on this thread. The person who started this discussion is in a relatively beginning mode right now, and you're loading her down with bells and whistles that are meaningless. Frames? You've got to be kidding. They're an annoyance above all others in web design and web browsing. Given the choice I always turn them off. They have their legitmate uses, but they are used far too often, by designers who use them simply because they CAN use them. SRS |
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05 Nov 03 - 11:10 AM (#1048453) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Bill D as a user, not an HTML author, I like the Herald page. It is centered, it displays and reads fine in my 'regular' browser, Opera, and it allows me to zoom (enlarge) it, if I find it too small, with just a click on the + sign. Anything on a page which REQUIRES me to scroll sideways to read upsets me. Regarding the above discussion, I once attended a 'workshop' which was supposed to train new new people to operate our Folklore Society sound system. These eager new faces, who wanted to know how to connect it, plug it in and basic tricks of operation, were treated to 2 hours of technical wrangling by our TWO experts about fuse capacities, alternative wiring schematics, speaker impedance and reverb adjustment...all done in techno-geek with the audience looking on in mostly puzzled wonder. take the metaphor for what it's worth. |
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06 Nov 03 - 12:49 AM (#1048971) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: The Fooles Troupe SRS: "Frames? You've got to be kidding. They're an annoyance above all others in web design and web browsing. Given the choice I always turn them off." --- So do I, mostly. Not because they're an annoyance - they're much harder for the inexperienced to design with (and also require more focussing of the grey matter to design correcty with - and I'm lazy), and also years ago, most browsers were not frames enabled. Sometimes though, being lazy, I find that the frames solution is the better elegant solution to a particluar task. SRS: "and you're loading her down with bells and whistles that are meaningless" --- in YOUR opinon.... Learning curves are often steep. Or are you one of those few magnificent musos who can pick up ANY instrument and play it superbly and never need to practice - although I play many different instruments, I have to practice - if I don't, my skill detoriates until I do some practice on any instrument I haven't played in a while. It also took me a while of focusing on HTML again (since I don't do much web page writing these days at the moment) to get the knowledge frame back into mind to realise that what the nice beginner lady was trying to do was in violation of the HTML standard. A closed HTML expression/bucket/container in isolation will automatically do a carriage return in the browser to make the next bucket display on the next line. Simple, once it's stated in black and white, isn't it? If you convince people that they don't need to worry about complicated things cause "life is just simple, maaan", then they become upset when complicated things in life don't work simply. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Fools know everything - spoken as Author of The Fooles Troupe. ~~~~~~ Bill D "Anything on a page which REQUIRES me to scroll sideways to read upsets me." --- Precisely. I do so agree with with you. That is just as bad as designing a web page so that it does NOT fill larger screens. Nowhere did I say that I wanted the screens designed to work ONLY on larger screens, I said that it is a better design IF the pages are DESIGNED to BE CAPABLE of being read on larger screens, even larger screens than the designer normally uses. And I said that the Herald page annoys me BECAUSE I HAVE TO SCROLL DOWN. We're both annoyed about similar related things you see... :-) ~~~~~~` SRS: "but I am assuming that you're hotdogging on this thread." Ahh! you see, when we ASS-U-ME something, we make an ASS of U and ME! Now if I was a real hotdogger about HTML I might ASS-U-ME that you were trying to be nasty to me because you thought you knew all about HTML (and if you really did you would have come up with the correct answer to the problem before I did!) and were trying to put down someone you thought to be making threats to your competence in the field, and had ASS-U-MEd that I was a stupid ignorant git didn't know what I was talking about regarding HTML! But I'm a nice guy, so I'll simply say that your assumption that I'm merely trying to grandstand on a subject that you didn't know the correct answer to immediately, is wrong. ~~~~~~~~ Sadly, we sometimes find out in life that some people DO know more than we think we do - I find that out every day, expecially here on Mudcat, which is why I like the place. But sometimes we also find that we DO know more than some others who think they know it all - ... ;-) You see that is the problem with the "telling lies to children" school of education. It's OK to tell a child a simplified version of something for many reasons, including that we don't know the real answer ourself, and especially that a better answer requires that they need to understand other things which have to be explained to them first, but one should never try to convince the child (even the lesser intelligent ones) that the simple answer is the only REAL "correct" answer in that case. That way only breeds ignorance and stupidity (and Faith Based Religions!) - ask any good looking woman - the smart good looking ones know people are only treating them as stupid because EVERYBODY KNOWS ALL GOOD LOOKING WOMEN ARE STUPID! I know many highly intelligent good looking women. ----- Bill D - those "teachers" were dickheads, unfortunately - they really didn't know as much as they thought they did - and they certainly didn't know how to train otherss, obviously because they had not been trained how to teach others - and what's more THEIR manager were obviously stupid for thinking that anyone without trining in how to train others were suitable to teach a subject to beginners! As you stated, Bill, what they were able to talk about what not relevant to what you wanted to learn at the time. Bill, did anybody tell the two experts that they didn't have a clue what they were talking about, and could not see how it related to what they wanted to do with the equipment? They were the wrong teachers for that group of students at that time. There is an Eastern saying - "When the student is ready to learn the teacher will appear" - which means that until the student is ready to learn something, nobody can teach them anyway. The old saying about "those who know - do, those who don't - teach" means more than it seems. My best teachers in high school were those who made it clear that they didn't have all the answers - there was this lump of content that they had to cover, and they didn't really understand it all, and would try to help as best they could especially on the parts they did understand, but occassionally there would be parts they did not understand enough to be able to explain to our satisfaction of understanding, and we would just have to take it on trust that if we wanted to past the exam, that we would have to remember these bits anyway. These teachers never tried to talk down to us or "tell lies to children". The arseholes who tried to pretend they knew it all and were always putting down students who asked the intelligent questions that the teachers could obviously not understand (as it became clear to me in hindsight when I went on to higher levels myself!) were definitely the worst teachers. Robin |
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06 Nov 03 - 05:29 PM (#1049511) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Bill D well, those 'teachers' DID know the answers, but they fell to debating arcane technical stuff between them, and no one was sure what questions needed to be asked to get back on track. No, they were NOT trained to be trainers. It probably would have been smoother with only one teacher. The students were mostly amateurs who didn't realize that you could run a sound system without all the details, so they tried to take it in, but were frustrated & bored..I didn't figure out the problem myself until it was almost over...and too late. I will probably never learn the fancier aspects of HTML, but when I do decide it's time for my web page,(pictures of crafts, with explanations links), I know of helper applications like Arachnophilia which will automate and check much of the necessary basics. I do admire someone like Alice who is trying to work through some of the more complex situations and save a few $$$. I see pages which use javascripts (or worse) to pop-up full size images from thumbnails, instead of simple links...but I see no really good reason to do this. Tables are a different matter, and I hope Alice gets her problem worked out... (I just remembered an old sign I used to have..*grin*) If things don't get better soon, I may have to ask you to stop helping |
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06 Nov 03 - 05:43 PM (#1049519) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: Stilly River Sage Good one, Bill! Robin, ______________ (fill in the blank). |
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07 Nov 03 - 01:56 PM (#1049742) Subject: RE: BS: Need HTML help on a web page From: The Fooles Troupe Bill D - "I see pages which use javascripts (or worse) to pop-up full size images from thumbnails, instead of simple links...but I see no really good reason to do this." Yes, this is the sort of space wasting thing that annoys me - and these bits are often cleverly inserted by some of those "helpful" programs. The problem is that if you don't know HTML itself, you don't know just how badly your helper application is messing up. Like your quote. But for many people, at least the use of such programs gets them on the web quickly... there is another recent thread about El Greko's page - as I remember he started off in Word, but changed as he quickly became more astute in HTML. Mary PM'ed me that she had fixed the problem and emailed the suggested fixed page days ago - I was intrigued to find the REAL technical answer - cause I can't let go of a problem that I KNOW I know the answer to, but just can't "get it on the tip of my tongue!" Now I know - like many beginners (I've done it myself!) she was trying to do the impossible in HTML - but not obviously so due to lack of technical knowledge - that's what the specs are for!. :-) Re your technical experts - "Too many cooks can spoil the broth" Your sign sounds like some of the Wisdom of Ashleigh Brilliant... :-) ~~~~~~~~~~ OK, since you asked... SRS - "Robin, ___OK, I rate you between 125 and 135.____ (fill in the blank). " Robin |