HTML Help :o)

[007]

8th post for advice on companies and website help.



Hope this is in the most appropriate folder, just wanting a little bit of help.

Never touched HTML before, and a few days ago, I decided to start building a website. So, I fired up Dreamwever MX and had a go... And, i've actually almost got it.

I know Dreamwever is easy for coding, but it's a start.

On the main homepage, I want a block of text, top left, then on the right, 3 blocks of text, under each other.

I've put loads of tables in, but for some reason the text is being a bugger and wants to centralise itself vertically in the table. Which messes the look up. How do I get around this? Anybody know what's going on?

Cheers

x

[marcus]

I dont have DW to hand, but there should be an option in the toolbar to adjust the position of text within a table, for example to centre vertically, to baseline and so on.

[Ish]

In addition to the alignment

Have you set the width on the table to 100%?

This might be the kind of thing you want:

<table width="100%">
<tr valign="top">
<td>Hello</td>
<td align="right">world<br />
big<br />
world<br />
</td>
</tr>
</table>

[yashiro]

Post the broken code.
I, or someone else, will fix it.

[007]

Thanks for the help man. It's working now.

Got another question for you.

I've got two tables. The one on the right, has a list of DVDs going downwards. I want it so that when you click it, the review of the DVD appears on the table on the right, without loading up another page. is this possible in HTML? Or will I need to do flash etc? I've got the programs to make the flash if it needs be. But I don't have a clue on how to use it.

Cheers.

Scott

[marcus]

You could use a frame, although Im told frames are a very antiquited way of doing things. Not sure if there is another way offhand.

[Ish]

Yeah you could use frames. People do say they're antiquated (and they come with there own set of problems!) but they are a handy way of doing things like this.

Alternatives... well you could use DIV blocks and a bit of script to accomplish the same effect. That works on later browsers. But that would mean all the reviews being on the same page so if you've got a lot of them it would get a bit hefty.

If you don't mind restricting yourself to M$ then there are a tonne of other ways to do it too... but I wouldn't recommend that....

[choddo]

Frames suck a fat one, better to use an iframe inside the page and change the URL of that iFrame object with a little javascript when you click on the link.

tables are also massvely the suck. You should have done it with HTML & CSS and just put

<div id=logo>
<p>top left block of text here</p>
</div>

<div id=listof3>
<ul>
<li>1st entry</li>
<li>2nd entry</li>
<li>3rd entry</li>
</ul>
</div>

and then in the CSS;
#logo{float:left}
#listof3{float:right}

plus the other stuff to format the list of 3 to look nice etc.

[Fragmaster]

Yeah but actually if he is learning HTML he isn't going to know CSS is he?

I suggest checking out http://www.htmlgoodies.com/

Some good primers for beginners

[Duncan]

Yeah but actually if he is learning HTML he isn't going to know CSS is he?

I suggest checking out http://www.htmlgoodies.com/

Some good primers for beginners

so what better time to start learning how to do websites by doing it properly!

CSS is the key to doing sites properly.

[007]

Hey gentleman. Thanks for your help.

I'll stick to Dreamwever and HTML for now I think.

I'm a total noob to this, so I need some help getting started and what the best way of doing it is.

Firstly I need to buy a domain, check. Then, what do I do?

What I want, is a Main home page, a main Film page, a main Game and a main music page.

For the actual reviews pages, i want them to be the same as the appropriate home pages, appart from the review will be in the middle table. Instead of it having the text of the home page.

If anyone could offer advice etc. Muchly appreciated.

[Ish]

For what its worth here's some general advice:

1. Play around in DreamWeaver a fair bit first. Just get the feel for what can and can't be done and what can be done (errr) can be done.

2. Sort out templates for each section of the site and just fill them with made up data to check your happy.

I realise you've not done this before but I really would make the effort to:

3. Seperate the content from the presentation. Easiest way to do this would be a database or an XML file for example. You can use either ASP or PHP (or blah blah blah) to translate your data source into the appropriate section of your pages. An XML file would negate the expense of a hosted database as its just another file on the web server (though you can get hosted space with MySQL databases pretty cheap).

The advantage of this (as opposed to having loads of content in HTML pages) is that should you need to make a fix or decide on a site change you have far less work to do. Far far less. Really!

If you plan on having more than 2 or 3 reviews I really would take the effort to learn about this. If not later on I can guarantee you'll be wishing you did!