Preserved Topic: Funny website

http://www.bad-candy.com don't use NS tho, use MSIE(sloppy coding). I laughed and laughed.

oh lord. How fun. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

That is a good one. Genius, almost. Had it on my Site Envy page for some time. The coding is bad, but you should have seen it a few months ago... >shudder<

[Just taking a break from boxing my crap.]

All right, smarty pants, if my codings so bad, what could I do to clean it up? I'm very open to criticism. Unless you piss me off, in which case I'll kick in your teeth.


- Bad Candy "My Ears Were Burning" Mark

P.S. Just kidding about the teeth thing. I realy would appreciate any pointers or suggestions. Tables make me cry.

P.P.S. In reference to the first post: bad-candy.com works in NN now. At least the front page does. This thread motivated me to be a less-stupid person.

P.P.P.S. This site is amazing. Great Photoshop tutorials. If ozones.com was a woman, I'd make sweet, sweet love to it all night long.

P.P.P.P.S. Sorry. That was disturbing and wrong. I'm done now.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Wes, with regards to "boxing your crap": you really shouldn't be picking fights with your own bowel movements. Not only is it creepy, but it's messy and disgusting. And in a bizzare way, it's like you're fighting a piece of yourself.

Let it go, man. Just... let it go.

Okay, Wes' penchant for fecal pugilism aside, there's one question I wanted to ask. What HTML Editor are you using?

I peeked at the source, and stuttered out the perennial "Holy nested tables with odd span CSS classings, Batman"....well maybe not that, but something similar..inside my head...yeah. It's really cluttered with table tags ALL over the place, and every instance of CSS seems to be set in a span tag. The page loaded a little slow, even on DSL in both browsers...since it's not graphic heavy, I can only assume it's very code heavy, and having a slow server day. Netscape, as a rule, hates complex nested tables. It much prefers complex tables that are nested as little as possible.

The only MAJOR Netscape plroblem that I saw was the incompatibility with the table/border CSS that you're using. NS is a little behind on what CSS it supports so far, but it didn't stop your page from displaying properly in NS 4.73. NS 6.0 (don't ask...skip a whole number, it's the big rage this season) handles CSS much better, and will minimize the differences that you see between browsers on your site.


Oh looky, I lied...question numero dos. Are you using SSI for the pages to make changes simpler?

Hmm..if I get some time where I'm not completely lazy, I could probably thieve your source, and look at juggling your tables around so they aren't as....well so they just aren't..hehehe.

Advice wise though:
Never use an Editor, and if you are, proceed to spank yourself rousingly, but only in the "bad" way.

Simplify the amount of nested tables you have, and checks the standards on CSS to what table properties are cross browser.

Other than that...I loved it.

Hope it helps.

Peter



ICQ:# 10237808

Ha! Ha! Ha! I Love it... Thankx for posting it, F1. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif"> <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif"> <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

Peter:

Hey, thanks for all the feedback! To answer your questions/comments:

No, I'm not using an editor. I'm doing it all by hand. Which is why the code is such a jumbled mess.

Tables: okay, the tables are nested all to hell. But how else can you achieve the organic, brightly-colored Mexican candy look I'm going for? If I simplify the tables too much, won't everything have to be pretty boxy? I tried to use the "colspan" property to cut down on the nesting, but that seems to be pretty worthless for sizing the cells, as far as certain browsers go.

And fer cryin out loud, I don't really expect anyone to fix my tables for me, though I definitely appreciate the offer. Christ, even I'M too lazy (retarded, actually) to fix it properly. But if you have some specific pointers, that would be extremely helpful. Would it help you if I created a version of the index.html file with the table borders set to 1, so it's easier to see what's going on?

CSS: I was just learning CSS when I started redesigning bad-candy. The span tags are weird, granted. I went overboard with them because I wasn't sure what Netscape supported as far as using CSS across multiple table cells. The main content, however, isn't set in span tags. I mostly only defined CSS classes for menus and whatnot, though I should have probably done some of that inline.

SSI: Yeah, I use SSI to simplify updates, though I don't use it on the front page.

Page loading speeds: Partly my fault with the coding, partly the fault of portalofevil.com, who host my site. It's all hosted from one guy's house. He's moving to a full T1 in the near future. Great bunch of sites over there, by the way. [plug]

Spanking myself: I'm on it, regardless of editors. Do you need pictorial proof or anything?

Please say yes.

Pictorial proof would be interesting, but I don't think it's needed. As Peter / DG stated above using tons of nested tables can make for heavy downloads. But it's more in how you implement them not nest them. If you were to divide things up into neat tables first, and then enclose all of them into one table, you'll see things change a bit.

Another way to make things flow better, is to design in NS first. 99% of the time what you made for NS will work in MSIE. However, it does not work backwards. This is because MSIE allows you to forget tags, and fills in the gaps for you. (This is why I say sloppy coding) MSIE also will let you use browser specific tags, that only work in MSIE. (NS does the same, but more on that in a sec.) NS follows a more strict structure of the HTML document. With NS you must include all tags, NS will not fill in your gaps in code, and it does everything you tell it to, to the letter.

To find out what tags will work in both browsers, go to http://www.w3c.org this is the World Wide Web Consortium. These are the people who set the HTML standard. If you use the tags, as laid out here, everything will work in all browsers. If you use browser specific tags, you are going to go crazy trying to get things to work right in both browsers. (This isn't always true, but mostly.) There is also CSS info there also.

Another way to make sure things will work correctley and to find out if your code is clean, use the TIDY code cleaner. (found here http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/ ) Use this for HTML only, you'll have to strip out everything that isn't HTML before using this, i.e. JavaScript, ASP, etc.. TIDY is a great way to check your code for errors, and to learn where you are making mistakes over and over again. Since I started using TIDY, I now only find errors on rare occasions. It's really helped me to code better.

If you need or want more help just lets us know. That's why we are here.

F1,

Wow, thanks for the resources. I actually use the W3 website as my main CSS resource now, though I wish I had started using it months before. And that TIDY program is really cool, so thanks for pointing that out.

So, essentially what you're saying is that if I cut the site up into more basic, table-based "strips", so to speak, and lodged all the strips into a larger table, that would decrease rendering times in NN? Looking at http://www.bad-candy.com: what about stuff like that dropdown list that's lodged in the red menu bar? How would I position that without having a table for the main row and a table for the ddl column nested within? Or how about the menu bar on the left that runs parallel to the main content on the right (which in and of it self has nested tables for the sidebar articles)? How would I simplify something like that without nesting tables? Or is it just that I'm nesting them too much, and should start using skinnier, less involved, more numerous rows?

Did that make any sense?


And thanks again for the help, both you and Peter. This place is so extraordinarily free of egotism and elitism that I might have to call one of you a bitch just on principle, because I can't cope with the prospect of posting to a messageboard that isn't rife with 13 yr. old hormonal rage. You guys rock.

If either of you or Peter have sites and would like me to give a plug on Bad Candy in return for the help, let me know. We get a lot of traffic. Not a ton. But a lot.