Topic: Site re-done w/ CSS and optimized...

Hey, could you guys take a peek at what I have so far? It isn't a completely working site yet, its a re-do of my old site, done up with CSS and whatnot....

its at: www.drisson.com/retry/index.html

my old site is at: www.drisson.com

on the new one, only some of the links work, none of the lists are active yet...just some links on the side bar and a few of the top bar ones....

thanks

I like the site navigation and the use of css and style sheets... looking at your code I noticed this little bit

<link rel="stylesheet" rel="nofollow" href="drisson.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" rel="nofollow" href="drisson.css" type="text/css">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link rel="stylesheet" rel="nofollow" href="Templates/drisson.css" type="text/css">

You repeated your reference to your style sheet... I sure this was just an over sight, just thought you might want to know, it doesn?t hurt anything, but it don't help anything either.... I like the direction the site is going, keep up the good work

grats42: The site is coming along nicely there - the look is a lot cleaner and simpler and I like the new bar on te side selling yourself. Just a few quick comments:

1. The text in that left bar is hard up against the left hand side of the screen so I'd add some CSS padding there (and on the what do we do? bits).

2. If that bar is going to be white then there needs to be a contarst between it and the main page (which is an off-white). Perhaps a simple black line would work.

3. There are an awful lot of empty TD tags so I'd sort them - if it is for vertical spacing then use CSS.

4. You still need keyword and description metatags.

Keep up the good work its looking much improved. Well done.

I'll go and shut down the other thread and so people can keep their comments here (although remember to check out the previous thread).

[edit: Previous thread URL: www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum6/HTML/000786.html
]

Emps

[This message has been edited by Emperor (edited 02-15-2002).]

Definately looks good - in IE anyway.

In netscape however, it's practically unuseable. Here's a couple of screenshots to show what I mean -
http://in-dented.com/temp/drisson.jpg http://in-dented.com/temp/drisson2.jpg

Haven't looked at the style sheet, so I can't say offhand what's causing it. I've found however that validating the CSS ( http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ ) will go a long way towards making sure that it will work in multiple browsers.

It really is looking good in IE, so it'd be a shame not to make it look as good in NN.

I came across that empty td tag phenomena, and I'm sure that Dreamweaver is the problem. I can't figure it out otherwise.

As for the Netscape thing, could it be that I'm using a "box" for the left bar? I saw that too....I haven't gotten around to worrying about it yet...I'm still iffy on the cross browser thing...that is, how to make it work for both...

thanks

DL-44: Well spotted. I suspect the problem emerges from the odd mixture of CSS and tables. I suspect it comes from having that column defined with a float: left which is pointless if used with a table-based layout (as the table provides the columns) and could be what is throwing things out in NS4.x (although it is a bit difficult to track down the problem due to the various stylesheets!!).

As I said in the previous review you would probably also benefit from sorting out all the odd rowspans and colspans (there is a rowspan of 18 on your side bar and I spotted a colspan of 4). Your problem could be due to IE's laxness with code allowing you to get away with that kind of thing.

So have a fiddle with that and a test in other browsers and you should be able to track the problem down.

Emps

I figured out the problem with the browsers...now here's a question...am I supposed to use css entirely for layout, or do I use it with tables? I'm completely new to the idea of css....

Okay, so I have the page mostly done layout-wise, all new with css...how's it looking now? I got rid of some of those extra ref's to the style sheet...i need some cross-browser cheks...i know that 4.7 works but doesn't look as nifty, but honestly...i don't know if i can please 'em all...

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As I said in the previous review you would probably also benefit from sorting out all the odd rowspans and colspans (there is a rowspan of 18 on your side bar and I spotted a colspan of 4). Your problem could be due to IE's laxness with code allowing you to get away with that kind of thing.
<----------------------

Whats the problem with these rowspan/colspans? I'm not sure how to get rid of them. I think they're a product of using dreamweaver's layout. It is constantly resizing and adjusting a table...

Many people use a mix of CSS and table based layout.

Ideally, you would eliminate tables except where tables are actually called for - listing data and so on.

Tables were never meant to be used as a layout tool, but they turned into the best available option at one point.

The risk you run by using a CSS only layout is that older browsers won't see the information correctly. This is becoming less and less of a concern however, as more and more people upgrade to reasonable browsers.

grats42: Its a little tricky - I'll run a crude example off tomorrow.

On the CSS front - what DL-44 says and what I said in the CSS forum here.

Emps