HTML Coding

[John Layfield]

Seems like the best fit for the topic, all things considered.

I'm making a new layout for my site. One that is, hopefully, more attractive than the current one.

However, I am not a good coder at all, which means my ways are rather ham-fisted and cumbersome which makes it all the harder to get things working smoothly, as you can imagine.

The layout is coded and all, it just needs to be simplified so if anyone could take a look at the coding and 'sort it out' into a more efficent manner, so as to make it easier to modify by someone with the net experience of a cabbage (i.e. my good self) it would be greatly appreciated.

There is also one other issue at hand, I wish for the top half of the layout (banner, links, etc) to remain in place once a link is clicked. Currently I achieve this by the method of frames. Which is all well and good save for the face that when I scroll down, the main page scrolls 'into' the top frame, such is the current situation on my site. I would wish for that to be rectified also, if possible.

Anyone who can help with either or both of these little(?) problems will be lining themselves up for a nice Soldier-based reward, the valuable little fellows are of course rising in value due to their rarity and the (quite frankly extortionistic) exchange rate only serves to drive up the value even more.

The relevant files can be found here: http://peepulation.zorxz.net/newlayout.zip

Big thumbs up to anyone who helps, either out of love for me or love for Soldiers. :P
_________________
One day, I shall come back. Yes, we shall all come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.

[Vextor]

If you want a constant header in an HTML-only site, you'd have to use CSS, or copy/paste that header onto every single HTML page to generate the same effect (unless you use frames). The use of frames will always force the top of your page to scroll under the top frame.

[kuwaizair]

Oh...yeh I think there are many sites that give you HTML help...2cows or somthing...tucows I think.

or get Dreamweaver or any similuar program. I don't like Handcoding, because I'm not very good. nested tables look like a phobic's worst nightmare when its all in HTML.

as for CSS I know litle, aside from it makes everything look the same, so you don't need to do the same code all the time. a constent header is what I'd need one day.
_________________
few runes short of a set of 27

[John Layfield]

CSS coding... groooooan, I hate the interweb. It should, like, just do what I want, when I want and how I want.

Oh foul coding, why doth thou tempt me with thy forbidden... stuff?

A hypothetical question, however.

If I somehow managed to learn CSS (or alternatively, if I landed some poor sucker to do it for me) would I be able to make the top half of my layout AND the section to the right hand side of my layout 'constant' as described by both kuwaizair and Sars Ad-Minh?
_________________
One day, I shall come back. Yes, we shall all come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.

[Vextor]

Yes, you can.

[kuwaizair]

CSS I think will handle everything that needs conisstancy...like background and colors. does dreamweaver MX have any css buddy? I'd like to make a drop down button one day. is that possible? unless I design with flash....oh well Happy HTMLIng.
_________________
few runes short of a set of 27

[KoRnholio]

Two questions. First, for John.

So you're saying that the bottom frame scrolls INTO the top frame? That's not supposed to happen. Some people don't like to use frames for content consistency for aesthetic reasons, but your problem sounds like a coding malfunction. I'll try and take a look at your code.

Unless you meant scrolls 'under' the top frame. I kind of took that to meant scrolls 'over' the top frame. Sorry.

And for SARSadmin - How do you get CSS to do that? It must have been a while since I've done something like that with CSS. It is supposed to give a sense of style consistency to sites, but the only way I can think of to actually include HTML to be included by CSS would be to....link to a stylesheet that has HTML in it?

Certainly, he doesn't have to go as far as delving into PHP, but SSI seems to be the easiest way to do what he is describing. Here's a tutorial on that.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/howto/ssi.html

SSI is a server-side technology, so the only compatibility you have to worry about is if your server can handle it. Here's an easy way to test if you can use SSI.

1. Create a file called include.txt, and add some sample HTML to it. I suggest....

[Falcon Critical]

So far as I'm aware CSS can't control HTML, instead controlling the more subtle nuances of a page such as colors and fonts. I haven't looked at your site ( yet ) but my personal site has banners on all pages the same, but they're hard coded into each page ( copy and paste HTML woot! )

You can have a look at my site and the HTML here:
http://tenjyulegend.8m.net/

Its nothing special and I'm certainly capable of more, but the basic layout keeps the focus on what the site is designed to exhibit, i.e. the comic.

If you look at my HTML forgive the crappy messy bits that are the forced banners from my webhost. If you look at the HTML its pretty obvious which bits I wrote and what was auto-added.

BTW I also wrote added the StyleScript code to each page rather than running a seperate reference file. A flaw in design yes but I can't be bothered redesigning it atm.
_________________

[Vextor]

Yeah, I guess you'd need SSI, or use PHP includes actually. I don't know what I was thinking saying CSS.

But SSI, people still use SSI? I haven't heard of that word for such a long time. Server-side technology is great though.

[KoRnholio]

Falcon Critical: Aha, I thought I was right. At first when I saw two people recommending CSS for the job, I thought I was REALLY out of the loop and that recent CSS versions allowed people to manipulate HTML with it, and that this had become widespread knowledge. So thats correct, CSS can control certain elements that describe the page, everything from sizes of tables to sizes of borders to colors to fonts to margin sizes, but you can't include any text or straight HTML in your page with CSS.

SARS:
Well, PHP is infinitely more useful than SSI, but SSI has two things over PHP, for this purpose:

1. Its slightly easier to learn

and more importantly,

2. More inexpensive webhosts will give access to SSI than PHP. The scope of SSI is pretty much included for that one function, and I think is basically included in Apache most of the time (my guess). PHP is a separate program that requires a lot of upkeeping to keep up to date, so some cheaper hosts might not care to include PHP compatibility. SSI doesn't take as much effort to offer, so you're almost sure that it'll be supported.

Wild speculation: I think its also more cross-platform than PHP, which you'll generally only find on Unix/Linux/BSD servers. SSI as far as I know is often included on Windows hosting packages. PHP can run fine on Windows servers but most Windows hosts don't bother with PHP in favor of the proprietary equivalent, ASP.