Need an HTML guide recommendation

Chaos Angel · Post by **Chaos Angel** » Thu May 22, 2003 10:33 pm

Heylo. I am going to have a website again, and I have a general idea of how I want it to look. However, my HTML skills are very basic, and I need a guide to HTML that will allow me to write the page the way I want it.

It will look something like this.

The dashed lines mean the borders are invisible. Essentially, I want there to be a title bar and button side bar that is always present, and the main area is what changes. The buttons and text and images should float over the background image (meaning the image does not change as the text and images scroll over it), and when you click a button it changes the viewer area. This sounds like Frames work to me, but does anyone know of a guide that can show me what I need to know to make the page the way I want it?

Thanks.

Stoic · Post by **Stoic** » Thu May 22, 2003 11:38 pm

Frames are evil. Most self respecting web programmers stay clear of them... I said MOST...

Anyway get a Program like dreamweaver (a WYSWIG editor) so that way it can do the HTML for you.

shadow-the-hedgehog · Post by **shadow-the-hedgehog** » Fri May 23, 2003 12:43 am

I agree Frames are Satan, mmmkay. Use Tables for that lay out. I used Table in Table in Table for mine. Secondly, you want to use a resolution of about 600x800 for web design. Not everyone has amonitor with that resolution.

Here's something to get started:

HTML Basics

gadoo · Post by **gadoo** » Fri May 23, 2003 2:46 am

what's so wrong with frames?

for a layout like that ...why not make frames?

Chaos Angel · Post by **Chaos Angel** » Fri May 23, 2003 8:24 am

Well, the problem with frames (according to a guy I work with) is that they run crappy on slower computers because they operate more heavily due to being basically pages within pages.

Tables is what I meant to say, but I'll take what I can get.

Dreamweaver, you say? Thanks.

gadoo · Post by **gadoo** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:57 am

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Sat May 24, 2003 4:58 am

Who is your target? If you're making a media arts page. The bastards who visit better have a damn well good enough computer to view your videos. If they can do that. They can defenitely handle frames. :/

Maybe there is some other reason frames are bad.

~klinky

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Sat May 24, 2003 5:01 pm

klinky wrote:Who is your target? If you're making a media arts page. The bastards who visit better have a damn well good enough computer to view your videos. If they can do that. They can defenitely handle frames. :/

Maybe there is some other reason frames are bad.

~klinky

Elizabeth Castro (HTML for the WWW 5th Ed) wrote:Frames do have some disadvantages. They can be hard to navigate, their scroll bars can hog precious screen real estate, they can be hard to get indexed in a search engine like Google, and once indexed they may appear independently without benefit of their surrounding and supporting frames.

In fact, the W3C (WWW Consortium) discourages the use of frames. Instead, they recommend embedding content on a page through fixed positioning and the use of the object element.

The frame and frameset tags are not part of strict (X)HTML which is why I suspect that "transitional" (X)HTML is more commonly used.

For an example of layout without frames, click the link in my sig.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sat May 24, 2003 5:13 pm

TaranT wrote: For an example of layout without frames, click the link in my sig.

Despite the fact that frames look bad, aren't standard, and are just overall annoying sometimes, one advantage that frames still have over more modern layout methods is that frames can be handled in a convenient way by just about any browser, from lynx to links to Mozilla.

Using Phoenix 0.5 (Gecko 04/11/2003 build), the layout of the page in your sig totally b0rks itself up when I scroll.

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Sun May 25, 2003 2:00 am

trythil wrote:
TaranT wrote: For an example of layout without frames, click the link in my sig.
Despite the fact that frames look bad, aren't standard, and are just overall annoying sometimes, one advantage that frames still have over more modern layout methods is that frames can be handled in a convenient way by just about any browser, from lynx to links to Mozilla.

Using Phoenix 0.5 (Gecko 04/11/2003 build), the layout of the page in your sig totally b0rks itself up when I scroll.

I always wondered how compatible my stylesheet was (even though it's not at all complicated). Given the direction the W3C wants to go with the newer browsers, I thought it would be better this way for the long run. But there are drawbacks.

Just out of curiosity, is it the main page that's screwed up or the contest tables (or both) ?