"Internets are hard! (or me stupid)" Topic

I'm trying to get my website up and running. I thought I would try uploading what I have done so far, but it is getting screwy when I open the page.

fictionalminiatures.com

I'm using CoffeeCup HTML Editor (trial version) and hostmonster as my host. I'm using hostmonster's FTP Unlimited to transfer the files.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong? I have been fighting my website for a couple of days now.

Looks ok to me in IE, I think. Not sure what it's supposed to look like, but it seems normal enough. Are you using Firefox or Opera or some oddball browser like that?

Look ok to me to also in IE, unless there is something missing that we do not know is suposed to be there!:)
Jo

I'm using Firefox. I think your problem is your font sizes are too big. See link for how to resize.

I'm using Firefox. The preview looks ok in the editor.

Looks OK in IE 7.xx. The Email link is missing the graphic, however. There is also some variation in font sizes of the different blocks of text.

Rob

I just checked it with IE, it looks like the WYSIWYG preview in the editor, but Firefox displays it differently.

Good thing I chose a simple html editor, so that I could slap together a website quickly and easily…… grumble grumble….

I fixed it so it looks good in IE, and it became more messed up in Firefox, ?

Is there a different html editor I should be using (one designed for not html savvy folks?)

Try fixing it so it looks good in Firefox. It should then lok OK in IE. The problem with the two browsers is that Firefox is standards compliant and IE isn't.

"Is there a different html editor I should be using (one designed for not html savvy folks?)"
I have always found the best HTML editor is any simple text editor, but I would not say that method is for the non HTML savvy. For that, try Nvu (pronounced N-view). It's free and should produce standards compliant code. See: nvu.com/index.php

I think the problem was that I had moved items around too much and had a couple of items underneath the header graphic that were displacing the text boxes.

I have redone the page so that it works in both browsers now. I think I may get the hang of this, it is just going to take a lot of experimenting.

I'm still open to suggestions for html editors though, this software suite is making me angry.

M R Hard. Right now under Firefox 2 the pictures and text are OK, but above the yellow 'logobar' you have a white text on a white background. Looks like maybe the logobar was compressed so that it is abour 5/16" tall with 2" whitespace above it.

Regards, the Gorb

I use nVu and have found it very simple and reliable.

Currently the site looks a lot better. Some small things:

I'd change the header format from .bmp to .gif, to speed up loading.

You need to work on search terms. Having your main page being titled "Index" isn't going to help -- though I suppose that is a low priority at the moment.

Put a couple of lines white space at the bottom, or the page ends very abruptly on your picture.

I suggest links to other sites open in a new tab, or people might not come back.

Lastly, arrange your site's layout and navigation system very carefully at the start. This will save hours later. Currently you have left no room on the home page for any navigation functions. You will want to do it with some form of buttons or list: just hyperlinks in the text isn't too hot.

Your editor is using CSS absolute positioning for everything, something I always try to avoid. The danger in using absolute positioning is that the layout is fixed and cannot accommodate differing screen resolutions or text sizes.

As you're discovering, the real headache to web design is cross-browser compliance. If things look different just by using different browsers on only your system, just wait until someone looks at it with Safari on a Mac, or Konquerer on Linux or my great-aunt in northern Manitoba uses her 28.8 modem to look at the site with IE4.

Heck – I've been in professional web programming for years now and I still trip up occasionally!

Coffee Cup, in my opinion, creates some truly awful, awful source code. It may "work", but that is some really ugly generated HTML. Might as well use MS Word.

No matter what you use, thinking of future scaleability like Mark Plant mentions, is always a really good idea. I might also suggest that you not put your images in the same directory as your site. Create a subdirectory called "images" or something similarly original, and put your artwork there. Again, in the long run, things will be a lot less messy for you.

I'll put in a pitch for the editor in Sea Monkey. Sea Monkey used to be the Mozilla suite, which means that it's the "Super Firefox." Browser, e-mail, editor, and more, all in one.

The editor isn't the best ever, but it's free. :) (If you want to spend money, well, I use Dreamweaver and it's pretty nice…)