dk01 — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:19:51 +0000

For more info on liquid layouts (non-table based, sorry) you could look at some of these:

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html
http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/3cols/3cols/2.asp
http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/3cols.asp
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/negativemargins/
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=AnyColumnLongest
http://positioniseverything.net/articles/jello.html
http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/onetruelayout/equalheight

Many of these are quite advanced techniques though and are not meant to work with table designs.

-Jim

mastermind86 — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 23:49:23 +0000

Thanks, that's probably what I'll end up doing. It just bugs me to have the extra empty space on the borders of the site when using 10x7, but because of my lack content I'll have to just deal with it.

dk01 — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 23:05:05 +0000

Making a site 770px wide will allow for 800x600 and above but takes into account the scroll bar. Ideally you will want to have a fluid layout that expands but if you must use a fixed width then this is the width to aim for.

steve40 — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:36:04 +0000

If you make a fixed width page, which is what I do. Do not make it 1024 x 768, go 800 X 600. There are still more 6 x 8 viewers out there than 10 x 7. It is a pain to either have to change res, or scroll a foot for them.

mastermind86 — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:29:47 +0000

Ok, so there is no way to move single borders, wow, that really surprises me. Seems like that would be a really beneficial thing? As for using dreamweaver. I really like the interface, but it seems a bit more complicated to me. I definitely had major trouble with getting the WYSIWYG part working. All the work I did was never lined up correctly in the preview. Perhaps now that I know a good deal more than last time, I could start over in dreamweaver and try again.

The other problem I had with dreamweaver (And I probably am just looking in the wrong places), but I didn't see a way to create the interactive buttons (I think that's why you have Fireworks), and I didn't see a way to "publish the site". I guess there are ways to use FTP or something? I don't really know, but I like that feature about FrontPage. I guess I can use FP to publish and DW to create...

So what you are saying is, because the page is so 'simple', I should set it as a centered table so even in 1024x768 it stays the same size, otherwise it's too spaced out and 'empty' looking? That makes sense now that I actually have it half-way working.

All of the pictures are the exact same 'canvas' size in the fading photos, but I definitely agree it's taking way too long to load which is something I was worried about before. Perhaps I can just do a random single picture on every refresh, or even better would be to make a larger center and add a pargraph such as a mission statement or something.

I'm not really familiar with how to make a search engine find the site, so that's why I haven't geared the site that way thus far.

Thanks for the extra notes, you guys have been really helpful so far. I'm learning .

Busy — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 20:36:56 +0000

To answer your last question you cant unless you use rowspan or colspan.
The link in my signature has a couple pages on tables, one on layouts.

The problem you had with the random javascript causing the buttons to be spaced is because of the height of the random images. I watched them for a but and it seems Tina is the tallest one. Brian and Linda are right up there thou.
I don't get a horziontal scroll at 800x600 with either layout.

For a design like this I personally would use a set width (760-780) because of the content or lack of it. Seeing this on a wide screen would give to much white space.
I have several sites with fixed width and even the heights are limited (from the content) so they just sit in the middle top of the screen on big resolutions.

Your site could also be one that could be printd off (parts of it), so less images maybe the key. On the old/new pages you gave there is no text at all, search engines love text like the cookie monster loves cookies . The fade in and mouse over buttons makes for slow loading on dialup. Maybe add the fade in to it's own page, a 'who are we' page, that way the mouse over buttons would of already loaded from other pages.

You said you had dreamweaver and frontpage, do yourself a favor and only use dreamweaver, frontpage is bad

A couple of notes for you:
... is auto aligned center and bold (you dont need to use align center in p tags or anything else)
When using width in (and ) tags making them equal over 100% can have weird effects (can go smaller)
You only need to use width in (and ) tags in the first row, having different widths will sometimes take the first set, sometimes the last depending on your content width.
Height only needs to be used once per row but if border isn't set to 0 (and cellpadding, cellspacing to 0) the cell will be a couple of pixels taller has everything has a default margin (and they vary on different browsers)

steve40 — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:56:55 +0000

There are several ways you could do the width thing. Set a fixed width on your table. like say 750. then set each td dimension to the width you want, all equal to 750.

But since tables are not totaly fixed, if you put to much info in one it will crowd the others. You can also make some gif. images the same color as your background to fill 1 row in each table dimension, and make it stable.

Text is not to bad, as it will wrap to the table dimension, without pushing the edges. But large images will, unless you are carefull to keep the size down.

So you may, or may not need the gif. images to keep it fixed.

I used a three row setup once wirh one at 10 px. wide row for a spacer. I made a 10px gif. the color of the background, and never had any trouble with it.

Or as you are going to be told use CSS, not tables.

I looked at the tenative site. I see you are using percent, you can never get a multi row table to size uniformely when changing resolutions. You just have to build it at one or the other resolutions, and let it ride.

mastermind86 — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 18:08:49 +0000

Edit: Another question. A little hard to explain maybe. Using Frontpage, suppose I have a 4-cell square table. How can I move the verticle line of ONE box, and not the other as well? In other words moving the borders independently of one another. It causes an entire row or column to be forced at the same heighth or width.

I will post an example of this problem on the site's homepage:

http://faculty.sga.edu/cisy2000/slowther

Thanks for all the replies. I'm actually just rebuilding the homepage because the last one I didn't like the layout of. I don't really know what I did, but so far it appears to be "fluid" as I was trying to achieve before. It is weird how merging certain cells or placing things different can cause it to being unproportional at different pixel sizes.

I hope to have the new homepage finished today. It's still not great, but a little different look at least. The link will be:

http://faculty.sga.edu/cisy2000/slowther/ahcs6.htm

If anyone cares to take a look at it that might be helpful. Thanks

steve40 — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 14:35:32 +0000

I just went a took a look at your site in 1024 X 768. Like I figured; all the text is small, and crowded to the left, with a yard of white space. Believe me it would look better at 8 x 6, and let it go. You can always use a background gif, which will resize, behind your page to fill in the gaps on the sides.

Here is an example of one, I am currently working on.

View Web-Page

steve40 — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 14:29:25 +0000

Centering your table, and letting it come up middle screen, at higher resolutions is the best bet. % may work fairly well for a single table layout, if you dont have your text margined. But not for nested tables. I would rather my site come up in the middle of the screen, at 1024 x 768 than to have the text scewed all over the place.

I always build for 800 X 600 because I wear glasses, and I figure others that do, appreciate my decision. The folks that use the high resolutions can see well enough to read the text if you use a slightly larger text at 8 x 6 something like 13 pt.
Another problem with % is your background gif if you use one, it will not resize, and looks really strange. There is really no site that will look exactly the same at different resolutions, no matter how you build it. It's always a compramise.

The gif I am talking about here, is one that would occupy only one row in your design. A one size fits all gif does enlarge.