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Subject: OT: Website HTML issues
Posted by: Chuck
- Donor [571132017] Fri, May 16, 2003, 11:48
Youth Group website
OK, so I'm a total HTML dummy who just learned how to post a table in here a few weeks ago. However, being the most technically advanced person at staff at my church, and the youth pastor to boot, I'm taking it as my duty to try and form a website for them. However, as I teach myself HTML, I'm running into issues.
I'm using 2 basic sites to help me get started:
http://www.w3schools.com/
http://htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/
While these sites are good, and I recommend them for beginners, I've had trouble navigating them for specific issues.
Namely, on my site above, in it's very first stages, I'm trying to set up a navigation bar on the left-handed side. I got that to work, however, when one clicks on the "Back Home" link, it does not reload the right side, it loads a new copy on the left side. Clearly I don't want this to happen. Anybody know what I could do to fix this?
I could just put the navigation at the bottom (as I now have "home" and "links" down there), but though I am an amateur, I'm trying to go for the professional side-bar look.
Please ignore the cheapness of it as I'm trying to see how feasible this will be for me to do first before adding all the necessary and fun gadgets and gizmos.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! |
| 1 | Gary
ID: 54161011
Fri, May 16, 2003, 12:31
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Ok, I will try to help you. I believe that the reason it opens the home page on the wrong side is you didn't target the other window. You must name both sides then target the side you want to open the page in. I hope that makes sense.
Personally I wouldn't do it that way. I would use a table to put the menu on the left side and then the info on the other. I have attached my old Fantasy Football League page as an example.
My Fantasy League
Use the view source to see how I did it and see if that would work for you. It is a bit less complicated and can be copied to use as a template for other pages.
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| 3 | Salt Bandit
ID: 2837169
Fri, May 16, 2003, 12:38
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Wow... something I can actually help with.
You need to do 2 things. First, when you make the frames, you need to give them names. To do that, inside the frame tag, just add something like
name=body and name=bar
so the whole tag would say
frame src="home.html" name="body"
Then, inside the link in the bar, add a target="body"
So the whole tag would be
a href="home.html" target="body"
This tells it to open in the body frame.
Obviously everything needs to be in the brackets.
As a side note, I'd also recommend using tables, but you can try them both out and see what works for you.
Hope that helps.
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| 4 | Chuck
Donor
ID: 571132017
Fri, May 16, 2003, 13:10
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All right... I'm trying the table thing, and it looks a lot better (and I like the ability to copy it onto every page).
Question regarding the left table background:
I got it activated using the "BODY BACKGROUND=x.gif" command, but I don't know where to turn it off so the main part of the page can have a separate color. Which command am I missing?
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| 5 | Gary
ID: 54161011
Fri, May 16, 2003, 14:00
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Ok, chuck. That background was like that what you want to do is either find one that switches colors like the one on my page or make one of your own. Here is a page if you have Paint shop Pro. She tells you how to make your own. Here is one if you just want to use a premade border. Otherwise you can just goto yahoo, type in border background and it will give you sites that have or explain border backgrounds. The other option is to go to a site that has a border background you like and copy the background jpeg to use as your own. But if you do that remember some may be protected so ask permission from the web owner to use the background graphic. Hope this helps.
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| 6 | Chuck
Donor
ID: 571132017
Sat, May 17, 2003, 20:28
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Thanks for the help. While there is still a lot more work to do here (including that width of the strip thing...) I feel farely confident I know the basics of what I'm doing now.
Thanks again.
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| 7 | KrazyKoalaBears
Donor
ID: 513102216
Sat, May 17, 2003, 22:24
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Chuck, I'm not sure if you're using an HTML editor or not, but if you aren't, you may want to look into one. It can make life far easier, especially when you're first learning. Dreamweaver MX is pretty much the industry standard right now and you can get a free 30-day trial version that has no limitations on it (pretty sweet deal). Just FYI.
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| 8 | Chuck
Donor
ID: 571132017
Fri, May 23, 2003, 14:03
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KKB- thanks for the tip.
Right now I'm doing everything by hand. I may try out the Dreamweaver come next fall, but I'm not gonna be around enough to get full value of the trial offer for now.
I guess since this is part of my job (and a lot more fun than paperwork), I'll use the guess & check method for now.
Things are coming along pretty well, and if you want to keep tabs, I'd say check back every week or so. :-)
I'll have an official website unveiling sometime this fall.
Thanks again, everyone, for all the tips.
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| 9 | Astade
ID: 214361313
Fri, May 23, 2003, 18:18
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Hey Chuck,
As an amateur webmaster, I had many of the same problems that you encountered last year. A couple of things that might help you:
1.) Dreamweaver is a really good idea. Best interface and very easy to learn with.
2.) I don't know what professionals think of this idea, but it worked for me; Find a site that you find to have a layout that is pretty close to what you are looking for on your own website. Open up the source file and see how it is structured. Assuming that there is no copyright and/or you are able to get permission from the webpage's author, try to use that as the skeleton for your website. It will not only save you a little time, but more importantly it will allow you to see some valuable HTML coding and to learn from other people's mistakes.
Perhaps other coders might disagree, but it is easy to learn this way and of course there should be thousands of sites that have features that are similar to the ones you want for your site.
good luck
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| 10 | KrazyKoalaBears
Donor
ID: 513102216
Fri, May 23, 2003, 22:08
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Most pro's will frown heavily upon outright copy-and-pasting code for your own use, but a beginner opening up the source code and seeing how something is made is well within reason and is the way that a lot of people, myself included, first learned HTML. I strongly encourage this route. The idea is to build your knowledge base of how tags work and what you can do with them in order to be able to do what you want when you start to make your own interface. Be warned though that some source code may fly a bit over your head to begin with. If that's the case, bookmark the site under "View Later" and continue on looking. Eventually, you'll be able to go back to your "View Later" sites and fully understand what's going on.
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