My First Website & quick question

Jason Ramsey

Jason Ramsey

Admin
Hey,
I am building my first ever website.

Needless to say it is slow going.

Anyways, in IE it almost looks right. Firefox is screwing up the alignment a bit, and Opera displays it exactly as is should.

I am using dreamweaver mx (pre 2004 version)

Anyways, just wanted some folks to check out what I have so far (which ain't much) and if web gurus out there could tell me what might be causing incorrect display on the 2 main internet browsers or how I can verify and correct.

Thanks a bunch www.ramjetfilms.com

Jason
 
Displays fine on safari..i think. But the red marble looks a bit off imo. Can't really say anything else other than the links aren't working - but its obviously incomplete. Sorry about the negativity
 
It's fine. What about the marble don't you like? The links link to the page but there is nothing on them yet. Work in progress. I just did this last night :)

What isn't displaying properly for me... the red bar with the text "click a link section above..." should only be about as thick as the text. The 3 gray areas below should all end at the same point on the bottom of the screen. Is that what you are seeing?

Jason
 
I would loose the marble coloring on the logo, it blends too much with the background and don't make that a big rollover button. You can link it back to the main page but making it a rollover looks...not so good. I can't help with the alignments. I make all my design in photoshop and then cut it up and export to web.
 
Im also making my first site ever, ive had 2 other sites, but i didnt make em, just came up with the concept. Its kinda live no click my banner. Having the forum is cool! I think you need to darken the reds maybe? Atleast your site isnt as heavy as mine. Need a t3 line to get a good connection. :(
 
Yeah, I am trying to keep it as light as possible. Use my bandwidth for videos, etc. :)

Anyways, so are you guys saying that the whole title image is blending too much with the background (which should be showing as a medium gray), or that the text of the text itself in the title image is blending with the marble?

thanks for the input. You are probably right about the rollover for the title image. I may just replace it with some pop up text when rolled over, if I can figure out how.

Thanks,
Jason

* Yeah I have several ideas for the forum. Mostly company related, but I also want it to be a discussion forum for Film & Theatre, and a strong focus on acting as well.
Maybe an HVX section, that says if you have a question you want to post here, you should go to dvxuser.com :)

Jason
 
Last edited:
For possible clients though, they might find this place a bit messy. But for discussions thats good to come here. I think the red is just too either cliche' or im not sure, harsh to the eye. Maybe if you just change the red to something friendly like a light blue or something i dont know. Like whenever i read the RED forums on here, it gets me angry! lol, if that makes sense. you know sitting in an all red room for too long can make you insane?
 
I like red :)
No, seriously, the forum is just a theme I downloaded because the original does not match the direction I am currently headed with my main site at all. I want it to be similar enough so it's not like your completely leaving my main site. Problem, I think the only way I can screw with the forum site much is via html coding, which I know absolutely nothing about.
Maybe I'll just go back to the original for now, for the forum. I don't like the theme that is on there now, either.

Thanks, any input is much appreciated, and if anyone knows about making sure my homepage is displayed properly on different browsers that would be great

Jason

Maybe you'll like this look better for the forum cynic :)
 
No, i like your Red in the forum, i was talking about the color of the marble on your main site. The forum rocks. And you and me are probably on the same exact level with HTML coding. LOL, i didnt even know how to show an image on here for like 8 months. <--- makes too much sense for me to understand it. LOL

Oh, btw, everything on the site runs and looks fine in Safari 2.0 Intel Mac.
 
Hi Jason,

Aside from needing to color-contrast Ramjet Films from the background, I suggest you consider you reduce the title button vertical height to one-half of the current pixel size. Real estate "above the fold" is very valuable space, and since you're going to be using CSS with the accompanying navigational buttons on every page, you are using one-thrid of the vertical screen just for navigation - way too much. I suggest you reduce the font a bit, get rid of the underline, etc. so the nav title button and nav buttons occupy no more than 20% of the vertical screen size. And for my sites, the seach is part of the CSS - it goes on *EVERY* page.

However, if you're more into form than function, you may have other ideas...

Good luck, Michael
 
Hey, moonlite. Thanks much for the reply.
I like the idea about making the title section take up less space. I may think about shrinking the title bar in width and height, and adding a couple of other links on either side to maintain the pixel length of the page. i.e. contact, about us, etc.

As for css... well, I am totally ignorant of web page building, if I am using it, then I didn't know. :) I don't even know what css is.

Also, if you are referring to the google search bar, I just did that last night, after taking forever trying to get it to work, I do plan to have it on every page.

A couple of questions if you don't mind. With the latest page, which is what I believe you saw, it is closer, but I am having problems getting the page to display as it looks in dreamweaver. The current problem is the middle "about" section. On some browsers the text does not go the same line to line, and it also is causing it to end in a different spot. Near as I can tell, it looks as it should in I.E. on one computer, but on another it is shrinking the height of that middle section so that it is shorter and doesn't line up with the gray sections to the left and right of it. Any idea what I could be doing to cause this.
Also, concerning those 3 sections below all of the title stuff... If I create a layout table, or cell, etc. I cannot keep it to constrain to the size that I assign it. Meaning that one will affect the other sometimes. Typing in one of the cells for example will sometimes cause it to lenghten and screw up the symmetry of everything below it.
Anyways, thanks for taking the time to input.

Jason - this website building ain't easy
 
Jason,

While I don't use DreamWeaver, the symptom you're describing could be as simple as the users preferences (on IE, see Views/Text Size... Sometimes this type of problem is when the designer uses a non-standard font size which requires the browser to "guess" the best size, but I doubt that's your problem. And you seem to be using standard fonts that various browsers can access on the user's local computer.

CSS refers to Cascading Syle Sheet and while you don't need to learn all the intracasies, sooner or later you'll be sorry if you don't at least incorporate the basics on your navigational layout. You want the same navigational experience and consistency for your users throughout all your pages. And you add dozens and eventually hundreds of pages, you certainly don't want to have to propogate a change through every page! It won't be long before you realize you've missed critical navigational element. I'm sure you won't get too far before you realize you forgot something critical such as a "Contact Us" button and realize Google Search should be on every page. But when you reorganize you "Other" into several components, you'll have a real problem on your hand. After several instances of numb fingers and pulling out your hair realizing you either missed some subpages or didn't copy the code correctly, you'll be a believer in CSS design. And in time, you'll realize that since you're using the nice top navigational style, you should have more consistent links at the bottom of each page, too. Perhaps you'd move "Contact Us" to the bottom, and include your boiler plates like "Terms and Conditions", your "Privacy Policy", links to other websites, a "Help" page, maybe a "Disclaimer" page, your Sitemap, etc.

To avoid reinventing the wheel, spend 15 minutes each day looking at other websites that have been around some time, both in your industry group (to evaluate content layout and organization) as well as heavy-duty mega websites like ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal, etc. But be somewhat careful thinking a website in a specialized area (as our industry group) has a good design - many are great in video at the expense of understanding and deploying correct website design. And don't forget to look at websites by website designers, too! While Paul Boag's site won't be your forte, I recommend you listen to some of his audiocasts/podcasts online at his site - the archives are located at:

http://www.boagworld.com/archives.html

Good luck, Michael
 
Michael,
Thank you very much for taking the time. Your information makes a lot of sense. So as far as css. Basically that is something that is like a format or a overall template for my site? Something that allows me to "easily" maintain consistency accross the various pages of my website and "easily" make changes to the look of my site, etc. that would spread across every page, rather than me having to go and make all of those changes individually. That is basically correct, right? So, it sounds like I need to do some searching and reading up on css. That said, is css something that I have to do with code editing only or is that something I can look at in my design?

Thanks, very much. That is about all I can ask at the moment, until I start figuring out how to deal with css.

Jason
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top