HTML/CSS peeps

[GottaHavePride]

OK, I finally have time to mess with rebuilding the orchestra's website. Plus the director asked if we could add some stuff to the website that requires a bit of rebuilding anyway. Beano's logo looks killer shrunk down to size, and then I faded it out to use as a background underneath everything. good look so far. I just need a couple of pictures of the orchestra to make the pages look polished.

Anyway, some questions, and I'm using Dreamweaver MX on a PC to do this. And be gentle, this is the first website design I've had to do. Which sucks because I'm a perfectionist about this sort of thing - I hate if it doesn't look right and I hate if the code that gets me there is too messy.

1. I'm using tables for the layout because it's easy and it isn't frames. So on my sidebar down the left I'm putting links to the various sub-pages and marking each one with a small bullet image. Only problem is the text isn't aligned properly with the bullet - the text is too low by 8 or 9 pixels. How do I adjust that?

2. When I make those links, I don't want to make the text itself the hyperlink - I'd rather make the entire cell the hyperlink - how do I do that?

3. For this I'll need to give you guys a visual aid. On this site: http://www.philorch.org/styles/poa02e/www/index2.html there's an integrated calendar on the left side. I'd like to do something like that on this site, so that a person can click on the highlighted days and find out what the orchestra is doing (concert, rehearsal schedule, etc) on that particular day. Is there any way to do it that's not massively complicated or should I just go with something much simpler? Oh, that site is also a good example of the bullet thing I mentioned in question #1.

That's all I've got for now. I think the rest is fairly easy to do.

[Sooner_Bob]

1. I'm using tables for the layout because it's easy and it isn't frames. So on my sidebar down the left I'm putting links to the various sub-pages and marking each one with a small bullet image. Only problem is the text isn't aligned properly with the bullet - the text is too low by 8 or 9 pixels. How do I adjust that?


First off, thank you for not using FrontPage. :D

You'll probably have to put the bullet and text in separate columns. I think that's the way I've done it in the past.



2. When I make those links, I don't want to make the text itself the hyperlink - I'd rather make the entire cell the hyperlink - how do I do that?


You should just need to wrap your < a href > tag around the < td > stuff < / td > tags . . . never done it before, but that's how I'd start.



3. For this I'll need to give you guys a visual aid. On this site: http://www.philorch.org/styles/poa02e/www/index2.html there's an integrated calendar on the left side. I'd like to do something like that on this site, so that a person can click on the highlighted days and find out what the orchestra is doing (concert, rehearsal schedule, etc) on that particular day. Is there any way to do it that's not massively complicated or should I just go with something much simpler? Oh, that site is also a good example of the bullet thing I mentioned in question #1.

That's all I've got for now. I think the rest is fairly easy to do.

You'll probably need to search for some dreamweaver/website templates for some of what you're wanting to do.

Macromedia has the developers exchange that has tons of Dreamweaver stuff you can buy or download for free that you might find useful.

[jkm, the stolen pifwafwi]

if you are using css why do you need a table?

[mdklatt]

Tables for layout is so 2001. HTML for structure, CSS for design.

[yermom]

you should call in a favor from someone i know ;)

[GottaHavePride]

if you are using css why do you need a table?

I don't know css very well. Should I look into that and ditch the tables?

[yermom]

from my limited knowledge, yes

see above post ;)

[GottaHavePride]

Someone you know? You offering to take a look yourself? ;)

Although sadly I don't have any of the stuff on my home computer - it's all on campus.

[GrapevineSooner]

This is good for a starter lesson (http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp) on CSS.

[yermom]

Someone you know? You offering to take a look yourself? ;)

Although sadly I don't have any of the stuff on my home computer - it's all on campus.

no, it's not me, but you know her :)

[GottaHavePride]

Oh. I gotcha. Well, I think first I'm gonna mess with this css bidness, and I might call somegrl next week to see if she can help me make it suck less. ;)

[Norm In Norman]

Yes, use css.

Do I look smart after 10 people have already told you to do this?

Here's a problem with css: good luck trying to get things to work in both IE and Firefox (and let's not forget Opera). It's hard. Some of the coolest stuff (like making a row highlight with css) won't work in IE unless you use javascript. So the biggest thing is make sure you test it in IE before you get all proud of yourself because you got something to look just right. Really though, it's pretty cool all of the stuff you can do in CSS. It's better.

[Norm In Norman]

Oh, and as far as #3 is concerned - I'd hate to be the guy that updates that html every week. You'd really want to do that in PHP or something.

[GrapevineSooner]

Oh, and as far as #3 is concerned - I'd hate to be the guy that updates that html every week. You'd really want to do that in PHP or something.

Perhaps in conjunction with a MySQL database.

[GottaHavePride]

OK, all these acronyms are screwing with my head now. ;)

[yermom]

Oh, and as far as #3 is concerned - I'd hate to be the guy that updates that html every week. You'd really want to do that in PHP or something.


Perhaps in conjunction with a MySQL database.

um, that's probably a negative :(

not that you guys are wrong... it's just not possible unless he changed hosts

[GottaHavePride]

Oh, and as far as #3 is concerned - I'd hate to be the guy that updates that html every week. You'd really want to do that in PHP or something.

I was thinking that, but if I set up a calendar-page template that I can edit quickly it wouldn't be TOO bad... I think. If it sucks I can just axe that part and go to a sort of week-at-a-glance page.

[GottaHavePride]

OK. The bitch is finally up and running. I still don't have all the content I need for it, but that will come in time. What do you guys think?

http://www.ou.edu/ousymphony/

[SoonerTerry]

Looking good man