Uncreative Labs

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Finally, after two years of doing nothing, I started out with a complete redesign of my homepage. and this time it's not german but rather 100% english!
the url is
http://mf2server.gotdns.org/mf_2s-world/
the design is rather simple but sufficent in my opionion.
tell me what you think.
what do I need to change / improve?
please note also that the scholar's bowl section is still under heavy construction and that i'll complete it asap.
I also have a self-made php guestbook on there.
as you may notice, only the first two parts of the html tutorial are translated so far but pretty much everything else should be complete.

edit: and for the design's sake: please use at least 1024x768. I have to use my parents' computer right now and they run winxp in 800x600 and the design doesn't look good at all in that small resolution..

Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 114 Location: ~/

Frames are so 1997!

Using images for text is awful. Use text for text, not images of text!

I really can't say anything good about your site. The clipart you have used throughout the pages looks pretty bad too.

You're using deprecated presentational extenstions to HTML too instead of using CSS to control presentation.

Your computer history page is plain wrong.

Quote:

In the 1970s, the first homecomputers appeared. The most prominent homecomputer is probably the IBM PC ( Personal Computer ). Its successors are still sold today, most of the computers sold today have their roots in the IBM PC.

The PC was not and is not a home computer! The PCjr was IBM's home computer. The PC was intended as a business machine, which explains why its audio capabilities were so primitive.

I don't mean to sound overly negative, but your site is pretty bad.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

I might be ablke to replace frames pretty soon with a table layout, since I'm working on a new php script for the site.
what imagte do you mean? the logo in teh upper left?
I used an image there, becasue I wanted the shading. I don't think you can do shading with HTML4 ( DHTML maybe able to do it but I'm not using that ).
the cliparts are simply from word and I thought they fit their locations. I'm not a great artist when it comes to making up pictures out of nowhere.
do you know better cliparts?
what do you exactly mean by deprecated presentational extensions of HTML? do you mean ie. the font tag? that's how I learned html ( seven yaers ago ) and so far I haven't made the step to css, since everybody said to stay away from tehm back when I learned html, since they were so new back then and support for them was horrible and my biggest goal is to stay compatible to as many older browsers as possible. but I'll give css a try if anybody can give me a link to a good tutorial.
I corrected the stuff on the computer history page, thanks for pointing that out.

Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 114 Location: ~/

Quote:

what imagte do you mean? the logo in teh upper left?

Yes.

Quote:

I used an image there, becasue I wanted the shading. I don't think you can do shading with HTML4 ( DHTML maybe able to do it but I'm not using that ).

So? We're talking about a hypertext page here, not a magazine page. The usability losses suffered by using an image to display text is not worth the presentational effect gained when viewing the document on a screen.

CSS2 actually describes a text-shadow property that can be used to apply fancy shadow effects to text. Sadly though, I cannot name one browser that actually supports this property.

Quote:

the cliparts are simply from word and I thought they fit their locations. I'm not a great artist when it comes to making up pictures out of nowhere.

So why use tacky clip art then? It's just that -- tacky, and does nothing to enhance the page content or even appearance.

Quote:

do you know better cliparts?

No. I don't bother with clip art.

Quote:

what do you exactly mean by deprecated presentational extensions of HTML? do you mean ie. the font tag?

The font tag, yes. HTML is intended to describe the structure of a document, not the presentation.

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that's how I learned html ( seven yaers ago ) and so far I haven't made the step to css, since everybody said to stay away from tehm back when I learned html, since they were so new back then and support for them was horrible

Today CSS is fairly well supported by standards-compliant browsers such as those based on the Gecko layout engine.

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my biggest goal is to stay compatible to as many older browsers as possible.

That's the beauty of CSS: Old browsers that don't support it simply ignore the style. This way the structure of the document is still intact. The only thing missing is the style.

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I'll give css a try if anybody can give me a link to a good tutorial.

The W3C has a page with many links to starting points to help you learn to use CSS: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/learning

Try this one: http://www.w3.org/Style/LieBos2e/enter/

Once you have an understanding of the basics of CSS syntax, have a look at the CSS2 specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/. Read over the property index and experiment! Don't be surprised if your design works with Gecko (as used by Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape 7 and newer, ...) but not IE, as IE is very outdated and has quite poor, lacking CSS support.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

I jus found a nice css1 tutorial and banned all the font tags out of my documents. I used the div tag with the class attribute and gave it special properties such as a font size of 12pt with a css file. it's really easy...
now I just have to see about the frame business. the main reason I wanted frames in there was that i had the navigation bar at the top always visible. I would give that up if I would simply transform it into let;s say div elements or an invisible table...
however, I might still do that.
and I personally don't think that the logo in the upper left will hurt the site's design. it;s just a logo, like ucl has one too.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

I tried adding a poll to this topic, but I couldn;t find a way to do so in phpBB. so i'm just going to ask here: Who likes teh cliparts and who doesn't? I'm asking, b/c I think eszett's dislike of the cliparts is just because it's not his taste. taste is very subjective. everybody likes something else.
Is there anybody that likes the cliparts? Or should I ban all the graphics of my site?

Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 114 Location: ~/

Perception is subjective. Wink

If Gecko supported the text-shadow property, you could use it to create a drop shadow effect like you have in your "logo" image.

CSS2 has a position property whose fixed value allows you to have elements (such as a div, for instance) that are fixed -- that is, they do not scroll with the rest of the content when you scroll through the page. Gecko supports this property, and perhaps Opera does too -- I'm not sure. IE does not.
see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#propdef-position and e.g. http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/learning for an example.

edit: and check some of these designs using Gecko Smile

http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns/specialeffects/

Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Posts: 20 Location: Athens/Greece

Its nice but he can be much better Smile

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

I would have no problem with using gecko. but most of my audience is still using some ie ( most likely 6.0 ). does anybody know if the upcoming ie ( 7.0 which is in alpha or beta stage right now ) will support fixed div tags?

Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 114 Location: ~/

I would hope so, seeing as how it has been part of the CSS2 specification since 1998!

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

I have been reading up a little on div boxes and now I have a problem. i have a div box with absolute positioning and I want to give it a background image. how can I do that? '<div style="background-image: url(NameOfFile)">' doesn't work.

Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 114 Location: ~/

Did you try enclosing NameOfFile in quotation marks, i.e.
background-image: url("myfile.png");

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

still doesn;t work. i think i'll try it with table cells. that shouldn't be obsolete unlike frames. I'll probably still put it all on one big div container though.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 377 Location: Stuttgart, Germany

the tables don't really work either. agfter much work I got them almost to work like I wanted them to work. any new ideas abotu the background images for div containers?

Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 114 Location: ~/

This works fine for me:

Code: