new iweb site. Bad code?

[wordwench]

Hello, all-

I have just designed and launched my first site w/ iWeb. I am an artist (NOT a web designer!) and this is my professional site. It is image, rather than text heavy.

I went through an ISP (other than .mac) as I already had a site w/ them and wanted to switch payment, and redirect traffic to the new iweb-designed site. I used Fetch as my FTP. It took me awhile to figure it out- but I can now see the site via my emac. (OSX). I cannot see the site on a PC: it's a mess. The home page loads only some text, no images. The links work and you can see some things on the inside pages, but text is all over the place.

I called the ISP and was on the phone w/ Tech support for almost an hour before I was told the problems were due to poorly designed code by iWeb.Irregardless of whether this is true or not, how can I fix this so the site is viewable on all computers??

Also, is anyone familiar with Fetch? how hard will it be t tweak, edit, update the site, once I get all the bugs worked out?

I am NO HTML wiz or super tekkie-(I can see the HTML code via the ISP) I would like to make this as easy for myself as possible!

Any advice?

Here is the link:

www.claudiajulian.com

Thanks

[apfhex]

Originally Posted by wordwench

I cannot see the site on a PC: it's a mess. The home page loads only some text, no images. The links work and you can see some things on the inside pages, but text is all over the place.

Your images are al PNGs — on the PC, Internet Explorer is at fault for not having proper PNG support (supposedly fixed in IE7). Solution? Tell people to use Firefox or even Safari! Unless you absolutely must have lossless images, I'd use JPEG. It would probably cut down on the overall size of the site a lot too.

As for the text, that's messed up in Safari too. I'm seeing a bunch of '?' marks (black diamond with a question mark). Seems like an encoding issue.

[wordwench]

As I mentioned, I also have a Mac, (OSX) and Safari is my one and only browser. I can navigate my site just fine. As for jpegs- all the images were saved (via Photoshop) for the web as jpegs.

Now what?

[wordwench]

I've done some research. I read that CSSEdit will help make my site compatible to all browsers.

I don't have CSSEdit- don't think my old Mac can support it. Will BBEdit do the trick? I have that. Will I be able to make my iweb site compatible with all browsers with BBEdit?

Grazi.

WW.

[jng]

Originally Posted by wordwench

I've done some research. I read that CSSEdit will help make my site compatible to all browsers.

Naw, that's just a marketing gimmick. And it's for people who hand code their sites. Don't buy it.

This won't help you if you've made your site in iweb, which isn't the the greatest WYSIWYG editor either, but certainly easy, simple and elegant.

The ?s appear because you're using foreign characters or your character set is different. It can happen to apostrophes if you paste your content in from Microsoft Word for example.

The images work fine in IE7 (it does have PNG support). But using JPEG is better if you want to make your site work in IE6 as well.

Not sure about how iWeb handles that though.

[wordwench]

What about BBEdit? I already have that.

(Not sure how to use it, though, as a friend used it to launch my last site, 4 years ago)

[jng]

Originally Posted by wordwench

What about BBEdit? I already have that.

(Not sure how to use it, though, as a friend used it to launch my last site, 4 years ago)

No, it's for handcoding. If you're not a hand coder, don't bother.

Open up iWeb again and comb through your text to find where those ?s appear. And just type it in manually if you have to.

Look in iWeb for options to save as jpeg instead of PNG and you should be fine.

[theBB]

I am seeing quite a few question marks even on a Mac. I agree it is probably a fonts or encoding issue.

[Super Macho Man]

<div class="paragraph Heading_1" style="line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;
margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-indent: 0px;
color: #000000; font-family: 'ArialMT', 'Arial', 'sans-serif'; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0; line-height: 15px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: none;
text-decoration: none;">��</div>
</div>

Mama mia! That's a spicy HTML meatballs!

I agree with theBB. It's probably a fonts or encoding issue. Quick and very dirty fix in the meantime would be to open the Home.html file in TextEdit, do an Edit -> Find for "?", and replace it with nothing.


I really like the overall look of the site. I don't know if you were looking for them because you didn't ask, but I have a few criticisms... not intended as put downs at all!

- The whole page all together is almost 1MB. Mostly because it is full of huge images. I would say compress the images more (make them JPEGs) and make them smaller in dimensions, especially the huge ones. A fair number of people are going to be accessing your site with modems and they will have to wait 3-4 minutes for the whole thing to load. Even people with broadband may have to wait 10+ seconds...

- Text should generally not be made into an image... not sure why iWeb made it that way. There are several drawbacks to "image text." One of them is that it takes a lot longer to transmit (as in the problem above). Find a way to make the text into real text.

- The page is too wide, so people with lower resolution or narrower browser windows have to horizontally scroll, and your beautiful illustration on the right gets cut way off.

- A bit too much empty space all over the page. Condense the content a little. That should also help you with the above problem.

- There is a bit of a clash between the header text, with your name in the big "fun" font and your title in the "serious, dignified" serif font. I understand that cartoonists are supposed to be fun and "illustrator" connotes more seriousness, but I still don't think it works. I would choose one or the other font (I like the serif one better)

- Ideally the filename of your main page should be "index.html". That way it should appear in the URL bar as "http://www.claudiajulian.com/" and not "http://www.claudiajulian.com/Home.html".

[ezekielrage_99]

Where does iWeb save all of your html/images/videos? I can't seem to find it on my Mac.