Dreamweaver on iBook, looks different from Safari to Firefox

C

CineSight

macrumors newbie
Thanks for your attention everyone...

I am running a new movie-based website, on a 3 yr old iBook, with Leopard, and the CS3 version of Dreamweaver. My site looks pretty much the same on Safari as it does in Dreamweaver, but the newer versions of Firefox are spreading the words apart so that columns and lines don't line up.

You can check this out on http://cinemasightlines.com/index.php - see how the two columns of the index page are the same length in Safari but in Firefox, the right one is waaay longer.

Any ideas about this?

I could also use some php advise for the message boards...
 
Welcome to the wonderful world of web design, where no web browsers follow all of the standards. It looks fine in Opera for me. Who knows how it looks in Internet Explorer!?
 
I'd say it's partly a consequence of using tables for layout. Tisk tisk. You don't explicitly state a line height and so each browsers is deciding on its own as to what line height to use. You've also got some validation issues you should resolve as they some times contribute to these sorts of problems.
 
Don't we ALL have validation issues??

angelwatt said:
I'd say it's partly a consequence of using tables for layout. Tisk tisk. You don't explicitly state a line height and so each browsers is deciding on its own as to what line height to use. You've also got some validation issues you should resolve as they some times contribute to these sorts of problems.
Click to expand...

I paid a college undergrad to build the site for me, and it turns out he didn't have much attention for detail. I don't know about the things you mention. No idea what tables or validation are.

I asked him to design it so it would go wall-to-wall in any browser. he didn't even know enough to design the banner in a large size for future use or even save a layered resource file. I've been asked to make up a movie poster to advertise my site, and the banner won't look good any bigger than a computer screen...
 
CineSight said:
I paid a college undergrad to build the site for me, and it turns out he didn't have much attention for detail. I don't know about the things you mention. No idea what tables or validation are.

I asked him to design it so it would go wall-to-wall in any browser. he didn't even know enough to design the banner in a large size for future use or even save a layered resource file. I've been asked to make up a movie poster to advertise my site, and the banner won't look good any bigger than a computer screen...
Click to expand...

You probably got what you paid for.

Also, when you create graphics for web, you create them at a much smaller scale, hence the reason him not having your graphics larger, unless you specifically requested it and paid more for it. I don't randomly make my clients graphics for print.
 
ChicoWeb said:
You probably got what you paid for.

Also, when you create graphics for web, you create them at a much smaller scale, hence the reason him not having your graphics larger, unless you specifically requested it and paid more for it. I don't randomly make my clients graphics for print.
Click to expand...

My background in graphics goes back to 1975, and I've always known since then that creating something bigger is better, because you can always reduce, but you can't enlarge. I instructed the kid to make it big, but he was too busy tinkering with dropdown menus that did nothing but make the site look funny in some browsers.

I am frankly a little tired of people giving me a hard time for not having payed more. Not everyone has the astronomical money many "designers" demand, and many of them haven't the talent they're charging for. Many people calling themselves graphic artists have never even learned the basic rules of typesetting.

The design/art direction of the site, conceptually, is all mine. I just needed someone to construct what I very specifically asked for. I also supplied all the necessary graphic elements. All this kid had to do is put them together.
 
ChicoWeb said:
You probably got what you paid for.
Click to expand...

Good call.

But there are plenty of good low cost developers out there who will take your wireframes and storyboards to the creation of a web site. It's not about paying more for a project it's about cost effective management, a web site is a business tool and long term investment and therefore should have a professional touch to it.

You wouldn't get a student to do your tax you'd go to a qualified accountant wouldn't you:confused:
 
ezekielrage_99 said:
Good call.

But there are plenty of good low cost developers out there who will take your wireframes and storyboards to the creation of a web site. It's not about paying more for a project it's about cost effective management, a web site is a business tool and long term investment and therefore should have a professional touch to it.

You wouldn't get a student to do your tax you'd go to a qualified accountant wouldn't you:confused:
Click to expand...

We work with what we have. I posted the job several times on contractedwork.com, and EVERYONE wanted at least ten bucks an hour for something they claimed would require a MINIMUM of 50 hours. And they were almost all overseas. I'm not about to dictate specific details through only email and let them bill me for even more time, after which they give me something off-the-shelf that they've just changed the colors of.

This kid was reachable by phone, and his was the ONLY offer that was remotely affordable (I am living at a deficit with a less than zero budget) Everyone else wanted to charge me a thousand for ONE PAGE. I also checked with one top-notch design pro (a friend of a friend who I couldn't remotely afford) and was told to ask specific questions of the kid... his answers seemed to indicate he generally knew what he was doing. Problem he was working on a PC and had no idea how to code for things to look the same on a mac... And simple things like "make up a profile of stadium-style risers for the seats" were over his head. It's like he had never been to a movie before.

You see the design, it's not very complicated. I believe in elegant simplicity. I didn't want any flash or other stuff that would make it difficult to load, but I'd like to have the navigation menus line up more symmetrically and set up the message boards to appear within one of the normal site pages...

I supplied all the components for the graphics, (the seats, the curtains) and I contacted a type designer to customize one of his fonts for me. Considering what I paid, I'm generally happy with how it looks, I'd just like it to run a bit more smoothly.

There were no "professional" designers I could find who would even consider it for less than a fortune.

And no, I can't afford an accountant either.
 
You might have been better off investing in a copy of Rapidweaver and modifying a theme. It's cheap, works and looks pretty good on any browser.

I've done that for clients in the past where the initial setup costs are too high for them and they don't have the capital to outlay. It's worked a treat for them specifically smaller schools, they get a web site where they can updates and change as they choose without the massive expense of a typical web site.
 
ezekielrage_99 said:
You might have been better off investing in a copy of Rapidweaver and modifying a theme. It's cheap, works and looks pretty good on any browser.

I've done that for clients in the past where the initial setup costs are too high for them and they don't have the capital to outlay. It's worked a treat for them specifically smaller schools, they get a web site where they can updates and change as they choose without the massive expense of a typical web site.
Click to expand...

If anyone has any constructive ideas about what can be done in the real world of here and now, instead of criticizing my choices and opining what they think SHOULD have been done in the past, I'd like to hear it.
 
I already mentioned some of the key things that were contributing to the problem, but you aren't the web designer so it didn't mean anything to you. That should tell you what you need to do. Find a web designer to take on the job. We're not going to be able to give you a solution you can implement on your own if you don't know what you're doing.

Also, the solution is a bit involved because of the things I mentioned. It's not going to just be a matter of "add this line here" or "delete this line" to get a solution. You keep stating how this isn't a complex design and what not, but actually it does have some complexities in the design. Simply not having Flash on it, doesn't make it simple. There's also a number of pages and dynamic navigation elements.

You mentioned one site you went to in order to find help. There are others. Do a search in the forum to find threads on people discussing some of the other options. Since you're looking not to spend much also try to make some contacts at local high schools and colleges to find students who are wanting to build on their own portfolio and willing to do it for much cheaper or possibly even pro-bono. The sites already up so it may be possible you can find someone to update it for little to no cost.
 
Due to the css being everywhere it really need a developer to fix up the code clutter. The code looks like standard drag and drop dreamweaver development and this is why there are rendering differences and even conflicting styles on the pages.

To salvage this pay for a web developer to recode the site for web standards and accessibility guide lines and the rendering differences between the browsers will be cleared up during this process.

You state you have no money well due to the complexity of the process a developer is going to want payed so you ether get the money back from your designer to pay someone else or tell him to re code the site correctly(by the looks of the code he is not a coder at all).
 
You can play with the line height in Dreamweaver...it's not the most difficult program to mess around with.

Ultimately however you'll probably need to get a real professional to fix the site or learn how to do it yourself...as there seem to be other problems (I got a 404 on one page). Learning basic php and html isn't particularly difficult and would serve you quite well—though don't bother trying to edit dreamweaver-created code, that's suicide. Whatever you do, don't spend any more money on amateurs...really you get what you pay for, for the most part (and those $500 bids weren't high at all for a site well done which clearly you didn't get).
 
Alright, I felt nice. Here's a quick fix snippet to at least make the home page look the same in Firefox as is does in Safari. Add the following CSS to the file style.css. You can add it anywhere inside the file. I only tried it out on the home page though. I don't know how it will effect the other pages. I also don't know this will effect IE or Opera or any other browser. It may even change Safari's rendering. I just used Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar extension to try out some alterations to the CSS to make it look like what Safari was showing. If if messes up things too much in other browsers you can easily delete this code.

Code: 
p {
 line-height: 1.2;
 letter-spacing: -0.2px;
}
 
angelwatt said:
Alright, I felt nice. Here's a quick fix snippet to at least make the home page look the same in Firefox as is does in Safari. Add the following CSS to the file style.css. You can add it anywhere inside the file. I only tried it out on the home page though. I don't know how it will effect the other pages. I also don't know this will effect IE or Opera or any other browser. It may even change Safari's rendering. I just used Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar extension to try out some alterations to the CSS to make it look like what Safari was showing. If if messes up things too much in other browsers you can easily delete this code.

Code: 
p {
 line-height: 1.2;
 letter-spacing: -0.2px;
}
Click to expand...

I dropped that bit into the CSS file in the styles folder and reloaded it and you can see it has made absolutely no difference.
 
CineSight said:
I dropped that bit into the CSS file in the styles folder and reloaded it and you can see it has made absolutely no difference.
Click to expand...

I didn't see the CSS added. Did you upload the file after making the change. I looked at the style.css file and the other files and it wasn't present unless you've already removed it.
 
angelwatt said:
I didn't see the CSS added. Did you upload the file after making the change. I looked at the style.css file and the other files and it wasn't present unless you've already removed it.
Click to expand...

two different style css docs, one in style folder the other is loose.
 
HUH??

the files must be identical now cause I copied the changed version to both locations. I put the added code at the very bottom.
 
Not all undergrads are terrible at web design. I am an undergrad and make fantastic websites (all learned in my spare time). I do think, however, you should of asked the designer for a portfolio or something showing previous work. That way you could get a glimpse of the kind of work he does.
 
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