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I am a beginner and I can´t make my website look good:-( Please help me!

L

lia77

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
79
0
Hi!

I have written a couple of other posts here previouslt asking for help on my website which has been very uselful. However, I just realized, I missed the most fundamental part in creating my website:-(

I have a 13 inch widescreen mac notebook, and on it the site looked alright...
But then i asked a friend to check it out,( and she has a 19 inch one )and it looked awful. The site covered the screen horizontally but only half of it vertically....

Does it look the same on your computer?

And what can i do?? I guess i messed up with the page size. ( i think it is 1100x500 or something like that...) But now i dont know how to change it, (i did it in frames) Do I have to start all over (again...)???

Gosh, I am really a beginner and i never knew how difficult it was to create a good looking website...( not to mention how to make it easy to navigate etc etc...)

Here is my website adress: www.thedreamdayproject.com if you would like to check it out!

Thanks for reading!
Lia
 
Yes, the page does expand horizontally as you increase the page. At work I have a 24" monitor so having the page go that wide would be less appealing (though I don't generally have my browser windows maximized).

Using frames for web sites is considered an obsolete practice truthfully. They can be handy, but CSS based layouts are the current trend. iframes also get used, but generally not for the same purpose. I'm not saying you have to start from scratch, though it may not be that much effort to reorganize the pages, I'm just letting you know.

I'm not sure how well some CSS works on frames, but you could try using the CSS property max-width on the frame to keep it from expanding so much on larger browser windows. I don't have time to try this out though to know if it's possible. Maybe another member here knows a way to accomplish this with frames.

As a way to compare tactics, I'll describe how I do my pages. It's based in PHP, which I mostly use to include common areas on the page. PHP has an include function that will let you dump a file's contents at that point on the page. This is similar to your frames. So for each of my pages I have a file similar to this:
PHP: 
include 'head.php'; // which includes an include for the navigation
Page content here
include 'foot.php';
That way I can focus on just the content for each page and forget about the header, navigation, and footer regions of the page. The in the head and foot you include your DOCTYPE, meta info, banner, etc and the foot will have copyright info and any additional navigation.

If your server doesn't happen to support PHP, there's also Server Side Includes (SSI) that can do file inclusion and your server may support it. I'm also not sure what program your using to edit your pages. I use a text editor (BBEdit) for my pages so I'm hand coding everything and have a lot of control.
 
@OP:

There will be more white space (blank screen real estate) based on higher resolution monitors. It's still wise to design your layout for 1024x768 in terms of pixels, as that's more common today than the old 800x600. But users with 1920x1080 or similar will see a smaller version of your web site, which is traditionally pixel based.

You can use proportional fonts but your graphics will always look the same.

You can switch to a liquid layout, i.e. double up the photo strips so they're twice as wide, display them each within inner div's as background images with no width set. Then make use divs to contain the white border elements and black margins on the left/right area, the margins set to a static width unlike the others. This means as a user resizes their browser window smaller, or visits with higher resolution, it'll fill the center content area more (i.e. more photos will display horizontally) and maintain the same basic look (same margin), just wider in the middle area.

Height in your case should be defined by content, i.e. add more if you want it longer, but as I said before if it looks good at 1024x768, no need. I see no way to "stretch" your content as it is now in terms of vertical and I argue it looks fine, as is (my .02)

Or, just live with it, and realize your site will simply look smaller at much higher resolution.

-jim
 
Thank you both for replying!

I never really "learnt" dreamweaver, I just tried a few things out on my own, so I am a little lost when it comes to terms such as php, dic, css etc.

I will see what I can do, but I might come up with another question soon again;-)
 
lia77 said:
Thank you both for replying!

I never really "learnt" dreamweaver, I just tried a few things out on my own, so I am a little lost when it comes to terms such as php, dic, css etc.

I will see what I can do, but I might come up with another question soon again;-)
Click to expand...

See sticky topic in this forum to learn about those.
 
Hi again!

Thanks for the tip! But the thing right now is that I need to have my website looking ok for thursday when I have a presentation of my project.:-(

What do you think I should do??? I dont have the time to go throught all the tutorials right now. How can i change the page size on the index page with the frames?

Or should I start all over? But how?? I have dreamweaver 8, and there are no templates to choose from, should I go for frames or not?

It is funny, the more I work on the website, the more I understand how little i actually know...
 
lia77 said:
Hi again!

Thanks for the tip! But the thing right now is that I need to have my website looking ok for thursday when I have a presentation of my project.:-(

What do you think I should do??? I dont have the time to go throught all the tutorials right now. How can i change the page size on the index page with the frames?

Or should I start all over? But how?? I have dreamweaver 8, and there are no templates to choose from, should I go for frames or not?

It is funny, the more I work on the website, the more I understand how little i actually know...
Click to expand...

This is going to sound harsh, and it is.

Your question about frames being useful or not was answered. You were not advised to start over. You stated you were lost as to certain basic frameworks and development skills so you were given help, then tell us you don't have time.

Then you ask how to increase the frames size, and it's hard to believe you, who designed the page you linked in this topic, could not figure out you simply need to increase the size of the content frame, currently 778, to a larger width. YOU named the frame "ContentFrame" for crying out loud, so I know this isn't a case of a user creating the site via WYSIWYG mode without comprehending at all the design configuration.

What I see here is a user being given copious amounts of help, ignoring every single word because you're under such "stress" to get it done by Thursday, and completely wasting our time. I say this rarely, because I give the new user (to development) the benefit of the doubt they honestly are clueless and mean well, but the difference is --- you're not willing to learn.

Your solution is:

Increase the frameset, get the project OUT THE DOOR for Thursday, then after that read the tutorials, take the time to learn the basics, move to a better template system without relying on one software product (DreamWeaver) which doesn't use outdated frames, and you'll be fine.

I'm sorry if this seriously pissed you off, but this is a teaching and learning forum, we can't help you if you don't help yourself and follow our advice.

-jim
 
Hi Jim!

Your reply made me feel quite bad. I realize now that I was taking out my stress on you guys while you were just trying to help, and that is really bad. And asking for short cuts and not wanting to read the tutorials from scratch is nothing more than laziness...

I guess if somebody would do the same within my field of work, I would have been just as upset as you. If you do want to to learn, there are really no short cuts and you just have to learn it all like everyone else did, one step at a time.

However, I do think that it is abit difficult if you ARE a beginner. I read those replies over and over without understanding. ( and maybe you forgot how it feels since you already know so much about these things)
The word contentframe I just picked up somwhere, and I have absolutely no clue how to change the size of it still... ( if you click on page properties in dreameaver their is nothing telling you the page size, or how to choose "liquid layout" or anything like that.

And when I checked out the beginner links page I saw a page with so many options I had absolutely no idea where to start... Call me dyslectic or whatever, but I dont think I am the only one out there who just thinks this is a jungle of words.

I am sorry if I wasted your time. I worked for 7 years on this art project and I guess I underestimated the time you actually need to put into creating a website for it. (Which might take just as long for me:))

Thanks for writing!

Greetings from sunny Mexico!

Lia
 
I hate to grind on someone, but in the sticky topic with all the helpful links to the tutorials, those tutorials really are are novice based. Meaning, you can argue that we may have forgotten what it's like to be new, but when we advise reading a tutorial and the name of it is, for example, "Introduction to HTML", "Introduction to CSS" and "PHP Beginners Tutorial..." then your argument doesn't hold water. Also, I included many W3C Schools links, which means well written, professional help for novices, directly from the people who create the standards.

We are all 100% compassionate to new users, which is why we include links and explain in depth (sometimes, ad naseum) concepts, often with examples. But development is a technical business - it requires learning specific syntax, attributes, order of things and boring rules as much as it educates people on powerful and interesting concepts. You need to invest the time, start out with the basic tutorials, and you'll find in no time you'll be using Google mostly to reference syntax, like we all do.

Please avoid redirecting your frustrations on the people here trying to help, and you can always use Google also to find other tutorials if you find the W3C basic ones are not suitable for your needs. And, you can't rush this stuff.

You wasted YOUR time, is the point. We have all the time in the world, but when a topic starts going in circles (and you admit why) then we will at least speak up. Nothing personal, please don't take it that way.

Okay, I've said all I needed, and we will continue to assist if you have valid questions - and have fun in Mexico! :) :) ;)

-jim
 
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