Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Test Version Of New Website Design
07-17-2008, 12:54 AM
A complete copy of the newly-redesigned website is now available for browsing at http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/test]%[link=http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/test]http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/test] -- I would greatly appreciate it if people could take the time to click around in it and let me know in this thread if anything breaks.
Thank you!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 1,449
Threads: 137
Joined: May 2007
Reputation:
0
Hey Bob!
You gots yerself a broken link there, you do. If, from the main page, you click on Miscellanea up top, and from there attempt to click on Bio, you get a 404.
That particular link is looking for a page titled "bobpeg.html"; your actual bio page seems to be (strangely enough) "bio.html"
If I find any more breaky bits I'll post 'em.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Some of the pictures in the Drunkard's Walk Gallery are missing... (i.e., 2nd pic of Sailor Loon.)
_____
DEATH is Certain. The hour, Uncertain...
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Okay, I'll deal with both of those some time this morning. Lunch at the latest. The picture issues, I think I know... I probably have case issues on the
file names. Case makes no difference of course with local files, but as soon as it goes out on the Unix system where my site's hosted, boom.
Thanks!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Okay, I've made fixes for the two problems cited above. And I'm trying to upload them to the site, but FTP from work seems to be deliberately choked to
a crawl. It'll get up there, sooner or later.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Update: Don't test the site until tonight. The FTP connection was so choked and slow that my site host closed it before most of the files could be uploaded. I'm not even sure what's up there right now.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Last night I noticed that, on the bio page, the right margin for the photo was pretty much non-existent under Firefox 2 & 3 Under IE7 it was much smaller
than the left and bottom ones. Also, the top margin is very tight under IE7. Looking at the code, you are using the depreciated hspace img option. Have you
considered using the css margin command for that image? If not, you do need to increase the hspace from 5 to better balance the right margin of the text in the
block in a non-IE browser. Also, if you are going to use hspace you should consider using vspace to try and even the image margins.
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Okay first thing: You can start hammering the test site again. I finally got home and got everything copied back out with the changes.
Second: Quote:Looking at the code, you are using the depreciated hspace img option. Have you considered using the css margin command for that image? If not, you do need to increase the hspace from 5 to better balance the right margin of the text in the block in a non-IE browser. Also, if you are going to use hspace you should consider using vspace to try and even the image margins.
I'm slowly learning css by trial and error. I have no reason not to implement what you suggest save not knowing the command in question or how to use it. If you could offer a snippet of (pseudo)code so I can see what to do with it, I'd be happy to implement it.
Once again everyone, thank you!
(And remember, starting tomorrow I'll be offline for a week or so.)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Oh, btw, folks might want to check out the Gallery page, as there are now two new images on it -- both by Dave Menard. Well, "new" in terms of being
available to anyone other than me.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 24,888
Threads: 2,045
Joined: Feb 2005
Reputation:
12
Quote:Oh, btw, folks might want to check out the Gallery page, as there are now two new images on it -- both by Dave Menard. Well, "new" in terms of being available to anyone other than me.
That caused me to find a broken link.
Right now in the bullet item under Kat, you've got
Dave Menard,
Which tries to find a page at
http://home.eclipse.net/~rms/test/image ... index.html
which doesn't exist.
That link should be
Dave Menard,
Edit:
And again - the ink in the third bullet under Shadowwalker tries to reach http://home.eclipse.net/~rms/test/image ... tions.com/
And the link in the first bullet under Sailor Loon tries for http://home.eclipse.net/~rms/test/image ... efault.htm
(This one needs a link updating: http://www.nucleus.com/~dinnigan/fanart.htm )
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Bob,
Unfortunately, the browsers don't properly use padding and margins the same, so there is no easy way to make everything lineup. You can make it "good enough" though.
You will need to modify your stylesheet.css
1) Add the following:
img.floatleft {
float: left;
margin: 0 0.8em 0 0;
}
This will create an img class that we will apply to the photo. The photo will "float: left" so that text will flow around the image on the right side. The right margin is set to 0.8em. Use em so that the spacing will adjust if a user changes the fontsize. As IE7 and Mozilla/Firefox use the padding/margins differently this will go towards making it look better in IE7. While is will work in Mozilla/Firerfox it won't be quite lined up.
2) change the mainContent section:
padding: 20px 0 0 10px;
This will set the top padding to 20px and the left padding to 10px. Again you can play with this to get it the way you want.
Now you will need to modify the bio.html file:
1) Change your DOCTYPE to:
See: http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html
The DOCTYPE you are using is not listed on the w3c.org website and some browsers will go into "Quirk Mode" if the DOCTYPE is not one of the ones listed by w3c.org.
2) Change the for the photo to:
[img]images/bobpeg.jpg[/img]
This will use the new img class so that the margins are set for the image.
These settings look better in IE7 than Mozilla/Firefox but you can play with the margins and padding to see how they change the page.
Keith
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Thanks, Keith. I'll give that a try right away.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 24,888
Threads: 2,045
Joined: Feb 2005
Reputation:
12
Quote: margin: 0 0.8em 0 0;
...
padding: 20px 0 0 10px;
Better to pick one unit of measurement and stick with it - ems (em), pixels (px), centimeters (cm), or inches (in). (Does CSS still support inches, BTW?) That way there's consistency in the way the browser lays out the page.
I tend to use ems, since they look the same on screen and on paper. (Edit: You never know how big a pixel is on paper because printers have different DPI capabilities, or what the screen's display driver is going to decide how big a centimeter or inch is on your monitor, but ems vary only by the font you use.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Quote:Better to pick one unit of measurement and stick with it - ems (em),
pixels (px), centimeters (cm), or inches (in). (Does CSS still support
inches, BTW?) That
way there's consistency in the way the browser lays out the page.
True, however, in this case the 20px is because the text will "slide" under the menu if we adjust all the settings to 0 and using an em will move the text up or down with a fontsize change allowing the text to move back under the menu. By forcing a px offset the text size can still be changed to a smaller size without this problem.
Posts: 1,449
Threads: 137
Joined: May 2007
Reputation:
0
Speaking of CSS... we've been using this tool at work, since it generates just the HTML/CSS we need (rather than filling page after page with proprietary
junk). Dunno if you want to use it or not, but thought I'd pass it along since hand-coding CSS menus are a pain. CSS Menu Generator
Aside from that... I haven't found any further problems since you fixed the last batch. And I have now re-read DWII -again-. Completely.
It took longer than I thought it would. Heh.
--sofaspud
-- "Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Mm. Thanks for the link -- obviously I'm not about to make use of it right away, but it's a good resource to know about.
As for problems, well, I wrote up a whole list of them just last night and have fixed most of them. As I go through things I find little stuff here and there, and the occasional big thing.
What kind of big things? Well, here's one. It was, best as I can recall, a design decision I made deliberately, but I'm thinking that from the point of view of interface design it was a mistake: I eliminated the chapter submenus for the DW stories on all pages below the top page. I'm thinking now I should correct that and put the chapter submenus on all the pages. But what do people think?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 24,888
Threads: 2,045
Joined: Feb 2005
Reputation:
12
Quote:I'm thinking now I should correct that and put the chapter submenus on all the pages. But what do people think?
Consistency in a design is good...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Which is of course the source of my tsouris on the issue.
I'm probably going to put those submenus in unless someone can give me a very good reason not to.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Turns out I can give me a good reason not to. Because I can't centralize them into a single include file thanks to the vagaries of HTML, I would have to update each and every page on the website individually any time I add a chapter to a DW story.
Grrr. I'll be the first to admit that consistency in interface is better. But I don't want to have to do all that work.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 1,449
Threads: 137
Joined: May 2007
Reputation:
0
Bob? Does your server support Server-Side Includes (SSI)? Most *nix-based servers do out of the box, and Windoze based ones can be made to. I dunno who your
provider is, so I can't check myself...
At any rate, if it does, you *can* use one file to do it. I did this all the time on my old site.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
I'll have to find out. Thanks for the tip, Spud.
(later) It is indeed. I now just have to figure out how to use it. Any suggestions for good books or websites on the subject to check out? At least before I
resort to Google?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 1,449
Threads: 137
Joined: May 2007
Reputation:
0
Well, it in part depends on the server setup. However, it's usually of the form:
(this is taken from the source of my old site -- the menu was standardized across all pages, and for each one I simply included this line in the appropriate
spot).
The target of the link is simply a file containing the block of HTML you want included at that position.
Oh, and, on the server I had the file needed to have an extension of .shtml instead of .html to make the server parse it properly.
I don't really have any documentation to point you at, but if it doesn't work out of the box I'll be surprised (and I'll poke around to see
what I can figure out, heh).
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Sofaspud is correct. Also, Bob, the code you are having the server insert has nothing but the section of code needed, no doctype, header information, etc.
When I've used it in the past I've used .htmlf as the extension letting me know that it is an html fragment not a full webpage. The way SSI works, at
least under Apache, I've not used IIS, is that the site administrator tells Apache what extension(s) to look for to know when to scan. Normally, most
sites use .sht and .shtml tell the server to scan the webpage before sending it and to look in the page for the #include "command". If one is found
then it will insert the file listed in the link as if it were typed in from the beginning. If you name the original file something other than the selected
extension(s) the server will not scan the file and nothing will be included. (With Apache you could use the XBitHack, if turned on, to not have to rename all
your pages but you'd have to have chmod access to the files to set the x bit.)
One caveat, make sure that the server is powerful enough to handle the load as the file has to be scanned and manipulated for each connection. As you appear
to be using a hosting site that should not be a problem. With that said, SSI is very powerful. At work we use it to generate the whole main page. Everything
is made up of .htmlf files loaded around the "wrapper" main page. That way we can change the layout without worrying about the information being
lost during a change. The information just "flows" into the new layout so no cutting and pasting from one file to another when making major layout
changes.
Edit -- Fixed typos and made thoughts clearer.
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Thanks, guys. I'll work up a set of test files and see if I can make it all work by lunch.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Posts: 27,163
Threads: 2,254
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
21
Okay, update. I did up a quick set of test files, uploaded them through the abysmally slow FTP connection (it's gotta be deliberate, I swear it), and did a couple tests.
It works, but it's slow. Then again, that may be another artifact of the fascist control over the Net at my job. I'll try again from home tonight. The important part, though is ... it works.
Yay.
And thanks, everyone.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
|
