Page not displaying correctly

[vbRider]

I am upgrading my company's website. I have created several pages so far. Most look okay when I upload them to the website. A couple though don't look like they did when I created them. The web site URL is www.transpacinc.com. Click the 'next' button, then click the 'Vendor Referral Service' link. Scroll down to find 'Roofing & Waterproofing Consultants'. Notice how the text scrolls over the border. To see what it should look like click the 'Vendor Referral Service' link at the top of the page, then scroll down to 'Security'. That is how the roofing page should look. btw, I used the Security page to create the roofing page. If you would like to see my HTML code I will post it. It is kind of long, so I will only post it if needed. Any help with what might cause this to happen will be greatly appreciated

Thanks,
vbRider

[David Harrison]

No I don't see. What browser and Operating system are you using. I've uploaded two screen shots of what I see, in IE6 and Opera for win XP.

[Charles]

That "border" is nothing more than a very long background image and when your lines of text are longer than that image they will end up on top of them. You need simply to use style sheets. But first you need to learn HTML. Start with a page that is done in HTML 4.01 Strict (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/). (The strict part is important.) And get your page to pass the validator (http://validator.w3.org/) with no errors. Your page should be rather dull at this point but it should make sense. Then use CSS (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/) to add colors and fonts and layout. Yes, you are supposed to use CSS for layout and not TABLEs.

[Fang]

image width 653px table width 750px result = overlap
First error: <!-- Created by Martin Webb 08/22/2003> close with -->

[Charles]

Originally posted by Fang
image width 653px table width 750px result = overlap
First error: <!-- Created by Martin Webb 08/22/2003> close with --> To the contrary, I see two fatal and one minor error on that page that preceed.

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
Thanks for the reply. I am using IE6.0 on a Win95 machine.

Charles,
Thanks for the reply. The problem is that the pages need to look a certain way. That is why I have used pages that already exist to create the ones that I need. I also created the security page the same way and it works fine. I figured I would copy the security page, change the name, change the info contained and all would be good.

thanks again for your help

[vbRider]

Fang,
If I understand you correctly, you are sayin that my background image is only 650 pixels and me text is 750 pixels. I tried reducing my text to 650 pixels thinking that might be the problem. The page did not appear to change. I even deleted the page off of the website, then loaded a brand new page, the one that is there now, still no change.

[Charles]

Originally posted by vbRider
I figured I would copy the security page, change the name, change the info contained and all would be good. Not good. Thanks to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act your web page needs to be accessible and a page in valid HTML 4.01 is important to accessibility. See the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/).

And it's quite simple to use CSS to achieve the same visual results. More simple even than the methods you are trying to use.

[David Harrison]

I realise that charles is trying to get you to change your code and I won't interfer with that, but if you post a screen shot of what you are seeing I could probably help you further.
To take a screen shot press the:

Prt Scr
Sys Rq

button on the keyboard, then paste the image into paint or something and save it.

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
Thaks for the reply, Here is the screen shot of what I see when I look at this page on the website. In case I did not mention it when I look at this page on my local machine straight from my hard drive(not from the web) it looks correct.

thanks,

[David Harrison]

Where did you say it was again?

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
I just noticed that there is a size limit on attachments. The bmp is way over the limit. let me see if I can shrink it down a lot

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
Sorry, can't get the bmp to fit the size limit of this board.

[David Harrison]

Well bmp's are huge files, so don't save it as a bmp. Try saving it as a jpg or gif. If you can try and save it as a png.

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
Unfortunately I do not have any other apps to change my .bmp to any other format. Any other ideas?

Thanks

[David Harrison]

Not even paint?

[Charles]

Originally posted by vbRider
Any other ideas? Use valid HTML 4.01 and position that border using CSS.

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
Paint won't let me save it in any other format besides .bmp or .dib which is the same size. aargghh

thanks,

[David Harrison]

Well in that case go to WinZip.com (http://www.winzip.com/), download WinZip&reg; and zip the file to make it smaller.

[Charles]

Originally posted by lavalamp
Well in that case go to WinZip.com (http://www.winzip.com/), download WinZip&reg; and zip the file to make it smaller. Or he could simply post the BMP image on his web site and give us the URL. But Fang and I have already correctly diagnosed the problem ... and I have given the solution.

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
Doh!! why didn't I think of that. Here we go, it should be attached to this post as a .zip file.

Thanks again

[David Harrison]

I realise that you have given an answer, bu vbRider doesn't seem convinced. I personally would use CSS, but maybe vbRider doesn't want to learn it.

There's someone in my form at school, he got 10 A*'s at GCSE (Pulic Exams taken at the age of 16), and he's going to get 5 A's at A-Level (Public exams taken at the age of 18). And yet still he refuses to use ANY CSS.

He runs this site:

eXsanity (http://www.exsanity.freeola.com/)

and he co-runs this site:

WeeAmWe (http://www.geocities.com/weeamwe/)

It just goes to show that no matter how smart someone is, it doesn't mean to say that they will use CSS on their web-sites.

[Charles]

If someone trying to affix a board with some screws were to ask you to hand him or her a hammer and you have a screw driver as well, Which tool would you hand over?

[David Harrison]

Well I've tried to hand this guy a screw driver many times, but he just throws it back at me.

I do suggest using CSS in posts where it would be appropriate, however since you have already done this I didn't see the point, two screw drivers wouldn't get the job done any quicker.

In any case, if vbRider doesn't want to use CSS, I would say to use a td cell all the way down the right hand side of the content. This way the source for the page would still be very similar to all of the other pages but the content wouldn't go over the background.

[vbRider]

Charles,
When fang posted his observations you said, and I quote"To the contrary, I see two fatal and one minor error on that page that preceed." Yet you fail to mention what the two fatal and one minor error are! If none of the pages that I created worked then I would be more willing to go with your suggestion of using css. But beings how only two of the ten or more pages that I have created using my technique do not display properly then css is not the only answer. That and your rather snide comments at the beginning of all this has rather turned me off to your suggestions. Lavalamp has at least shown that he would really like to help me solve my problem with the tools that I have available at this time.

[Charles]

Originally posted by lavalamp
I would say to use a td cell all the way down the right hand side of the content. This way the source for the page would still be very similar to all of the other pages but the content wouldn't go over the background. That's not going to do the trick. As the "border" is actually a part of the background the table will continue to be displayed on top. The whole problem is that the way the page is done now the "border" will always be a set number of pixels to the right of the left edge of the page. And you cannot keep a table from expanding as necessary, pushing text over that "border" from time to time. No, he needs to affix that "border" to the right side of the page, which he can only do by using CSS. Or he needs to nest DIVs and draw the border as the right side border of two DIV's.

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
At the moment the page has two columns set up on it. If I am understanding you correctly I should set up a third column down the right hand side and place the graphics in that column?

Again thanks for all your help and patience

[David Harrison]

Since you have nested tables, I tried to recreate the general jist of the source. This is what I mean:

Edit: If you would like I could just as easily create a div + CSS based layout, if your interested in converting.

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
I checked out your attachment. If I understand this correctly. I basically but everything that I need displayed in the area that says 'content'. Correct?

also I am going to attach the code to the page that is giving me problems to this post.

But one thing I still do not understand. Why do the pest control, tree care, and security pages work when they were created the same way as the roof page, which does not work, was?

[David Harrison]

Without going over the source in great detail I won't be able to "diagnose" the problem, and even after going over it I still may not spot anything. It could just be one of those things that can never be answered.
I won't be able to do a thorough check of your source until tomorrow, it's getting kind of late (23:09) and I'm tired.

Yes, you were right about the layout I uploaded, but you may want to change some nubers around.

One last thing. Yeeeehaaaaw, post 1000. :D :D :D

[vbRider]

It looks like I am 8 hours behind you (it's a little aftere 3pm here) so I won't be back in my office until about 4 pm your time.

Congrats on 1000!!!!!!

[David Harrison]

You go into work at 4PM? That's a little late isn't it. I finish school at 3:45.

I'll try an sift out the error by tomorrow.

[vbRider]

4pm your time is 8am my time. I am on the west coast of the US.

[spufi]

Ok, here's some stuff even though they don't technically help you solve your problem.

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp

Check out that link and learn how to define font attributes using CSS. This will cut down on your code big time.

I would change your initial listings of the partners. Give rid of what you have and then just list the names using a unordered list. This way, if you ever need to add, or delete a name, it will make it many times easier to do so in the initial listing. You are providing the rest of the info later on anyway, why repeat yourself?

Even if you just use CSS for fonts, get rid of all of the those <br> tags and use them only when you really need to. I was reworking your code and I got rid of 90 some percent of them.

Use more header tags, ie <h1>, <h2>, etc. to define things like the name of the companies.

I'll continue to play around with using CSS on your site for kicks and I might post it later on.

EDIT: I almost forgot, you need to watch what tags you open and don't close. It could lead to a big mess later on.

[David Harrison]

I think that everyone is somewhat missing the point. If someone is just starting a web-site then I would strongly suggest them to use CSS, simply for ease of use and it is easy to update.

However if someone has aready got a layout that they have in use on many pages then it is very labour intensive to convert over to CSS.

vbRider has already been nudged, prodded and poked in the direction of CSS, I'm sure that if he wants to know more about it he will ask.

[Charles]

Originally posted by lavalamp
However if someone has aready got a layout that they have in use on many pages then it is very labour intensive to convert over to CSS.Yes, it's labour intensive - at first - but it sure beats the cost and hassle of a civil rights complaint. Courts have been pretty clear that since an accessible web site is easier from the get go you cannot use the fact that retro-fiting is a hassle as an excuse.

[David Harrison]

No way, you can actually go to court for not using CSS!!! Hahaha what a screwed up rule.

So if I was american and set up a little geocities site for fun and used tables for layout, and the font tag etc. I could be taken to court?

[vbRider]

Lavalamp,
Good Morning, Thanks for all your help. Actually as I was checking through some other posts on this site I saw the link to www.w3schools.com/css. I have the link in my favorites list and plan on going through the tutorials as time permits. And your right, if this was my own personal website I would have stopped development until I learned 4.01 and CSS, but it isn't and the president of the company wants it a certain way (basically the way it is) and just wants the vendor list updated.

[Charles]

Originally posted by lavalamp
So if I was [A]merican and set up a little geocities site for fun and used tables for layout, and the font tag etc. I could be taken to court? The US Laws are much more relaxed than those of the UK in these matters. Only certain enterprises are required to be accessible in the US. Title I applies to employers of 15 or more persons, Title II applies to governments and Title III applies to public accomodations. A commercial enterprise is a public accomodation but a private club or religious organization is not.

[David Harrison]

If I spot anything in the source I'll let you know. By the way, can I recommend coding in XHTML 1.1, it's the newest version of XHTML to date and will eventually, (with any luck), replace HTML.
It's not that much different to HTML 4.01 Strict, but closed all tags must be closed, (even things like img tags), like this:

<img src="123.gif" alt="123" />
<br />

etc.

but other tags, (like p), are still written like this:

<p></p>
<li></li>

etc.

[vbRider]

Are there any browser restrictions to be aware of when using XHTML?

[vbRider]

Oh and another thing, do you still use CSS with XHTML?

[pyro]

Yes, CSS can certainly be used with XHTML. Also, a valid XHTML page (especially when CSS is used for layout) will be accessable on nearly all, if not all mediums.

[vbRider]

thanks Pyro,
See you all Monday

[Charles]

Originally posted by vbRider
Are there any browser restrictions to be aware of when using XHTML? XHTML &trade; 1.1 is simply XHTML &trade; 1.0 Strict and XHTML &trade; 1.0 is simply an XML version of HTML 4.01. As such XHTML &trade; 1.1 will look exactly like HTML 4.01 strict to browsers that don't know about XML, almost. See http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#guidelines for the offical list of the "almost".

[Charles]

Originally posted by vbRider
Oh and another thing, do you still use CSS with XHTML? XHTML &trade; 1.1 has no other way to specify presentation.