your opinion wanted!

[kittymary]

I'm a beginner who taught myself HTML over the summer... I'd be thrilled if you'd review the site I created for a organization I'm in. Besides messing around with trying to design a "personal home page" this is the first site I've created.

www.centralokhomeschoolbands.com (http://www.centralokhomeschoolbands.com)

I just found out 3 days ago when I joined this forum that using tables for layout it considered a bad thing. So...

Anyway, I am open to hear anything you have to say about it and any suggestions to make it better.

[aznchong91]

It's pretty good. I like the format and all. I don't really get it though, about tables being bad for layout...How else would you do the side menus, add stuff to the right, so on?

[KDLA]

To clarify:
Usage of a tables-based layout can cause many accessibility issues. (Test your page for accessibility at http://webxact.watchfire.com/.) In addition, the extra coding for each table row/cell adds to your file's size, making it much slower to download.
CSS positioning is advocated by many in this forum due to its inherently eliminating many Accessibility issues, as well as being just an overall better way to design a page. For more information as to why CSS positioning is endorsed, view the page: http://davespicks.com/essays/notables.html.

Example from your page: Easier for you if you used CSS:

<a href="ardmore.html">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ardmore</a>
The "&nbsp;" would not be needed. A simple tag of "text-indent: 4em;" would suffice, knocking out about 4 characters per link.

Your page design isn't bad. :) The only criticisms I have are don't use Comic Sans MS. It's a very unprofessional font. And, left-align your text, rather than centering it. It is easier to for a reader to quickly scan.

Good Luck!
KDLA

[spufi]

I don't recall clicking on anything for the music to start. I don't see where I can turn it off either. Some people really like to surf the internet with their own music, and music coming from a website interrups that. Beyond the table issue, I am hard pressed to think of when I would really use a <br> tag. <p> tags are probably what you are looking for.

[kittymary]

Did the music really start automatically? :confused:

My embed tag is;

<embed src="stars.mp3" width=100 height=16 autostart="false" loop="false" align="right" volume=50>

So, I'm confused as to why it started automatically, and with no controls.

You know what? I totally agree about the music thing, but the director of the band, really wants to have background music. Thus, I'm not sure what to do...

Thank you all for your comments.

[spufi]

I don't even see where I can click "play" to play background music. I went to the site again, and it kicked in.

[kittymary]

Well, then, if it is "malfunctioning", that gives me a good reason to totally take if off! :) yay! (see my above post)

But seriously, considering my embed tag (my previous post) can any one tell me why it isn't working? I'm new to this all, and I just don't understand!!!!

[KDLA]

The controls appeared for me - top right hand corner in the yellow stripe. Although, the controls that did appear were messed up - cut in half or something.

Attached is a screen shot.

FYI - I have the sound turned off, so I don't know if the music loaded automatically when the page came up or not.

Good Luck!
KDLA

[spufi]

Ah, I see now. What I see in that spot looks almost like a fraction of the AOL logo, so I had no idea what it was suppose to be. I view the site in Firefox. Regardless, the area where the player is needs to be taller so you can actually see it.