[B]the new big thing?[/B]

[Zacku]

Hi
i happened to come across a website : www.homepage.d4a.com, which i feel has the potential to be a big player in the Internet.

I think this site is gonna be useful to us becoz it saves time by lettin us easily click on the links rather writing those addresses into the address bars !!
They have more than 600,000 users as of now and hence i do believe we are seeing the rise of another Great !
Im waiting to recieve your comments on my opinion,
Zac

[TheGodfather]

Hey, thats a good site there, but i dont think its gonna be as good as Google !

[David Harrison]

You're telling me that you have over 600,000 users for what appears to be a single page with just a handful of links on it, are you kidding?

On top of that you're hosting on freewebs, I doubt that you'd have the bandwidth to handle that many users. 600,000 page downloads comes to just over 90GB by the way.

You should definately check out that site in a real browser some time, it looks terrible, and a look at the source code explains why, seems as though you made the page in Microsoft Word.

All you've got is a smattering of links, most of which will be useless to individuals, therefore it's like a very generic, hit and miss bookmarks list.

It's got an OK design though, although as previously mentioned, it only works in IE, but not decent browsers.

[Zacku]

Well.............alrite...........i admit................!
This site is mine and it has NO users at all !!
All this site has recieved is 423 hits !
I dont have the money for a host - so its a free host !
I dont have the money for a domain name - so its a URL redirection !
I dont have amount of visitors I have - so I stuck up with a 6-digit no. !

All i wanted to create was a site with a difference - Im just 16 yrs old so im not a gr8t
programmer so all i cud create was a site with a proper design (I hope atleast my design looks good) - and I think my idea of a site that serves solely as a Home Page wasnt bad. This site loads each time u open a web-browser ( so it helps a person not to type in those addresses, but instead just click on the links to the most frequently visited sites !
But i guess im no good at it now,
Anyway i thank u all !

[David Harrison]

So why not simply say all that in the first place?

Some advice, quit using M$ Office to make pages with, Office is a desktop publishing suite, not a web publishing suite.

There are lots of other programs out there that make creating web-sites easier, though I would stay away from WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) programs, like Frontpage Express and Dreamweaver (although apparently the code view in DW is quite good).

Personally all I use is notepad, but others prefer editors with more features, such as syntax highlighting and tabs. There have been many threads on the forums about which is the best editor to use.

You have some good design skills, so keep at it. If you learn to hand code your sites you can get them to be cross-browser aswell.

[Kevey]

Slow down bro...this site is all about getting punched in the face by your peers. I think you should keep your post bumped and ask questions on how you can improve your design. There is alot of expertise here that can lead you in the right direction and help you make a really cool site. Don't get down cuz people are whacking you...that's kind of what has to happen to get things rolling. I got whacked a bunch of times!

So...what's your main goal for the page? Lots of visitors, or your own personal use? This will give us all a starting point to go from. I am glad to hear you are into programming at 16...very cool.

[Zacku]

thanks to both Kevey and David for your advices and encouragements!
I think i shud learn from my mistakes,
but the problem is even when i introduced my site, i was blamed for using a free web-host, and im not economically sound enough to take a risk,
I know a bit of HTML and lil bit of JavaScript and i am confident that i can hand-code my site, but i thought creating a website in Office would be a lot easier, Can u plzz tell me if there is any advantage in programming by ourselves to using Office?

[David Harrison]

There's a huge advantage to hand-coding it. Office will only produce code that works in IE and WYSIWYG editors concentrate only on the visual side of it and the semantics of the page are left behind, making it harder for non-graphical browsers to access the site.

When you hand code a site, it's easy to test in a variety of browsers throughout the build process maximising the amount of users that can access the site. Also, WYSIWYG editors add lots of unneccesary bloat to a page, sometimes randomly including JavaScript that isn't needed, or an excess of elements on a page where none are needed. A human mind is capable of realising when code is neccessary and when it isn't, machines simply can't do that yet.

At the present time machines only do what they're told to do, they can't work things out for themselves and make a judgement call. When it comes to turning a design into a web-page, there are so many variables involved that it's simply not possible to program them all in, so if you use a program to create a site then you're going to end up with unoptimised code, which will affect search engine rankings and site accessibility to users with non-graphical browsers (such as audio browsers and braille displays).

The best way to go is to learn HTML and CSS yourself, it won't take long to learn it, it will take some time to get used to using them and to work out all of the CSS quirks that IE possesses, but after that it just get's easier. After a few months it'll be like second nature.

There's no problem with using a free host, especially if you've just started, everyone uses free hosts when they start out. But when you announce something as the next big thing, and it's on freewebs ... well, something doesn't click.

I would hold off on using JavaScript for now until you learn how JavaScript affects the accessibility of a page. JavaScript should only be used to augment a page, and the page should still be useable when JavaScript is disabled or not supported. Remember, it's not just blind users that don't have JavaScript enabled, some users choose to disable it, and search engines are just like blind users.

Two last pieces of advice, the first is don't use tables for page layout, use a CSS based layout. Second is to buy a book to get you a good base to build from, I'd recommend Elizabeth Castro's HTML for the World Wide Web 5th Edition with XHTML and CSS. I've got it and it's very good.

[Zacku]

so does making use of Microsoft Frontpage have any advantage disadvantages??

[David Harrison]

Microsoft Frontpage is a WYSIWYG editor, except it's the worst one available.

[pcthug]

Originally Posted by Zacku

so does making use of Microsoft Frontpage have any advantage disadvantages??

Its interface is much the same to all other M$ apps, like word, so it will be simple to learn and use.

As said it is also one of the worst WYSIWYG webpage editors out there, though it is atleast better then Word.

It is also much easier to design in as you get automatic results, drag and drop and absolutly no coding is necesary, although....

*
M$ frontpage creates very dirty code, which can only properly be seen in IE, which excludes all the real browsers: Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc. from seeing your page as you intended.

If there is a problem in your code or on your page you will not have any ideas on how to fix it, as you will not know how to read your html to find the problem.

*
My advice, you should just go out and learn HTML. It is not overally hard, and wont even take that long. Start by checking out W3 Schools HTML tutorial, and continue on from there.

Dont forget the web is packed with HTML tuorials and help, and if youy cant find your answer there, just ask in the HTML forum

[Zacku]

so can u plzz name some very good WYSIWYG??

[ray326]

Probably the best of the WYSIWYG editors is Dreamweaver.


I moved this thread here since it's off topic in Reviews and although it started as a bit of spammage I think the poster's gotten the message and is now simply looking for assistance. == Ray

[Zacku]

My advice, you should just go out and learn HTML. It is not overally hard, and wont even take that long.

Thanks for the advice,
But i know most of the basics in HTML, I was interested in using Office becoz it wud make my work a lot easier !, I wouldnt naturally have to spend all my time and effort on something im not sure whether it will turn out to be successful

[pcthug]

well there are alot of other programs which share the ease of a wysiwyg editor like Frontpage, and that dont produce such bad results, here 3 to name a few:

Dreamweaver, the king of wysiwyg editors, although only 30 day trial
NVU This one is yours to keep, and is'nt that bad.
Golive Another wysiwyg editor, and this one is from the owners of Dreamweaver, but it too is only a Tryout.

All of these produce much cleaner and valid code, and boast many more options and useful things in which FrontP. dosent