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Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 7/17/2007 7:31:34 AM
Posts: 4,
Visits: 44
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| Hi all - And a big thank you to Dustin for his works of encouragement and of course those great tutorials.... I persevered and managed to work my from tutorial to tutorial... overcoming at times unexplainable hiccups. Anyway, its just "live" and has exceeded my expectations for a first attempt. www.4sight.eu I think I'm mad/brave enough to accept criticism from anyone prepared to offer any.... so fire away. Interestingly, it took me longer to write the content and to source or create the images than the actual Expression Web coding etc. A couple of things I was keen to try out was:- - text and layers that coped with varied viewer window/screen size... and heh - it seems to work. That includes the sky with cloud banner I created with a wrap-under right layer section in blue (which one isn't supposed to see the join of....)
- navigation options for the viewer i.e. wherever possible more than one way for the viewer to make their way around. For example, I created a 'tour'-like series of windows where one could go from page to page in a kind of sequence, as well as a graphical jigsaw image that I embedded hotspots so people could click and head to wherever they wanted to go directly. (under "marketing services")
My two next tasks will be to have roll-over navigation menus as well as a more punchy home page......  As I start to explore the rollover menus I'll be reading through other content in this forum as well as checking out other tutorials. Wish me luck. BTW, when I looked at this before it seemed to me that EW copes with them easily in .aspx but not in the .htm / .dwt master page combination. Is this right or anyone who can give me some pointers. Anyway - enjoy yourself. All the best, Tim
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Supreme Being
Group: Administrators
Last Login: 10/24/2008 2:27:36 PM
Posts: 437,
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I'm following you right, that this is your first site Tim? This is a pretty great first site really, so congrats on that.
Some comments;
I would set that cloud image to the background of that div, instead of inserting it into a div, that way you won't get the scroll bar on the bottom of the site if the browser window width is less than width of the image.
Also, great job on attempting to do a fluid layout with your first site, that's a big hurdle that I just posted to someone else about on the forum. However, as I pointed out in my other post, the biggest obstacle with fluid layouts is to make sure you control the max and minimum width. Right now I can make the line lengths extremely long, or I can really destroy the site by making my browser window small enough. Now granted, hardly any user will probably have a browser window small enough to make the site break as such, but its still something you'll want to control and protect yourself, your site, and your user from.
It looks like you have some heights defined that are are interferring with your right column sometimes. On this page for example, if I make me browser window long enough (but not long enough to get rid of the horizontal scroll bar), the footer comes up and runs underneath of the right column. I didn't pour through the code, but most likely this is due to having conflicting heights. Unless necessary you should just avoid setting heights on your divs to avoid these problems.
I think my other comment would just be to give a bit more space around certain things. For example the footer can run really close to the end of the content most of the time, I'd give that a little more breathing room. Or on your blue block on the home page, I'd give that a little more space on the outside of the box, and on the inside of the box to bring that text off the boundaries of your blue box.
All and all though, you've done a good job. Its pretty easy to navigate through, and you're thinking it through. Good work and good luck as you continue to work on it.
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My wife has given birth to our twins, so I'm still going to be spotty around here. It never seems to correct itself does it? I'm sorry, I'm trying.
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Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 7/17/2007 7:31:34 AM
Posts: 4,
Visits: 44
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| Yes, it was my first ever web site - so delighted it works. And thanks for the words of encouragement from Dustin. But I guess the real proof of how 'good' it is will be in the responses we get from prospects that then become customers ! I'll take on board your comments and see what I can do to tidy the code up. FYI, over the past couple of days I've been going through the code and doing some 'housekeeping' - not an easy task for an untrained eye ! One area that stood out to be looked at and I'm working through is the trail of additional (and often duplicate) styles that are added automatically each time the text is changed - on each and every page. Instead, I aim to have one set of commonly used/standard styles on a separate style sheet. On one page it was up to .style34 !! I'm already thinking ahead to what to do on the site next - for example content that will be updated regularly and of genuine interest to customers i.e. a reason to keep coming back..... and the keep the 'relationship' two way and dynamic. I have two "technical" questions:- - I've found a dynamic roll-over menu (i.e. hovering over main choice dynamically shows sub-options below) creating utility "UltraMenu" http://www.antssoft.com/ultramenu/index.htm which seems OK for my needs and is not too pricey. But: When testing it out in IE7 I have been getting a pop-up bar security warning re: ActiveX each time I reloaded it. My IE security settings are not excessive so I wonder if this means that just about anyone who arrives at www.4sight.eu will receive a similar off-putting warning - and be forced to make a decision as to if its safe... And just for a menu ? This to me doesn't seem right. Any thoughts ?
- On some of my images (positioned in layers of course !) I have created dynamic hotspots with clickable hyperlinks to other pages (as part of the navigation set up). They work fone, but every time an image has a polygon hotspot drawn on it, when viewed in IE there now appears a blue border around the image. Looks like a border, acts like a border, but is not a border as far as the properties are concerned.... Mmmmm. No matter what I do, I can't get rid of them. Any ideas ? Here's an example page with one in it: http://www.4sight.eu/marketing/market_analysis/market_analysis.htm
Any help or ideas much appreciated. Tim
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Supreme Being
Group: Administrators
Last Login: 10/24/2008 2:27:36 PM
Posts: 437,
Visits: 632
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Well, here's two answers for you;
As to your ActiveX problem unfortunately, yes, everyone (using IE6 and IE7) will see this message for certain types of scripts and objects. Basically this is a result of a patent lawsuit that Microsoft lost, and this change actually took place in IE6 as a service update. This is one of the reason scripts like the SWFObject got so popular, to avoid users getting these messages when you use Flash on a website. Microsoft is supposed to have an article on their site to get around this, but the link seems dead. I'm sure its still on there somewhere, but I don't know where at the moment.
And as for the blue border, the way I've always solved this is to add border="0" when I insert my image in the html file. I'm sure there's another way to control that, but that's how I've always handled it.
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My wife has given birth to our twins, so I'm still going to be spotty around here. It never seems to correct itself does it? I'm sorry, I'm trying.
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Forum Guru
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 8/29/2007 6:36:38 AM
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Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 7/17/2007 7:31:34 AM
Posts: 4,
Visits: 44
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| Thanks too for the words of encouragement. Much appreciated. I tried to take a look at your site (pm 10/05/07) from the link embedded in the text and received an error message as indicated below:- I'll try taking a look again in a day in the hope that it will be live then... to cast a very untrained eye, of course ! Good luck to you too. Definitely worth persevering - I did and it was worth it in the end. Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".
<!-- Web.Config Configuration File --><configuration> <system.web> <customErrors mode="Off"/> </system.web></configuration> |
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
<!-- Web.Config Configuration File --><configuration> <system.web> <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/> </system.web></configuration> |
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