Web pages

[Patryn]

I always thought personal homepages were kind of lame no matter who does them, so don't take this personally, okay hon? I mean, even the best of them really have no content. Think about it...how interesting is it, even if you know someone, to look at pics of them, or read their bios more than once.

I had one up for about a year...no dice. It was kind of a hybrid personal and E/N site, mostly me just playing with HTML, graphics apps, and the like. Never really expected to get a ton of hits. The final layout I had was pretty cool though, if I do say so myself....and I'm probably the only one who did...haha.

If you can, make your site interactive. Put up some games or something....there's some good ones at http://**********.internet.com/ It shows you how to install them, so it shouldn't be too hard, even if you have no experience. Also, it's ususally a good idea to make your links open in a new window...keep your site accessible in the background.

It's usually helpful as well, to think about what YOU like to see on pages, personal or otherwise, and try to incorporate that. HTH...if you need any advice or just get tired of doing it...I do freelance design work, so give me an e-holler if you'd like to.

 

[Endlessly]

Funnyguy? The program you sent me didn't work, but I've been playing around with Flash anyway.. And SO cannot understand a fucking thing.

Oh well.

Thanks though!

 

[Patryn]

Hey Endlessly...what do you need? I have Flash, and I consider myself a little above average with it...maybe I could help you out.

 

[Endlessly]

Patryn.. That would be the BEST.

I put an animated GIF in a movie, yes? And I wanted to add another in the same movie, have them going off at the same times, you know? But only one will animate. I don't get it.

 

[Patryn]

You need to make a new layer for the second gif. Flash is kind of "all or nothing" like that. Just put them both starting on the same frame in their respective layers and you shouldn't have any problems.

If you need anything done, my rates are reasonable.

 

[April]

Hecate, I'm so sorry about the guestboo. It's my fault. I was trying to make it smaller, but it didn't look good. I forgot what the original settings were, and had to delete and then put it back. So that's what happened to your entry. Hope you forgive me?

Patryn, I'm going to figure out how to make the links open in a new window. I hate that myself. The opening in the same window, that is. That's why I put up the warning. Although, you can get around that by right clicking on the link and selecting open in new window. Well, it's good for me to have a project! It keeps me thinking and busy, which is good.

 

[Lasher]

Patryn, I'm going to figure out how to make the links open in a new window

That's an easy one, April. Say you wanted Literotica to open in a new window - your whole link would look like this (minus anything special you'd want to do with the font):

<A HREF="http://www.literotica.com" target="_blank">Literotica</A>

It's the target="_blank" deal that opens a new window for ya.

On the other subject. I still do most of my HTML coding in Notepad. Fortunately for me, most new pages I add to my site are copies of previous pages, so it's just a matter of changing a few lines of text. I've had Dreamweaver 3 on my computer for about 4 months now, and I just haven't had the patience to get comfortable with it. Although it's great for verifying links, LOL.

I suppose if I had 4500 pages on my site and was adding more everyday, I'd get comfortable with it in a hurry. But I've only got about 60 or so and I just stick to what works for me.

That's the important thing, being comfortable with what you're doing.

 

[Guest]

*cough*
*cough*
http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/hans/

*evil snickers*

 

[Johnny Ringo]

Good start

It is a good start.

I started my page many years ago, (1996 or 97) while I was still using web TV. Since then I bought a PC and learned alot. The web page is now a monster with a live of it's own. It now has intenational exposure. I have also built pages for other people. And create web graphics for other folks. Even at one time had some graphics on the Jerry Lee Lewis homepage until the "Killer" fired the webmaster.

I could answer some questions.

http://www.johnnyringo.com

 

[Never]

Laura, oh Laura! *Knows this is the beginning of a show tune, or the like, but can't recall the words* Would you be kind enough to tell me how to make a text link without the line underneath? *points to the words 'contact us' and 'submissions'*
There's that word again, I wonder if it's some Freudian thing.
Anyway, thank you in advance and thank you for the e-mail. When I couldn't get on the BB I was worried that the narks had busted down your door were interrogating you under hot lamps about the cocaine residue found in a bottle of Cherry AnalEaz.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Patryn]

Never...you need to use a style sheet and it only works in IE. E-mail me if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

 

[Laurel]

Patryn, you're fast! Yes, it's a style sheet code. However, it's an embeddd CSS command that doesn't rely on external style sheets, so it seems to work in later versiona of Netscape.

Never - paste this into the header of your HTML document (not the lines, lol):

------

<style type="text/css"><!--a { text-decoration: none }
--></style>

------

People - go to that link Lasher suggested - http://www.htmlgoodies.com - and go through the tutorial. It's easy, it's even fun (the guy's got a good sense of humor, and explains things well), and will give you a working knowledge of HTML. Then cruise around the web. When you see something you like, you can look at the source of a web page (it's under "View" in Netscape, I think it's there also in IE) and try to figure out what's going on. You can even save someone else's webpage to your hard drive - not to appropriate it as your own (that's baaad!) but to open it in a program like Dreamweaver and try to figure out how they do things. I've learned a lot from doing that.

If a page uses Flash or a lot of ********** or something crazy, you won't be able to tell much from the source. But with most pages, it'll be helpful. HTML is NOT that complicated. There's thousands of commands, but only a handful of them are used on a regular basis. If you're going to spend a lot of time making webpages, you should get a reference full of all the HTML codes and their usage, and probably a java reference of the same.

Patryn - I'm learning style sheets right now on a site I'm building and am getting frustrated because though will they not work in Netscape, they still override the font & style tags I manually add. It's driving me crazy! Any thoughts on why this may be happening would be appreciated.

 

[funny_guy]

Oy, I leave for a few days, and everyone you guys start talking about web paging, a topic that I really would enjoy discussing. a) I knew all that stuff, you just didn't give me a chance to answer. b) I just use Homesite's html interface to manualy enter it in, and then make templates for repeated stuff. Piece of cake. c) style sheets rock, and <font> is becoming obsolete. My recomendation (and you don't have to take it, I'm used to been rejected) is to not learn a thing about font tags and just concentrate on style sheets, because once you have them down, you can do stuff a lot more easily and quickly than manualy entering in the font tags. And you can rearange your page (the way it looks) down to the PIXEL!! No matter what browser people are using. Anyway, enough ranting. Flash rules, ActionScript kicks ass and WYSIWYG can go to hell.

 

[Patryn]

You can do all sorts of things with a style tag...highlight the background behind text, use a strikeout on mouse over...play around with it, and yes, read some tutorials.

 

[Svedish_Chef]

Did I mention my hompage is

http://homes.acmecity.com/felicity/covington/160/index.html

And anyone who can save me from the F'n banners doubling up when I use the internal links would be very much appreciated.


Da Chef

 

[Lasher]

Style Sheets are great - if everyone that visits your site is using a 4.0 Browser (IE or Netscape) or higher. Problem is that I know from looking at my stats that on any given day 25-35% of visitors are not. And while I can't understand why anyone wouldn't take the time to upgrade their browser (Well, except for Netscape 6.0 - I can understand why noboby would want to upgrade to that piece of shit)- there are plenty of people out there who don't.

Hell, I got some shit who regularly visits my site using Netscape 1.1! God only knows what he sees when he gets there, but apparently it's pretty fucking entertaining to him.

Oh, along with what Laurel said about checking out HTML Goodies ( http://www.htmlgoodies.com ), another thing to keep in mind is checking to see how your site looks in other browsers. I do my surfing in IE 5, so my site is optimized to look best in IE. However, just because a page looks good in IE 5 does not mean it's gonna look good in earlier versions of IE, or Netscape (especially Netscape) or other browsers. I try to take some time once a week to surf my site in 2 other browsers - Netscape 4.7 (Netscape seems to be the browser that's strictest about using proper HTML coding. Several times I've had pages that worked fine in IE, but gave me nothing but a blank page in Netscape) and Opera. It'll save ya some heartache in the long run, trust me.

 

[Patryn]

Well, Lasher, you have a point. Thing is, if you use style sheets/tags and you have a Netscape/other use, they'll just see a normal link. But yeah, when my site was up, I too did it in IE when I first launched it, and because of an unclosed <table> tag, I had a blank page. On another page, I had the alignment wrong, so I had 2 tables overlapping each other. Odd thing is, no one e-mailed me and told me about it...hmm...could they have thought that it was supposed to be that way? Haha....makes ya wonder.

That Netscape 1.1 user wouldn't be on WebTV, would they? I know WebTV uses IE2, so...

 

[April]

Well, I've added two new pages to the mess I created. It's amazing what you can do when you can't sleep! I'm not telling what they are about. You'll just have to go and see. I'll let you know right now, though, that one of the pages is not working exactly right. I will fix it, but not right now. Another guest book has been added, but don't use it, as I will be getting rid of it. I should be getting off to bed now, as my hubby will probably get pissed that I stayed up!

 

[ShyGuy68]

Ooops

April.

I just tried to acces your webpage again, but all I get is an error message.

I hope you'll be abel to fix it.

ShyGuy

 

[Xander]

Ahem hem hem

Ehhhh...April. Why have you set up a password access on your site??
Don't want us to come in any more??? You don't like us any more??? Do I smell or something???

*pout pout* April not likey little Xander any more ???*waaaaaaaaaaaaaa*

 

[Firesprite]

I learnt HTML at HTML goodies too!

I use notepad.

I have found Thumbprint to be easy to use to make thumbnails quickly and easily.. there is a shareware version out there somewhere.. I think I found it at http://www.tucows.com (and yes I have registered it!)

If you need to make good meta tags you can have them done for you at http://www.scrubtheweb.com they have a very good little free programe on there.

In IE to view the source, the easiest way is to right click on the page and select "view source" it will come up in notepad.

feel free to steal any of my html.. I know it isn't flash (excuse the pun) but I am still pretty new at web design myself!

 

[Lasher]

LMAO...

No one ever tells ya when you fuck up, Patryn. I had a </table> tag missing on the page that lists all my link categories and such - you can't really navigate the site if you can't see what's there. It wasn't a problem in IE, but in Netscape it left a blank page. For 2 weeks no one said a damn thing. I could see that the number of Unique visitors to my site was where it should be, but the number of page visits was way down. Someone finally pointed it out to me, and then I had to go thru the gruesome task of trying to find the problem, LOL.

Oh, the guy that uses Netscape 1.1 has it on a Windows 95 machine. I can tell that much from my stats. But it does scare the hell out of me the number of visits I get from people using WebTV - I actually see more WebTV users than MAC users....

I do use style sheets on my pages, but in a pretty limited role right now. I design my pages so they look good without the benefit of the style sheet, then use the style sheet to enhance the look of the page for those who can benefit. They really are great, and save a hell of a lot of work. I just wish EVERYONE would take the time and download a 4.0 or higher browser so I wouldn't have to worry about it.

 

[ShyGuy68]

I just thought I would tell that I have had to much time on my hands the last few days, and have created a new web page myself. If you are interested in visiting it, the url is http://homepages.go.com/~shakes68/secret/

By the way, do anybody know if it's possible to add and link in the "biography" field on your profile??

ShyGuy