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**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 28, 2004, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460 "2004-01-28T20:54:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 17\
**Page:** 2
**Author:**  [@NavinJohnson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NavinJohnson)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/21 "2004-01-29T01:02:38Z")
> [@World Eater](#):
>
> Ooops forgot.
>
> Is there a way to merge slices in Imageready?
Not that I know of. You can probably get away with deleting one of the slices and re-adjusting the dimensions of the other slice to fill in the void.
BTW–I checked out the Flash version of your site and like what I heard. Do you have any other tracks (other than those seven) out there I could get my hands on?
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**Author:**  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/22 "2004-01-29T01:45:21Z")
> [@NavinJohnson](#):
>
> Not that I know of. You can probably get away with deleting one of the slices and re-adjusting the dimensions of the other slice to fill in the void.
>
> BTW–I checked out the Flash version of your site and like what I heard. Do you have any other tracks (other than those seven) out there I could get my hands on?
Thank you for checking them out. Yes, we have a bunch more that I’ll be posting up as soon as I get the downloads.htm up there. 😃
Feel free to drop me an email, and I’ll make sure you get them ASAP.
Everyone has been very helpful, hopefully I won’t hit anymore bumps, but if I do, I’ll be asking here.
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**Author:**  [@fezpp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fezpp)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/23 "2004-01-29T11:23:24Z")
Based on the simplicity of your site, and the fact that you can’t use server side includes, I would just copy and paste your navigation code onto the 8-10 different pages that you have.
If you are determined to do javascript content swapping then you should really use DIV layers.
I would definitely stay away from frames.
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**Author:**  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/24 "2004-01-29T12:06:45Z")
I’d just like to say that for something that is apparently a very simple design, you are going the completely most complicated way about it.
My suggestion - Forget Frames, avoid Javascript, stick with HTML, and learn Cascading Style Sheets.
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**Author:**  [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/25 "2004-01-29T13:25:50Z")
**World Eater** , Checked out your flash site and downloaded a few songs, very nice!
The music sounds really good, and the vocals are equally nice. Your singers has beautiful voice.
Please let us know when you have everything set up 😉
Good luck!
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**Author:**  [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/26 "2004-01-29T14:42:59Z")
GuanoLad is right on the money. Keep the navigation simple. Having the top border of your pages common across the site works well, and you can put some simple navigation in that. The problem with pasting a left-side navigation cell on each page is what happens when you want to change something in that cell. You have to edit each page. Think about the maintenance early on. Avoid too much Javascript, and definitely avoid Flash (You designed Flash-only web sites? Shame on you).
For maintenance, definitely learn how to build sites with Cascading Style Sheets. I’ve done that only recently, and I wish I had much sooner. You can greatly simplify the HTML of each page by putting common attributes in one file, and linking to that with CSS. Editing is then easier, plus if you want to change colors or fonts, there’s only one file to edit.
For editing the HTML, I haven’t found any GUI editors that I like. The GUIs always obfuscate your HTML code. The best approach I’ve found is to use FirstPage2000, which lets you edit the HTML as text, but then quickly click the Preview pane to see what the page looks like rendered. Maybe there are other tools that do this, but FirstPage2000 is free and works well.
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**Author:**  [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/27 "2004-01-29T17:25:18Z")
> [@CurtC](#):
>
> The best approach I’ve found is to use FirstPage2000, which lets you edit the HTML as text, but then quickly click the Preview pane to see what the page looks like rendered. Maybe there are other tools that do this, but FirstPage2000 is free and works well.
FYI - [1st Page 2000](http://www.evrsoft.com/) comes with several ready-made JavaScripts and assorted other scripts you might want to use in web pages. However, one of the files is called “Six Buttons From Hell.izs” This code is interpreted by several anti-virus engines as a virus. I know Norton will quarantine this script.
–Please read this carefully → The script is _not_ a virus, trojan, worm, etc. It is a poorly named script being interpreted by anti-virus engines as a virus.
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**Author:**  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/28 "2004-01-29T17:47:44Z")
Well, everything _was_ going smoothly, I sliced the thing up to pieces, figured out how to do my dual rollovers, etc, everything is _looking_ nice. Time for the content, so I through in a a little text to the various cells, and found the one that is the big gray main part where all the content will be plugged in. I stuck an Iframe in there, making the dimensions slightly smaller then the measurments specified for that cell, and guess what? The layout was literally blown to kingdom come! I reduced the size of the iframe even more, nada, still looks like modern art. I removed the Iframe and stuck some text back in there to insure sure I wasn’t working with the wrong cell, nope it’s the correct cell. 😕
I’m just having it pull “blah.html” which doesn’t exist, but I figured the page not found would still fit within the cell.
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**Author:**  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/29 "2004-01-29T17:51:23Z")
\*_throw_.
I need some food.
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**Author:**  [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/30 "2004-01-29T21:53:46Z")
I really wish I’d found this thread a lot sooner.
Forget using tables to create the main layout of your page. Talk about dead.
Go for CSS. From the looks of your site, you’d need a fairly simple stylesheet to put it together, and CSS is not particularly hard to learn. Use the “position” and “z-index” properties to place the gray square and your logo over your gradient image, and plug in some JavaScript to do the rollovers, if that’s how you really want to do it. Judicious use of \ tags and “id” and “class” attributes could help too.
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**Author:**  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/31 "2004-01-29T23:54:41Z")
> [@scotandrsn](#):
>
> I really wish I’d found this thread a lot sooner.
>
> Forget using tables to create the main layout of your page. Talk about dead.
>
> Go for CSS. From the looks of your site, you’d need a fairly simple stylesheet to put it together, and CSS is not particularly hard to learn. Use the “position” and “z-index” properties to place the gray square and your logo over your gradient image, and plug in some JavaScript to do the rollovers, if that’s how you really want to do it. Judicious use of \ tags and “id” and “class” attributes could help too.
I have to disagree. Throwing in a crapload of divs to get spacing just right is not going to simplify things, and if you use position: absolute to get stuff where you want, or specify the dimensions of your boxes with absolute units, you’re going to manage to wind up with a LESS accessible site than if you’d used tables.
CSS non-table-based layout is really, IMHO, for web designers who have transcended pixel-perfect layout. I don’t think **World Eater** is there yet. If you take someone who wants things to be exactly in their place, and make him use a system where that’s just not the way things are done, he’s going to go crazy trying to get it.
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**Author:**  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/32 "2004-01-30T03:04:18Z")
Well if anyone wants to take a look, it’s up. I must say slicing it up in Imageready was a real treat. It may sound strange but I removed the image for the big main viewing table and the formatting seemed to go to hell. I put the image back in, and chucked the Iframe on top of it. I have no explanation of why it worked (and I’m sure it’s a simple one), but it did.
There are of course some technical problems to fix (the downloads don’t work), and the rollover works on the right side which bothers me, but hey, it’s up. I’ll be plugging in the content over the next few days, and fixing the bugs.
Hmmmm, maybe to solve the rollover problem, I can place a transparant layer over the right side?
I of course, will be keeping all the great advice from this thread in mind when I do a redesign in 2 months! 😃
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**Author:**  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/33 "2004-01-30T03:30:23Z")
I’d like to request that you put ALT attributes in your IMG tags when they’re images of words. It’s easy to do, and one of the best things you can do for accessibility:
\
to
\
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**Author:**  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/34 "2004-01-30T03:51:09Z")
Sounds good, I’ll add that in.
Btw, what does that do? 😃
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**Author:**  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/35 "2004-01-30T03:53:38Z")
Ha. If for some reason the image can’t be displayed (maybe it’s missing, or the user can’t display images), then the ALTernate text is displayed instead. Imagine what it would look like if all your images were missing - it would just be a bunch of blank boxes.
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**Author:**  [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/36 "2004-01-30T05:54:42Z")
> [@World Eater](#):
>
> Sounds good, I’ll add that in.
>
> Btw, what does that do? 😃
Some of the linux folks use text based browsers , to reduce the load on their comps and keep everything fast, As well blind and near blind folks use a text to speech plugin for their browsers , so it enables them to get the content on your site and avoid stuff that they dont need.
Declan
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**Author:**  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-few-really-stupid-html-questions/226460/37 "2004-01-30T06:10:10Z")
Ah, good to know.
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