"CyberSimian" <OlySimian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
>
> Brian Swale wrote:
> > I write my own web pages from the ground up
>
> That is absolutely brilliant, Brian. Not only do you learn a new skill to
> add to your portfolio, but you also have complete control over web page
> layout. That is why I did the same last year when I created my web site.
>
> I spent 25 years coding internal design documents and external user
> guides in a Generalized Markup Language (GML), so I am well familiar with
> the concepts of tag mark-up. But HTML is a very different dialect that
> requires some experimentation to achieve the results that you want. And
> yes, if you want all of your web-site visitors to have a pleasant
> experience, you sometimes have to forego some of the fancier things that
> it is possible to do with HTML.
>
> I am just about to leave for four days, but here are screen-scrapes of
> your "Photographer" and "Pricing" pages. A screen-scrape is NOT like
> viewing the page in a browser (which re-renders the HTML) -- a
> screen-scrape is a pixel-for-pixel copy of what is on my screen. To make
> this a reasonable test, I used the font size that I normally use -- I did
> not inflate it artificially in order to exaggerate the effects. File
> sizes are 122KB and 108KB (bigger than previous examples in order to show
> the complete screen).
>
> http://www.xenscape.com/imaging/anon/brian_swale_photographer.jpg
> http://www.xenscape.com/imaging/anon/brian_swale_pricing.jpg
>
> Notice in "Photographer" that your text does not flow. I have looked at
> the source, and it is because you have coded a [br] tag at the end of each
> line. You should remove those. Also, you specify the font size
> explicitly; you should remove those too, and see what your page looks like
> without them. If you want text of differing size, you should use relative
> sizing (there are different ways of doing this, depending on which HTML
> standard you want to adhere to; for simplicity use the [big] and [small]
> tags). There are also some problems at the bottom of the page.
>
> BUT: before you make any changes to your web-site files, take a complete
> copy of all of the files so that you can revert to them if you don't like
> the results of your experiments. To get a pleasing result will require
> more changes than the two I mentioned above. I am happy to discuss this
> with you off-list if you want to pursue it further (CyberSimian3 at
> BeeTeeInternet dot com, but with "BT" in place of "BeeTee").
Thanks for the kind words.
I realise that the html methods I use are deprecated now. Including the use
of the html tag pair <font> </font>.
The reason I have coded the pages you mention the way that I have is that
they fit together well (making a coherent design that I think looks good),
"provided" the font size is left as it was, and that includes, as I now know,
size 9 in the browser. Size 16 overflows all over the place and that also
causes ugly problems at the bottom of the page, because it flows past the
background image I have created (background images also deprecated by
current fashion; thank goodness browsers still interpret them).
What CS provided me (the images) with is the result of pressing the key on
the upper keyboard row <Print Screen>, and pasting it into blank page with
(eg) Irfanview. I know it well; I use it all the time.
The only way I can see to solve this is to make the text into one large JPEG
and insert it into my page exactly where I want it. Changing browser font
preferences then will have absolutely no effect, but the Opera. method of
magnifying EVERYTHING will at least keep the text in proportion to
everything else.
I have read books ( a few years ago now, and there are bound to be more
recent editions and major new developments), about Style Sheets (CSS). I
have looked closely at the code used by many authors, and I just don't see
how it works. Yes, I can see a pattern, but then my patience runs out. When
I did manage to get the early versions of CSS to run it was a rare thing.
It's difficult enough to cope with the aberrations of MSIE without having to
imagine what font changes will be made by users, and expect them to leave
the page layout not ruined.
I might just try a page or two with the text converted into an image. After
all,
that would be little different for the viewer from looking at a pdf file.
Perhaps I'll do it for CS when he returns in 4 days.
Cheers, a (frustrated) Brian @ http://www.brianswale.com/
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