Hullo Syren,

I hope that I have got the post subject right this time. I have also entered the following post into Site Design. As I have explained in that post, I think that I misread the pages last Saturday in thinking that Site design was closed to new posts.

I have decided to leave the post contents unaltered. The points raised are probably relevant to both Forums.

Regards,

Iain R Stewart.

Dear Forum,

This is my first post to site design/review. I am not a professional web designer/master but I have had some training in web design (HTML & CSS). Up to about 2 to 3 years ago, I knew nothing about computers and then I acquired Scottish Vocational Qualifications (Level 2 - Basic) in Word, Excel and Access, along with the European Computer Driving Licence. The web design course was a follow up. On the web course, each student had to have a personal project and I decided to use the web to express my feelings and experiences as a carer for my elderly mother. My site sits at www.geocities.com/excarex/index.html. It is plain and simple, and to many people it will no doubt appear bland, but its reason for existing is clearly stated on the home page. A lot of sites are far more colourful but the creators use web creation programmes. Excarex is hand coded and at the outset I did not have any experience in graphics creation.

There are seven main pages with one page having twelve sub-pages. I hope that someone can advise me on the necessary coding required to make the following changes to the navigation, which would facilitate easier access to current sub-pages and aid the addition of sub-pages to other main pages.

At present the CNA page (carnat.html) has twelve sub-pages. I want to be able to mouseover the CNA page name button and three rows of four buttons each ie the sub-pages carnat 1-12 will slide into view. Each of those will then be mouseovers, which will activate the sub-pages as new windows with the main letter jumping to the corresponding point. The sub-pages will be as at present but opposite the present “main letter” button there will have to be a “CNA Top” button which would close the new window but return the main letter to the top.

I would also like to have on either side of each window a group of four buttons sitting about halfway down, consisting of Top; Page Up; Page Down; End which would always return to that position, when vertical scrolling. These new buttons would have added to them onClick events, as the present buttons also need to make the buttons act like buttons when pressed. This would necessitate that all pages content between the top and bottom navigation bars will have to go into a table with the first row’s first and last cells rowspan=”100%”. The width of the first and last cells would be set to the width of the buttons in pixels, but I have my doubts as to whether W3C will find fault with that as they are at present finding fault with some attributes of my elements. I am undecided as to whether there should be a graphic which would be under a repeat-y in those cells, and the sliding four-button bar as a separate item from the table contents, or that just the sliding bar should be the cells’ contents. I am also thinking in terms of increased white space on each page. I don’t really want to change the basic design. I created the site with the specific intent of saying something. I feel a more flashy site design would, detract from it.

I feel sure that the above will require JavaScript, and I would appreciate any advice with regard to where I would find the necessary code. There are so many script sites, and I could spend ages looking on the web. I cannot afford my own computer and consequently have to use my local library, where the maximum booking time is three hours. I believe that one should be able to open an empty notepad and create the JavaScript from scratch, but I don’t know enough, and I accept the words of the author David Flanagan in his book “JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition” that JavaScript is not the simple scripting language that it is sometimes made out to be, and can be equal to and greater in complexity than the accepted languages.

I would also appreciate answers to the following questions:

1. In submitting my index page to W3C HTML validation, I find that their explanations seem a bit difficult to understand. My understanding is that where a file is linked to a stylesheet, then the DTD has to be strict. Where is my error?
2. Why will W3C not allow the anchor name for return to the page top to be immediately after the opening body element?
3. Why will they not allow the br before and after the hr above and below the navigational buttons? I don’t want the loss of vertical space here. I have a 1x1 pixel transparent gif saved and I suppose that I could put that in with width 100% and adjust the height accordingly, but I have read that that is said to be bad practice.

My stylesheet passes CSS validation, but again they have me puzzled when they tell me that I have no colour to my background-colour in the declaration for the body selector. What do they mean?

I recently posted my first two letters into the September archives in the topic “How Much Text Is Too Much Text?

I would have put this post into site design, but it is closed to new posts.

I trust that someone among you can help.

My regards,

Iain R Stewart.

Nice start under web site. There are however some major concerns I would address. Most of your pages read like your posting on the WebPro forum. They are long and the content within the page cannot be found by scanning the page for keywords.

Writing for the web is very different than writing a letter or a book. For the most part, people don't read web pages. They scan the page and look for content that interests them. And then they click or read a short paragraph.

Consider breaking up the text, making some key words standout and dividing content across more pages.

I would also look into shortening the content that you have a the very top of your page. The name of your site in the following ads can take up half the screen on the standard use hundred by 600 resolution monitor. If you're going to advertise other people sites on your site make their links distinguishable from your links. Consider putting them off to the side or even better at the bottom of your page.

If you need some more help on this please let me know.

Hi KarenH,

Thanks for your response. I take your point regarding the long content, although the people who tend to read websites are looking for information. I have had responses from people on that basis. Earlier this year, a woman who is a carer was obviously touched by my experiences, and for that to happen she had pretty certainly read through the site. I also had an American web hosting site offer to give me 3 months free hosting and a professional makeover of the site. Maybe they were trying to drum up business, but they commented on the fact that they found its content impressively holding.

I will take your views on board though and using my stylesheet will highlight the keywords and phrases that encapsulate the sites’ raison d’etre. I could also highlight certain paragraphs as well. The main reason for the individual file lengths was to reproduce the letters as I had handwritten them and in the easiest way to read without having to jump between files with the possible irritation for someone who is unfortunate to have a slow web connection. I am sitting here composing this in my public library on 18 October and I can’t even get a web connection at all. When I can get the navigation matter sorted, then the extra material will be divided across more pages.

I have also thought that the content at the top of the page was possibly taking up a bit too much of the screen depth, and I intend reducing it. The nhs-exposed banner I intend replacing by their latest, which is much smaller, and I am planning to try putting two of them with two links to that site (its main page and the carer page which holds an article written by me for nhs-exposed, due shortly to be updated with another article and my banner). In between, there will be the pages’ name button, and the present Exactseek and Scrubtheweb buttons will go. Scrubtheweb can go to the links page. That will lift the reading material substantially. In terms of e-commerce I know that it is obviously not good practice to send your reader straight off to another competitive site but nhs-exposed and excarex are complimentary sites in that mine is highly critical of the medical fraternity and nhs-exposed is a whistle-blowing site run by Dr. Rita Pal. The link shows on Altavista (search UK) where the query “medical neglect”, under my sites’ title, will return you to that carer’s page on nhs-exposed.

It will take me some time though. The library computers play up often. At times I think of how nice it would be to be able to put laxative down the A-drive, then sending it a bitchy e-mail - “hope it gives you the squits”.

Thanks again, and if I need more help I’ll buzz you.

Iain R Stewart