The Layout of a Website

Creating the layout for a Web site is more than just to try to bring up my scetched ideas into HTML. Often my knowledge is not good enough to bring my ideas into HTML...otherhand often I have realized finally my ideas just for to see that others cannot follow because of the resolution of the screen or the choice of their browser. Also I have to take care for the different browser generations...ahhhhh soooo confusing for someone like me, who only wants to create pages without the purpuse to sell something.

Otherhand as Farron pointed out, it is not very polite to tell people that they can view my stuff only with a specific browser or that they have to download lots of plugins...I dont want to do this either if I come to a site and they tell me first to download stuff only for to be able to look at their pages...I would surf to the next page, as there are so many out on WWW...

So what's to do? best to create simple but good looking elegant pages with proper set HTML and carefully used CSS.

I had lot's of problems with the sound tag and still havent found a solution for this, which would make me happy, as also my auditorium. Kate pointed that she is surfing with her own sound in the background and she doesn't like to have to listen to any other sound...she told, or Gloria - lol this old mind already forgot again, that best would be to place a button for the user that he can start the sound or not...I didnt't find the right script for this...also I see that I have no controll about the player and it's layout...hmmm now to stop the whole thing? I don't want to do this, as I think lake applet pages are nicer with sound in it...well will skip the whole thing for the moment and try to work on it later again. Maybe one day I will have better knowledge what is possible and what not.

I also maintain our schoolhomepage and there I don't use any special thing, because I know that many of our students have only simple old PCs with old software on it, as they bought it used for example...On this pages I will take care much more about browser compatibility than on my own pages, just for fun and for to learn and improve my own knowledge.

I had big difficulties with layering pictures and by looking at it on our schoolcomputer it suddenly was overlapping the text..waaaaaa...so I came back to work with tables and blind gifs again...I never thought about that even if I have a single transparent pixel gif and tell it in the source to get 250 width and any height, which I needed for to place my pictures, that it is not a good idea, as the processor has to count more now..I really didnt know about this...I will pay attention the next time when I want to use them...so will first put the image file to the right size and then place it...it would be too much work to go backwards now...

My work for this week was the workaround on my pages...I took my homebutton and deleted it again...I now used small  buttons up, back, next, home for to have a simple navigation. I hope people can understand it intuitively. I also added my next assignment pages about the flash 4 beginner class. Also I added to all main pages - means the index pages of my different courses some meta tags for the spicers. I added a small flash file logo to my first index site for some eyecatching. But when I looked at it with the schoolcomputer it wanted me to download the latest flash player..when I said no, as we are not allowed to download anything at school, it just played the flash logo anyway..hmm???

I tried to go through most of my pages and to add the alt text to the img tag..was such lot of work that I think I didn't see all the images, especially the blank gifs.

I wasted endless times to find a sound script, but am not content at the moment, so went away from this topic and let it rest :)).

I also tried to read about the article we should read : "Editorial Response to WaSP's Upgrade Your Browser Initiative". I understood that the more Browser compatibility the more I would need to add scripts to my source what would blow up my pages, which would result in a longer download time of the page. Or I have to stay away from fancy stuff, and just stay with simple plain html. But I know that many students and kids don't have the best computers and cannot afford to stay ahead all the time, because of the needed money...the same with elder people...they often get the elder computers from their kids and have to deal with the old browser generations. Otherhand if nobody pushes forward nothing will change and no improvement would be in world anymore.  I really enjoy to look at  grat wow sites with Flash as also great css layer positionings and other scriptwork, but know that not all can view it with the same eyes like me. 

So it is important to know about my auditorim from the beginning and to know for whom I want to design my pages. I also know that one can design well done pages without much fancy things.

I also read about the topic liquid pages, but didn't understand much about lol...

I bookmarked many css resouces and will read more about this topic the next time for sure. As I found many German pages about css by this work too, I bookmarked these and will read about in my homelanguage, which will be much more easier for me to understand (not that I say I would understand all what they are talking about lol!)

You want to look at my assignment for week 5??????? Well you already do hahaha...click around and you will see my idea of navigation as also my outgrey link on the different weeks navigation bar.
I made one mistake with my pages, when I added my up and next and backwards buttons...sometimes I put it centered and sometimes on the right side. I think I will have to redo this, for to get an unique look again. I like more the right side, as often I have to scroll and then am on the right side with my mouse, so haven't to move it but can just click on the button.