Hey all,

This is my first post so i apologies for any mistakes now.

Okay let me bring you up to speed before i tell you my problem. About a year ago i designed and developed a website for a drum teacher of mine, which i used mostly layers for the website. He now wants me to hand over the website to be maintained by another friend of his who uses mainly frames and tables.

The website is www.drumsteps.com if you want to check it out.

see its been a while since iv done anything to do with websites as iv been busy with college. The problem i am facing at the moment is

A)i don't no what layout technique i should use whether to stick with layers or change the whole site to tables. because i am not 100% on what is more professional and easy to maintain
B) If i should change to tables is there any hints or tips on allowing the website to keep compatibility with all browsers.

So iv joined this forum to grab some well needed expertise advice on the matter. Any help or advice or just general knowledge to be honest will be much appreciated.

Thanks all
Chris

A very good debate question, that's for sure. Tables are compliant (code-wise) but are meant to display tabular date.

If you don't understand divides, stick to tables and learn divides. Or if you have time, learn divides first and then work on your site.

I am guessing you are using some type of WYSIWYG editor since you called them layers as well?

With tables, less is more if you decide to use them. Don't go over-board with them

The best way is to create structurally/semantically meaningful markup (usually neither DIV nor TABLE elements, and certainly not frames), then style it with CSS. However this assumes the new guy that's taking over maintenance understands these things. If the new guy doesn't know much, perhaps a simple layout table is the safest bet.


Basic table markup is well supported by desktop browsers, but may not be supported at all by mobiles. If you're going to use tables for layout, avoid complicating things (you often see multiple nested tables, but usually a single one is enough).

Thanks for the fast replies its much appreciated.

yea you guessed right there Corey, i am using dreamweaver for the website. which helps as i am not a coding guy, i know the basics but nothing really in depth. Now what do you mean by divides, or do you know any websites that will give me more insights into how to use them?

and Christian J, i would love to find out how to layout with CSS but i never no really where to start, i went onto http://www.csszengarden.com/ which i heard was a great place to find information but i just don't no how to begin the lay out of drumsteps using CSS.

See after i posted this i decided i would just quickly change the homepage into tables just to see how it would work. I found that when i viewed the website in IE7 it looked fine but the minute i viewed it in Mozilla both side boarders were not stretching the complete length on the middle content box. Which is strange cause it used to be IE that gave me all the problems. I think i am going to just have to give my drum teacher a slap and tell him he ain't getting his website back.

If you have used "mostly layers" for you site, then you are already using CSS. Or rather DW is. As I understand it, "layer" is a word DW uses for absolutely positioned DIVs.

Yea its called a AP Div (Absolutely Positioned DIV) so do you reckon it would be fine to keep the website the way it is then? is that an appropriate layout for the website do you think?

Hi Chris

Dreamweaver does have a command that will convert layers into table -- it has worked 'fairly' well for me in the past with a few manual tweaks.

All and all the site looks fine and is working properly (speaking as a designer and not a programmer) - so I would probably not loose sleep over it. The biggest issue with using layers in Dreamweaver is that, unless you get a special plug in from the Exchange service, it will always load right justified. Using tables allows you to easier build a site along the center axis of the page. This looks more elegant at higher resolutions.

I personally would not worry too much about what other developers think of your site... your concern should be with what visitors think of the site... especially visitors who may want to drop $1000.00 to have their own site developped... and the way to impress them is with a site that works well and has solid creative standards.

Dreamweaver is also a good tool to learn and apply CSS and that is a tool that will serv you well.

Jon
PS... also try8ing to get some discuassion going on htmlhelp.ca if anyone is interested in posting there.

Well the <div> tag is an HTML tag and usually the WYSIWYG editors create the <div> and positions them absolutely to make it look like yoou are using an imaging program.

But absolute position can cause some problems from time to time. Editing them to float, etc is a possibility once you are familar with CSS.

If you are serious with the site, you might take a day or so to review HTML tags and look at some of the CSS sites for a potential layout as well. CSS is easier to work with once you get the hang of it. was my best friend for the longest time

If you are about to hand this over to someone else, make sure you have documented what you have done. This might be as simple as saying "Built with DW" - the person taking over will always have their own ideas. For you to try to "convert" the site to something else is likely to lead to disaster (on a small scale, I mean...!)

Actually, I don't quite understand why you would bother to do whatever on a site that will be taken out of your hands anyway.

As for learning CSS, see Where can I learn about CSS? and Web Design References: CSS (with lots of tutorials and articles).