OK it's online

[KevinBE]

Hi David. The gallery in your link looks impressive. The PS gallery function in version 7 generates a fairly nice looking gallery. I chose the vertical frame gallery and was able to choose a color theme that was close to the theme in my Web site. There is a lot of work afterward to each display frame to try and make it look like the other pages in my site but I think it will be worth it. One nice feature is not having to manually re-size the pictures in advance. PS will automatically resize the pictures to what ever pizel size you specify.

I'm working with the site off-line right now and wont upload any changes until I get all the gallery additions complete.

[KevinBE]

David, I've run into a problem. I had no problem putting the <target="_top "> into a single link. That was simple to understand. Now I have included a link bar into the gallery so that it matches the theme of the site. The coding for this link bar is kind of cyrptic, or at least to me, and I am having trouble incorporating the addition to this code. When I highlight the link bar in Frontpage the following HTML code is highlighted in the HTML page.

This I assume is the head.htm file I use for the header.

<!--webbot bot="Include" U-Include="../../includes/head.htm" TAG="BODY" -->

Somehow this is the link bar?

<!--webbot bot="Navigation" S-Type="sequence" S-Orientation="horizontal" S-Rendering="graphics" B-Include-Home="FALSE" B-Include-Up="FALSE" U-Page="sid:1027" S-Theme="basics1 010" -->

I'm lost.

[winwintoo]

Kevin, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you're dealing with Frontpage jargon that is incomprehensible to human beings.

What you're dealing with is exactly why serious web developers use a program like Frontpage to lay out the page, and then use notepad to do their coding - that way only the stuff you actually write makes it into the html file.

Doesn't Frontpage have a wizard for creating a photo gallery?? You'd think they would because a photo gallery is something quite common.



Margaret

[KevinBE]

Hi Margaret, yes Frontpage has a gallery feature but it too is limited as to what you can do. The Photoshop gallery allows me to edit the picture viewing page not just the thumbnail page. The Frontpage gallery doesn't give you very much flexability. You cannot edit and modify the viewing page as easily as you can with the Photoshop generated gallery.

I was afraid that this would be the answer to my question. I sure would like to use the link bar in the gallery but if it is too cryptic to deal with then I guess I wil have to place a simple link to the parent page. It's ashame too, Frontpage has a property setting for frames for a simple link, I found out later, but that same property is not available for a link bar.

I'll keep looking to see if I overlooked something. I probably will outgrow Frontpage soon, or at least get tired of it's limitations. But, it has given me a good head start. If I were studying Web creation and had plans to become a Web designer I would try something more powerful. All I want to do is get my own site up like I want it to look.

Thanks margaret.

[d_kendal]

hey, if you outgrow FrontPage, I'd definitely recommend Adobe GoLive if you can afford it, I was lucky enough to get it for free when I got my adobe design collection, and I've been playing with it lately, and I really like it, there's a lot it can do. and I definitely agree with what Margaret was saying, if you want to have full control of the page, at some point you're pretty much going to be forced into learning HTML. the good news is that it's not a horrible thing to learn, and there's tons and tons of books out there for any skill level. the first book I got was called "Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours" published by Sams, which I'd say is a pretty easy book to learn from if you're just starting out with it, plus it's been around for a long time so it should be pretty cheap. sorry I can't be any help on your link issues, it's definitely a bunch of FrontPage garble, and I've never even used the program so I don't have a clue what it means..

- David

[KevinBE]

Well, I was going to anounce that the newest version of my Web site was online. I've been working for days on the revisions and think I have all the problems solved. The new gallery is going to be a nice addition. But, I lost half of my hard drive Raid controller tonight as I was working on some of the last revisions. I wouldn't be surprised if I lose the other half before too long as there is only one processor running both controllers.

One brite side is that I have a mirror image of my primary drive just sitting there turned off. I wont lose any data, just a lot of time and frustration.

Stay tuned the new version will be online soon, I hope.

[winwintoo]

You have my sympathy, Margaret

[KevinBE]

OK, now I have finally finished the new version 3.0 of restored-memories.com. I have been fighting Frontpage for the last hour to get it to publish the site right. It only took 4 tries, I finally had to delete everything on the server and then publish to a blank directory. Even then it messed up the navigation structure and I had to edit it online to correct that.

Since I have made so many changes I wish that everyone take a good look at the site and let me know what I have done wrong or forgotten. I really appreciate the help I have gotten so far. I couldn't have done this without you guys.

The gallery was generated in Photoshop 7 and caused me a lot of problems. But, I think I have what I wanted. I need input as to whether I am going in the right direction. I don't even want to know how many hours I have invested in the site update. It was a lot of dead-ends and failed attempts.

[winwintoo]

Looking good Kevin!!

I went through it with a "fine-toothed comb" and here's what I found:

*take the "under construction" sign off - it's distracting and your site is in such good shape you don't need it any more

*it's good that you attribute the quote on the right hand side of the main pages, but I would make the author's name smaller than the quoted text - when I first saw it, I thought that was your name

*still on the home page, I wanted to click on the pictures on the left-hand side - they look so interesting

*On the Restorations page, some of the headings and paragraphs aren't evenly spaced out and the top heading doesn't seem to line up with the rest - it's only out a couple of pixels but I have to uphold my reputation as a nit-picker

*Now the Gallery page. First I have to tell you, I downloaded one of your pages a week ago and tried to figure out how to convert it from FrontPage to normal HTML and I gave up after my eyes started to bleed so I want you to know that I understand how much work you put into it - and you did an amazing job

I also know how much work it was to get the "Menu" to work on the Gallery page - but - it only has one item on it. Unless you're going to put more items on it, replace it with a nice button that fits with the rest of the page.

And this last item, I had a real problem opening the Gallery page in IE 5.2. If I have to guess I would say it's because IE and FrontPage are both Microsoft products and IE is anticipating what "should" be on the page instead of rendering what "IS" on the page.

What happens is that it mostly loads but without the scroll bars and if I link back to the home page, I get a nasty line up the left side of the page where the scroll bar would have been on the gallery page. I tried loading random unrelated pages (google, retouchpro etc.) but the nasty line was still there.

If I resize the gallery window as soon as it's done loading, I can get it to draw the scroll bars and everything runs smoothly from then on.

One more thing - also in IE, on the Home pages (and other pages with the same format) there is a tiny image blob that doesn't seem to be loading. I took a screen shot of it and circled what I mean. It doesn't show up on other browsers though.

Sorry to run on so long, but I really had to dig to find ANYTHING that you could fix....

Take care, Margaret

[KevinBE]

Thank you Margaret for taking the time to research this for me. Your right about the under construction signage I'll take it down. I'll fix the quotation also. What do you recommend that I consider on the collage on the left of the screen? Is it too much?

I'll try to get the text formatting lined up a little better. I have fought Frontpage a lot on this type of thing. It doesn't conform to MS Word nearly as much as Microsoft is willing to admit. It is hard to line up columns for instance because you cannot use the tab key in the edit mode. It's just little things like this that get frustrating.

Thanks for your comments about the gallery. It was a lot of trial and error and just everything imaginable stood in my way. On the Menu, did you mouse over the MENU and see the "pull down" menu items? That was a bear to write, and I hope it is working in all browsers. Frontpage refused to allow me to put in the -top> command to allow a link out from a page with frames using the "Link Bar" feature. I went to an add-in called "J-Bots" navigational component. It writes java script to generate DHTML code. Well let me tell you, it did the job but it was a nightmare to work with. If you were just talking about the menu bar only having one item, you'r right I may need to pull the bar back to make the menu look like a button.

I'm going to print out your comments so that I don't miss anything. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this.

I can't believe that Frontpage is having so many problems with IE! You'd think that Microsoft would generate code that would at least be compatible with their own browsers.

I hope your experiences with the gallery aren't typical with what others experience with it. I'd hate to have to abandon the gallery because of compatability problems. I can switch to a different style that doesn't use frames. I need to get other browsers on my systems so that I can test compatibility with the other browsers.

Thanks again.

[G. Couch]

You've done a lot of work since I last saw the site...Nice job! I had no problems with the gallery, although it took me a while to actually find the pop-out menu. It's a little slow to load but a nice feature. You might consider changing the font or color of the word "Menu" so that it's easier to find.

Frontpage sounds like a nightmare! I have been using Dreamweaver to create and maintain my brother's poetry e-zine ( www.sidereality.com ) and while the learning curve was rather steep, it's a wonderful program and generates pretty stable code.

[KevinBE]

Hi Greg, Thanks for your comments. I like what you have done with the SideReality.com. That looks real good. My menu problems in the Gallery have ended up with the compromise you see there now. I'm not at all happy with my experiences with frontpage. I don't think it was ever intended for anything more than a generic plain web site. I can't say I would recommend it to anyone. I don't know whether I am just tight and didn't want to waste the money I paid for it or just hard headed and don't like to get beat by a program. I should have given up a long time ago and switched to dreamweaver. I just wish I could get my money back on what I paid for Frontpage.

I have learned a lot though. Even if it was just on what doesn't work for Web publishing. I hope that is my last poor business decission for a while.

[winwintoo]

What do you recommend that I consider on the collage on the left of the screen? Is it too much?

I like the collage on the left - I just wish I could see enlargements of them - maybe put the enlarged images in the gallery?

I'm kind of glad I stuck with text editors in building my site - I'm more interested in learning the programming than I am in seeing a finished product.

Considering what you were up against, you did a credible job of your site.

I hope the IE problem is peculiar to my computer. I'll do a shutdown and a cold boot in the morning to see if the problem is still there. I've had some weird problems with my computer so that might be it.

Take care, Margaret

[KevinBE]

I will plan on putting some of those pictures in later. The second picture from the top is just a picture of my family tree on my maternal Grandmothers side.

You know the irony of this situatioin I am in is that I chose the path I took because I didn't have time to learn anything new. Wonderful how my plan worked out don't you think?

I have an older NT machine at work that has IE 5 on it. I will try it out tomorrow.

[jeaniesa]

Hope I'm not to late chiming in here. You've done a TON of work Kevin! You're probably saying, "You don't know the half of it!" - but I think I do b/c I'm going through it myself. The only thing I did differently was start out with Dreamweaver b/c my experience has always been that I want to do more than any template or "helper" has ever been able to give me, so I knew I'd have a steep learning curve from the start. It didn't make it any easier knowing that though.

It's late and I haven't looked really closely at your site, but here are a couple of comments and I'll try to look more closely tomorrow.

* I really, really like the change you made to the left sidebar with the small pictures. FWIW, I didn't feel the need to click on them until I read Margaret's feedback - then I looked at them more closely and thought, "Yeah, I'd like to see that with more detail!"

* I like the solution you came up with for the menu in your gallery. It's different than the rest of the site (obviously), but the whole layout of the gallery is different, so I think it works. I would suggest that you change the font to a simple Arial (or other sanserif font) to make it easier to read. A while ago I remember hearing that the fancier the font, the more difficult it is to read - and you want your menu items to be easy to read!

* Also with the menu - you might consider putting a small triangle graphic pointing down next to the word menu to indicate that it's a pulldown. That might help people realize it's meant to be a drop-down.

* Nit-picking with the gallery menu - is there a way to get the text centered vertically in the respective bars? The way I see them, the text is aligned with the top of each bar.

* It looks like you designed your gallery for a 1024 width screen resolution. Is that true? I say that b/c if I resize the window a little smaller, the horizontal scrollbar shows up under the large images (in the right frame) and if I make the window smaller yet (esp. on my husband's 800x600 display), there is a horizontal scrollbar for the left index frame as well. It's not really a problem as I'm still able to get the text within whatever window width I resize to. One slight oddity is that the bar that the menu link is in resizes with the window, but not the graphic at the top. So, if you scroll to the right, it looks like there is a chunk missing. That's a bit nitpicky though and might not be worth the time it would take to fix.

* I like the solution you came up with for the menus outside of the gallery. I think they work nicely and I found it easy to get around.

* One other thing I just discovered as I was playing with resizing... If I resize my window down to what I guestimate to be 640 pixels (trying to estimate how the site will look on an old 640x480 display), I'm not able to read the text in your first paragraph on the home page b/c it's covered up with the picture. Even though a horizontal scrollbar exists, the text is not readable b/c of the picture obscuring it. Since you're going to have a scrollbar anyway at that resolution (b/c of the image in your top bar), you might want to try to limit how small that center column gets? (I don't even know how to do that! But I'm not sure what else would work unless you were to put the image and text in separate table cells?)

I know you've spent more time on your site than you'd planned or wanted, but I think the time has been worth it!! You've got a really nice professional looking site and you should be proud of it!

Jeanie

P.S. It's possible that the little "blocky thing" that Margaret is seeing is a missing image? I had asked her to look at my site a while back and she saw something similar that I didn't see on my computer. I knew exactly what it was caused by - it just never appeared on my screen. And what she sees on your site is not visible on my version of IE6 nor my husband's version of IE5.5 (both Windows machines). I'm too tired right now to try viewing your site with other browsers - I'll try to do that in the morning.

[d_kendal]

I like the new design, nice work Kevin! I agree with the others, one of my first reactions was to try and click on the small images to see the full size example, it would be nice if you could create an image map linking to the bigger photos of that to replace what you have now.
Since Jeanie mentioned the problem of different resolutions, that reminded me of a program I've used for quite a while now called 1st page 2000, it has a very nice feature I haven't seen in any other web design programs, you can preview your HTML file in various resolutions (640x480 - 1024x768). it's a good idea to design a site so that it works in multiple resolutions, and if that's not really possible, than it's probably smart to have a warning at the bottom of your pages stating something like *this page best viewed at a resolution of 800 x 600 or above*

- David

[winwintoo]

Hi Kevin, after a cold boot this morning, I still had the problem with the gallery page so I think it's a bug in IE.

I think what happens is that IE sees that it's a FrontPage produced page and sees the template and without reading the HTML to see what is actually on the page, it renders the template and only later when I force it by resizing the window will it draw the window properly.

Other browsers don't know about FrontPage (or don't care LOL) and render what the HTML is saying, thus producing the intended result.

This behavior could be peculiar to the Mac versions of IE.

My first instinct is to remove any reference to FP or the template from the meta tags, but that would destroy other formatting that you've worked so hard to achieve. Unfortunately, IE seems to be the big winner in the Mac browser wars for the time being so this might be worth pursuing. If you want me to, I'll take it up with the Mac folks at Microsoft.

Take care Margaret

[jeaniesa]

Testing briefly in other browsers:

Netscape 7 - Looks good. The only thing that I notice different from IE6 is the color of the text in the menu on the gallery page. The text appears white when you first pull it down (in IE it's black). If you click on the link, then return to the gallery page, the link that you clicked on is now black (all others remain white - until you click on them.) Not really a problem as I can still read everything - just a difference in behavior.

Opera 7 - FWIW, this is my nemesis where browsers are concerned! I found it odd that the rollovers in your menu bar (on the right of all pages except the gallery) do not work. (I.e., the color of the boxes does not change when you rollover a link.) When you actually click on the link and go to another page, the color of the box changes to let you know where you are. It's just the rollover effect that doesn't work. I don't think this is a huge problem b/c it's obvious from other clues (pointing finger, link names in the status bar, alt text showing link) that these are meant to be links.

Still in Opera 7 - I found the above odd b/c your pulldown menu on the gallery page does work! The fancy effect is slightly different in that the boxes appear all at once and just the text scrolls out. Opera also displays the menu items in white until they are clicked on, then they turn to black once visited (like Netscape).

FWIW, I think these things are minor since they don't really affect the usability of your site - they're just comments about what's different in the different browsers. I can look at earlier Netscape versions if you want - it's just a little more setup b/c they're on my laptop (not my desktop) and I have to find a spare network cable.

Hope this helps,
Jeanie

[jrolinc]

Kevin

Nice work...long and hard to do. I'm like the rest, it's tough to make FrontPage work exactly the way you want beyond the basic web page itself.

Anyhow, I won't go over what others have said, but a couple of minor things I see.

The pics in the left margin...they don't have even spacing between them, you have the black lines "attaching" them, but the bottom pic is more closely spaced than the others. Oh, and the black line between that bottom one and the pic above...the black line extends over the bottom pic.

I've attached a screen shot of another "coding" error. You have a first letter in Bold, when you don't have that anywhere else on your site.

Otherwise...keep up the good work, you've got a great site and these minor things are just that...minor. It sure helps having multiple (dozens) of eyes helping you out.

[clare]

Hi Kevin,

You have been working very hard and the results are fantastic The site is working very well on Opera, and the navigation is much better and far less confusing that it was. I would also like to beable to click on the left hand images, or at least see them in the gallery... sorry that sounds like an echo

The only thing (oh no not another one ) is might be worth looking at having the price page after the archival page. It seems to split the services that you provide in two, making the archival look like it was added later. Just my opinion, and boy have you got to dig to find anything wrong, you have done a good job.

The gallery pages with the link back to the main pages of your web site link in well, even though it is a change of design it works well and I found that it didn't produces any navigation problems.

Hope this helps

Clare

[clare]

Jeanie posted while I was writing, so I thought I would add a bit...

My Opera 7 browser is changing colour on all the navigation buttons (the colour boxes) Which is pretty strange I will go and view the site in IE to check and see

Clare

[clare]

Hi again,

After looking in IE the only inconsistancy that I can find is in the gallery menu all the text is white except the restoration button. In Opera all the buttons have black text. The role over colour remains blue in both browsers.

The only other thing (sorry just flicking through your site) is that the animation is not working in my copy of Opera7 on the archival page, only noticed when I viewed the site in IE.

Good Job

Clare

[jeaniesa]

Clare - that is too wierd. Exactly what version of Opera are you running? Mine says:
Version: 7.01
Build: 2651
Platform: Win32
System: Windows XP

Jeanie

[clare]

Version
7.0
Build
2577
Platform
Win32
System
Windows XP
_
This is my one - we obviously have a bit of a difference here, although yours seems to be a later version so should surely work better !!!! To strange....

Clare

[jrolinc]

I've got the latest Opera (7.02) and on the Gallery page, the text is all black, the rollovers are blue (background grey).

The Animation plays fine on the Archival page as well. Looks like more things are fixed in the latest Opera version.

I do notice in my Opera browser, the yellow bullet blocks on the various pages don't line up as well with the text as they do with IE v6.0, but it's a pretty minor detail.

One more thing...on your Home page...the "CONTACTS PAGE" header towards the bottom is that dark blue (since it is a link). You may want to go in and see about changing your Link color to one that more closely matches your theme color, the dark blue color kinda stands out.

[winwintoo]

Now I see why you might have been confused by my comment about the menu in the Gallery page. When I view the page in IE, and Safari, all I see is the word "Menu" and if I click on it, it drops down with the one choice "Home" - that's all. (In my version of Opera - which we already know is pretty lame - I don't see menu at all)

I hadn't tried Netscape (it's so slow ) but I wondered what menu you all were seeing so I tried Netscape now and finally I can see it.

I wish I could offer some insight into why that would be or some suggestions for fixing it, but it's a mystery to me.

As a side note, I was writing an HTML tutorial for my son the other day and used the <pre> tag inside a table cell. In Safari and IE, not only did it not maintain the PRE formatting, it also destroyed the size of the table cell - nothing I could find explained it. Browsers - it's a good thing most of them are free

Margaret

[jeaniesa]

Just downloaded Opera 7.02 and it did fix the problem with the menu rollovers. I do still see white text in the gallery menu for links that I haven't visited though. (And 7.02 does not fix the problems I'm having with my site. )

Jeanie

[clare]

How can we possibly create a cross browser interface when using a different 7,7.01,7.02 have such different results? I just don't see any way...

Please tell me other wise

Clare

[jeaniesa]

Originally posted by clare
How can we possibly create a cross browser interface when using a different 7,7.01,7.02 have such different results? I just don't see any way...

I don't see any way either - unless your site is a boring generic site, e.g. a site that's simple text & images with no tables or Javascript?

Jeanie

[d_kendal]

yeah, it can seem almost impossible at times to have a site that's compatible with at least the couple most popular browsers (IE and Netscape for example) the only way I can see around the problem is using server side languages instead of javascripts or something like flash which shouldn't act any differently in different browsers unless the user doesn't have the plugin actually loaded.

- David