OK it's online

[winwintoo]

There has to be a joke somewhere in this browser mess, so I googled "browser jokes" and came up with this one - it's an oldie but a goodie.

I also found this article that takes a more serious look at the whole issue.

I'm taking David's advice - I'm going to learn Perl...

Take care, Margaret

[KevinBE]

Wow, I just found time at work to look at the replys. You guys are really helping me a lot. I have printed all the replys and am going over them now. Your comments are appreciated very much.

Jeannie, you aren't late at all. I've got a feeling that this thing will be going on for quite some time. I'd like to think I could link from those pics in the collage to the actual pictures. But, you know how Microsoft has problems with text and graphics mixing. I guess I could do it but it might harder than the gallery was. Also I wonder how that would look in all the different browsers.

I am already looking at changing the gallery again! But, I am not sure what format to use. I was thinking I could use a table format but I am hearing about the problems Jeannie and Clare are having with tables. I wonder if there is a way to create a nice looking Web site that will display the same on all the browsers?

David I went to the 1st Page 2000 site and tried to download the file. Cnet says it is no longer available and the link for the mirror goes to a German hosting site. I wonder what gives?

Margaret, I tested the site on an old NT machine I have that is running IE 5.0 and everything displays like it should, aside from the Monotype Cursiva font not displaying. I am concerned that the frames on the gallery page are giving some browsers problems. I'm not sure what direction to turn next.

Jeffery, thanks for you observations. I need to know things like that. I created that graphic on the fly and didn't notice that my spacing was off. Thats easy to fix, I'll put that on my list and also the text formatting error.

Clare, thanks for the flowers. It has been a lot of work, I just wish it has all been productive work. I spend too much time going down dead-end alleys and having to change directions. The arrangment of the Menu was an accident. The "link bars" in Frontpage are linked to the navigation tree. How-ever the pages line up in the navigation view is how the links are arranged on the link bar menu. The first time I tried to publish the site last night something went badly wrong in Frontpage and it trashed my navigation alignment. I made three failed attempts to publish the site from my PC to the Web site. It went from bad to worse. Finally I had to delete all the files on the Web server before I published the site to get it work. I still had some problems to work out and I guess I overlooked that one. The links were supposed to align just like you said. I've also had problems editing the site online. I had thought that I should edit an offline copy of the site and re-publish it back to the Web but now I'm not sure which way is best.

It looks like I may need to change the gallery again so I can eliminate the compatibility problems with frames. Problem is what can I go to that would be more compatible with all the browsers?

[winwintoo]

Kevin, I'd bet a good steak dinner that the problems I'm having in IE on the Mac are only peculiar to the Mac so I wouldn't worry about it. It is most likely the combination of Mac/IE/and FrontPage that is causing the strange behavior with a strong emphasis on the Mac/Microsoft combination.

Don't change your frame setup until we get an answer from Microsoft - I'm going to write to them write now.

Margaret
ps. I like my steak rare!

[winwintoo]

I realize it's late in the day to be asking this, but since you have Front Page 2002, I'm wondering why you didn't use it to create your gallery??

I was looking for a place to complain about your/my problem and came across this article at WebMonkey.

Maybe you tried it and it didn't work for you?

margaret

[jeaniesa]

I'd like to think I could link from those pics in the collage to the actual pictures. But, you know how Microsoft has problems with text and graphics mixing. I guess I could do it but it might harder than the gallery was. Also I wonder how that would look in all the different browsers.

You want to use an image map to create the links - no text is needed. Do a search on "image_map" in FrontPage and you should find all the info you need to make it work. I have done these in FP before and it was quite easy. To make things easy on yourself, you could just make it link to a simple pop-up window, perhaps with an explanation of the image if it makes sense. Or, just make the image appear in the center section of your layout so that the user will have access to all of the links if s/he wants to get back to the info. It should look the same in all browsers - it's standard HTML 4. No JavaScript or frames needed.

I am already looking at changing the gallery again! But, I am not sure what format to use. I was thinking I could use a table format but I am hearing about the problems Jeannie and Clare are having with tables. I wonder if there is a way to create a nice looking Web site that will display the same on all the browsers?

The problems I'm having with tables is the way earlier versions of Netscape don't render background images in individual cells correctly. It's an issue for me b/c of the way I've put my site together and expect pixels to line up where I want them. (I'm realizing now it's probably not the best design, but I'm too far along to change now. I'll have to wait for my next revision when I hope to use full CSS and get rid of tables.) I don't see anything in your gallery pages that would indicate a table format wouldn't work for you. I know that some sites have a "noframes" version of pages for browsers that don't support frames. You might want to consider something like that. Then again, as Margaret said, the problem with frames seems to be specific to IE on the Mac. So, don't spend any energy changing things until you get that figured out and decide if it's worth it!

It looks like I may need to change the gallery again so I can eliminate the compatibility problems with frames. Problem is what can I go to that would be more compatible with all the browsers?

I think it's next to impossible to design a site that's compatible with all browsers. That said, you might want to read the "serious" link that Margaret provided a couple of posts back. I'm finding it an interesting perspective - and I know that my site doesn't quite fit the view that this author has. However, I know I've purposefully made some design decisions that don't bode well for all browsers. I found a couple of sites with web-browsing stats (like the percentage of people using the various browsers, screen resolution sizes, etc.) and decided to design for the most popular ones. I know I'm not covering everybody perfectly, but hopefully the alternatives I'm providing for users are sufficient.

Don't get too discouraged. I know you probably just want to get this project over and done with, but it might help to look at it as a work in progress that you can improve slowly bit by bit. I think what you've got there now is a good, strong professional site - and almost everything we're mentioning is icing on the cake!

Jeanie

[KevinBE]

Margaret I have tried the FR gallery. The reason I didn't like it was that I couldn't put the comments I wanted to put about the images when viewed in the expanded form. The viewer page was a plain blank white page I think. I'll take another look to see if I overlooked something. I may have seen a blank web page and didn't know it, but I thought that I couldn't make any changes to the viewer pages

Thanks for the ideas Jeannie, I'll take a look at that and see what I can so. I have to edit that graphic anyway, to correct the spacing problem, and maybe try something.

I've made some of the minor changes to the site. I seemed to be able to update it OK this evening. That publishing problem last night got kind of frustrating.

You know this thread is getting to be a book! Almost 100 posts.

[KevinBE]

Hey, I have one more question. I have changed the name of all the other pages on my site in the "page properties", not the file name, to reflect what I want the search engines to see. Do I need to do this to the home page or does it need to stay as "www.restored-memories.com/index.htm" ? I am wondering why none of the search engines have picked me up and thought this may be a key point. I have submitted the site to four of the main sites through a link on Microsoft.com.

[winwintoo]

www.restored-memories.com/index.htm

The default page in any directory "must" be called "index.htm" or "index.html" or "home.htm" or "home.html" - home seems to have gone out of favor and I don't see it used much any more.

Most folks will just type "restored-memories.com" into the address bar so the server needs to know what to cough up.

Margaret

[KevinBE]

I'm not talking about the name of the page or file. I am referring to the name listed in the page properties, this lable is what internet explorer displays at the top line of the internet explorer window. Like this sites home page displays "RetouchPro - Microsoft Internet Explorer" at the top of the window when the home page is displayed.

By the way I looked again at FP gallerys. There is only one gallery type that allows you to put the picture description on the actual viewing page. I don't like that one because only 5 thumbnails are displayed at once, requiring the user to know that the arrows to each side of the thumbs have to be clicked on to cause the list to scroll let or right to see the rest of the thumbs. I thought that would be confusing, maybe not.

[winwintoo]

Sorry Kevin, I misunderstood. You're talking about the <title> and I notice that your's have www.restored-memories.com the title can be anything you want it to be. I don't know how to change it in FrontPage. I would just edit the html and change it there.

I need to shut this down and go do something else. I've been learning Perl today and it's making me cranky

Margaret

[KevinBE]

I took a better look at that one type of gallery in Frontpage that allows comments on the viewing page. It just might work good afterall. I think I will work up a gallery based on that format and see what it looks like. It would be better to have the entire site lok the same.

Also according to Microsoft it takes up to 4 weeks for Google to list your site after you submit it. So I may have 2 more weeks of silence. It'll gie me more time to get ready.

[d_kendal]

kevin - you can try this page for the download of that "1st page" program, it seemed to work fine for me.

- David

[clare]

Hi Kevin,

I have just taken a look at your home page source code and found the following
-----
</head>
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="geneology Lake Charles Louisiana picture CD photo archive photo restoration photo restore photograph restoration Restored Memories">
------

The meta keywords should be in between the <head> and the </head> and each word should have a comma inbetween it. To back up the meta keyword you should also have a description tag. Here is a possibility of how it should read

-----
<title>Photograph Restoration at Restored-Memories.com</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="geneology, Lake Charles Louisiana, picture CD, photo, archive, photo restoration, photo restore, photograph, restoration, Restored Memories >
<meta name="description" content="Photographic Restoration at Restored-Memories.com>

The description will back up the wording in the meta keywords and the title to give you a better placement in the search engines.

Google took about a month to originally start linking to my old site,
although I did spend several days submitting the site to a whole bunch of search engines.

Hope this helps

Clare

[KevinBE]

Thanks David for the new link. I'm going to give that program a run and see how my site works at the different resolutions. It is not real fun changing the resolution on my PC several different times to see how the site is displayed. Also that looks like a good editor. I might just go ahead and get the book you mentioned and spend some quality time with HTML.

Thanks for the tips on the tags Clare. Looks like you have done the syntax corrections for me. I should be able to insert your work in to replace what I have. Like I told David I am going to dive right in and get up to speed on HTML. It looks like Frontpage doesn't necessarily always create clean code. I took CJ's advice and ran my home page through DR HTML 's site and it found a lot of errors.

I'm also going to work on the Frontpage version of the gallery tonight.

Thanks again guys.

[KevinBE]

CJ;

Just wanted you to know that I did read you comments made at my site. I haven't been able to figure out how this data should be presented to me yet. Right now I have to open results.htm in the _private subdirectory on the site. I have asked my host to see if he can determine how this data should be presented to me. So far he hasn't responded. Just editing that file will be a very poor way for me to get the results back. The file has no formatting and no delimitation, ie its just a bunch of words all bunched together in that file. I know I am missing something here.

[jeaniesa]

Kevin,

Looking in my FrontPage book for what to do with form results (I assume your comments page is a form)...

1. Right-click anywhere on the form while in with WYSIWYG view and you should be able to select "Form Properties" from the pop-up menu.

2. To configure the Save Results component, click the Options button. One option is to e-mail the results to you, but you need to make sure that your web server has identified an SNMP mail server to the FrontPage Server Extensions. (Please don't ask me to explain that - I'm just copying it out of my book. )

You can both save toa file AND send an e-mail with the results. If you want to continue to save to a file, click on the "Options" button and you'll be able to specify the format the form results are saved in, e.g. HTML, formatted text, text database using comma as separator, etc. (FWIW, the example that's shown in the book for HTML looks very readable.)

Hope this helps a little.

Jeanie

[KevinBE]

Thank you Jeannie, that is just what I needed to hear. I don't know why the book I have doesn't cover setting those properties. It's kind of funny that it goes to great discussions on how to create the page but doesn't cover what to do with the results. I have now set the page up properly thanks to you. Guess I didn't buy enough books.

[jeaniesa]

Yeah! Glad that helped Kevin.

Have you tried looking at your library for technical books? I have found it really helps to try using a book before purchasing it. I have a bunch of books sitting on my desk right now that I know I will never buy either b/c they don't contain info that's helpful to what I want to do - or b/c they explain things in a way which is impossible for me to understand. OTOH, I have found a few gems which have made things seem really simple - and I've purchased those!

Jeanie

[KevinBE]

That's a good idea Jeannie. Don't know why I haven't thought about that. It sure sounds like a good idea, I have no idea what they have at our public library. I guess I need to find out. Sounds cheaper too.

[themanda]

Originally posted by clare
The meta keywords should be in between the <head> and the </head> and each word should have a comma inbetween it.

Actually, it's better to *not* comma deliniate your keywords, for what they are worth. By not separating them by commas, you're essentially making all of the available for different permutations of common keywords.

And it does take a while for the search engines to find you. When last I checked, Google hadn't even started to dance yet for this month, so the cycle could be even longer than a month there.

[KevinBE]

OK, here I go again. I took a hard look at the gallery situation and made a decission to try the Frontpage gallery. The style I chose is kind of a table layout, but not really a table. I decided to quit fighting Frontpage and conform to the rules that it likes to play by and I think we might get along better now.

I thought that it was important that I add a lot of descriptive text along with the photos in the view mode. But I guess if I do it right the pictures should be self-explainatory and no other comments needed. What do you think? I will admit that the photoshop gallery might have looked a little better but it was going to be a bear to administer. The Frontpage galley will be simple to modify and maintain.

I also corrected many small things, hopefully not making any more in the process. Well I am through making changes for tonight, everything is starting to blurr.

[jeaniesa]

Hi Kevin,

I like the look of the new gallery. Unfortunately, with the thumbnail table three cells wide, it makes the page too wide even on my 1024x768 display. It looks like you have three examples for each of the Basic, Moderate and Major restorations, so perhaps that's why you chose that number. However, I think that if you are able to specify the number of cells across, I would change it to two. That should help with the page width problem a lot!

Also, I know you don't want to play outside of Frontpages rules, but if it were me (and take this for what it's worth, b/c I always get myself into trouble with my big ideas! ), I would change the HTML code the FP generates for the HREF link. It looks like it's a direct link to your JPG files. You could change that to create your own HTML page to include the picture in - along with descriptive text - and then change the HREF to refer to the HTML file rather than the JPG image. Just a thought. You've had more headaches with FP than I, so it's up to you if you want to try that. If I were viewing your site for the first time and I didn't know much about restoration, I would want to know what you had to do to fix the image. But, I'm also an information junkie and perhaps I'm not "the norm."

Looking good!

Jeanie

[clare]

Originally posted by themanda
Actually, it's better to *not* comma deliniate your keywords, for what they are worth. By not separating them by commas, you're essentially making all of the available for different permutations of common keywords.

Thanks Themanda,

Its all so much to learn, I was told to seperate the words with a comma, I will try it without - thanks for the advice. Sorry for the mis information Kevin

Clare

[KevinBE]

Thanks for the insite Jeannie. I had failed to consider the screen size factor. Nice thing is that I can just simply make changes to the proterties of the gallery and the changes will be imediate. With the Adobe gallery I had to make a lot of manual changes after regenerating a new gallery.

I really like your idea to modify the thumbnail operation. But, if I do that it will make updates more complicated. I'll look at it though.

Clare don't worry about the info. That change was easy to correct.

[KevinBE]

OK Jeannie I went home for lunch and in about 15 seconds I changed the format of the gallery. I can add a large description text entry to each one of these thumbnails and it will display the description right under the picture in the viewing window. My question about this format is are most visitors going to be able to recognize that they have to click on the arrows to make the thumbnails scroll to see the remaining thumbnails. It seems to me that this might be deal breaker but I want to know what you guys think. Adding the descriptions tonight will be an easy task. I just didn't have a lot of time at lunch.

[jeaniesa]

Kevin,

I like it. If you're worried about people not knowing what the arrows mean, then just edit the graphic in PS and add the text you want. E.g., see my attachment here. Then, just replace the FP generated arrow with your edited one. If you keep the name the same, you won't need to change any code. Do keep a separate copy of your edited one though b/c I have a feeling if you update the gallery, your edited one will be overwritten.

You need to decide what screen width you're targeting though. This version is still quite wide. If you look at line 41 in your gallery page code, you'll notice that your table with is set to 1119. That's pretty wide! What happens on my display is that I have to scroll to the right to see your navigation links. I think that's because your large gallery images are 700 px wide. (Can you specify that when you set up the gallery?)

To help you determine how wide your images can be without causing a horizontal scrollbar, you need to look at the fixed width of the other columns in the table that lays out your page design. Specifically

105 - left column that contains the thumbnail design we all like
19 - left border of vertical navigation bar
150 - navigation buttons
87 - right bar
-----
361 - total

So, if you want to design for a 800 px wide screen, and you take into account the vertical scroll bar in the browser window (about 25px, giving you 775 px to work with in your design), then

775-361=414 px (the maximum width for your gallery examples, less if you want some cellpadding (i.e., buffer) between the edges of your image and the surrounding page elements.)

For a 1024 px wide display, work with 999 and

999-361=638 px (the mazimum width for gallery ex. for 1024 px)

I know that really doesn't seem like much room. I'm running into the same problem with my site. The table design you had before is actually a little better in this regard b/c the image opened in a new window without the extra site design elements around it. That allowed the image to be larger without causing the horizontal scroll bar.

Sorry, I wish I had some easy answers for you!! I hope this makes some sense. I'm dealing with the same thing myself. (Though just in my head b/c I haven't actually tried to implement anything yet.)

Jeanie

[KevinBE]

Hey Jeannie, No problems on adjusting the picture size that is one of the properties that are dynamic. All those settings can be changed on the fly. I'll check it out when I get home.

That is one advantage to the Frontpage gallery. Maintanence is not going to be a problem. I will try to come up with an attractive way to let my visitors know that the thumbnails do scroll.

[jeaniesa]

Doh - I knew I'd forget to attach that graphic!! OK, this time for sure!

Jeanie

[KevinBE]

Thanks Jeanie, that looks just like what I need. How come you keep letting me spell your name wrong. I just woke up and saw what I was doing.

[roger_ele]

Kevin

Great site!

In regards to the gallery problem of the menu not fitting on the screen at 800x600; If you want to keep the format of the before and after photos being next to each other - that means that your horizontal real estate is very precious. You might consider moving your menu to a horizontal strip under the header, unless you have plans for additional ways to use your "menu strip" in the future that this would mess up ...

You might consider a FAQ page with a link to contact page to add a suggested question. If you do a lot of web work from shipped / mailed originals you might state your policies and preferred methods / insurance, etc.

You might add a gaurantee policy to the price list if you have one.

I might have missed it, normal turn around times?

Roger