Re: Frontpage2000

On 3 Aug 2000, at 6:33, Chas Bullock & Stephen Webste wrote:

> Several have commented that the "clown" that should be in the top left
> hand corner is some times all over the place depending upon which version
> of browser, particularly Netscape, they are using.

That is to be expected.  Your "clown" image is being positioned with the in-
line style "position: absolute; left: 14; top: 26".  This is CSS2, and 
support for CSS2 is inconsistent among browsers.


> I have also used W3C HTML and CSS validation service which indicate a
> truck load of errors, all rather meaningless to this novice.

Two of your validation errors are related to your "clown" image.  You're 
specifying the position for the "left" and "top" and as "14" and "26" -- 
but 14 and 26 what?  Pixels?  Inches?  You must specify a unit, so that the 
browsers will know how much space to leave.  Browsers are supposed to 
ignore improper CSS, but some do and some don't (and are instead making 
assumptions about what you meant, which may or may not be what you 
intended).


> I am not a programer and never intent to be; 

You don't need to be a programmer to use HTML and CSS, but unless you 
restrict it (via "Tools | Page Options | Compatibility"), FrontPage is 
going to use advanced features that have limited availability, and you do 
need to understand what those features do and how well supported they are 
on the browsers your audience will use.

A good starting place is Dave Raggett's "Getting started with HTML" page:

  http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/

For a wealth of CSS information, try:

  http://css.nu/

Usenet newsgroups can offer help with specific problems:

  comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html (help with HTML)
  comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets (help with CSS)
  microsoft.public.frontpage.client (help with FrontPage)


> So is Tidy for me? 

Tidy is a good tool for turning invalid HTML into valid HTML.  However, to 
do so, often Tidy has to guess at what you meant to do.  It does a very 
good job but cannot guess correctly every time, so a better approach would 
be to attempt to write valid HTML initially and let Tidy correct the 
occasional mistake.


> Will it fix my Frontpage2000 problems? 

Even if you correct your positioning syntax, that won't mean that a given 
browser will support a feature that it didn't support before.  It will mean 
that you will have the highest likelihood of success in getting browsers to 
render what they do support properly.


> Can I incorporate it into Frontpage2000?

I don't know what you mean by "incorporate."  You can run Tidy on pages 
produced by FrontPage as a separate step.


> Which Tidy program would suit me: Tidy.exe or TidyGUI (I run Win 98se) 

Use Tidy if you prefer to work from the command line, or use TidyGUI if you 
prefer to work with windowed dialogs.

                                      -- Dave

Received on Saturday, 5 August 2000 01:18:13 UTC