sincere apologies -didn't know large case means shouting

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Guest

p.sorry for any offence caused, another lesson learned the hardway! Thank you
so kindly for your very kind replies, if they are bit to the point to say the
least but true- yes I know website needs lots of work- but in a funny kind of
way, it works well with lots of interest - that's the key for the timebeing -
in the meantime I fwill continue to figure out how to achieve smaller sizes
etc. Thank you.
 
Hi candy,

I don't believe you offended anyone. I believe that the reference to all
caps was in reference to some of the text on your web site.

I also think that there are several references to size in the remarks you've
seen, and it's important to distinguish between them in order to have a
successful web site. First, there is the size of your fonts. That is not as
important as the other 2. In fact, it is better to use too big of a font
than too small of one. After all, some people can't read fonts that are very
small. Second, you have the size of the HTML page itself. It is too wide for
the majority of computer systems. I use 1024X768 screen resolution, and
about 1/3 of it doesn't appear on my screen. The reason that this is
important is for the convenience of the user. Nobody likes to have to scroll
to see the whole page in pieces. The third size issue is the total size of
all the resources in the page, in bytes. A browser downloads content to view
it. Text is relatively small in bytes, but images are rather larger than
text, and the more images you have in a single page, the longer it takes for
that page to download to the browser. This is particularly important in
browsers that have a dial-up connection to the Internet. Many people will
simply tire of waiting for the contents to download and look elsewhere.
but in a funny kind of
way, it works well with lots of interest - that's the key for the
timebeing -
Click to expand...

Remember the Elephant Man? He drew a lot of interest too. However, you might
want to think about the KIND of interest you draw. After all, it certainly
looks like you want to sell furniture. It's good to "think outside the box,"
and heaven forbid you should have a web site that looks like everybody
else's. That said, you do want to draw the kind of attention and earn the
kind of reputation that will sell furniture for you!

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Ambiguity has a certain quality to it.
 
Adding to Kevin's excellent constructive comments:

A customer should have a "clean", simple and easy to see and understand
environment, one that is not so confusing and is organized.

When I went to the site, it was so "busy" that I was very uncomfortable.


--
===
Tom "Pepper" Willett
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage
---
About FrontPage 2003:
http://office.microsoft.com/home/office.aspx?assetid=FX01085802
===
| Hi candy,
|
| I don't believe you offended anyone. I believe that the reference to all
| caps was in reference to some of the text on your web site.
|
| I also think that there are several references to size in the remarks
you've
| seen, and it's important to distinguish between them in order to have a
| successful web site. First, there is the size of your fonts. That is not
as
| important as the other 2. In fact, it is better to use too big of a font
| than too small of one. After all, some people can't read fonts that are
very
| small. Second, you have the size of the HTML page itself. It is too wide
for
| the majority of computer systems. I use 1024X768 screen resolution, and
| about 1/3 of it doesn't appear on my screen. The reason that this is
| important is for the convenience of the user. Nobody likes to have to
scroll
| to see the whole page in pieces. The third size issue is the total size of
| all the resources in the page, in bytes. A browser downloads content to
view
| it. Text is relatively small in bytes, but images are rather larger than
| text, and the more images you have in a single page, the longer it takes
for
| that page to download to the browser. This is particularly important in
| browsers that have a dial-up connection to the Internet. Many people will
| simply tire of waiting for the contents to download and look elsewhere.
|
| > but in a funny kind of
| > way, it works well with lots of interest - that's the key for the
| > timebeing -
|
| Remember the Elephant Man? He drew a lot of interest too. However, you
might
| want to think about the KIND of interest you draw. After all, it certainly
| looks like you want to sell furniture. It's good to "think outside the
box,"
| and heaven forbid you should have a web site that looks like everybody
| else's. That said, you do want to draw the kind of attention and earn the
| kind of reputation that will sell furniture for you!
|
| --
| HTH,
|
| Kevin Spencer
| Microsoft MVP
| .Net Developer
| Ambiguity has a certain quality to it.
 
Thank you Kevin for taking the time to reply. Very much appreciated! I took
the website over from a webmaster and have reconfigured in a simple manner to
suit our present needs. However I have lost myself in it slightly, having
upgraded from 2000 to 2003, I sit with books and try the next 'task'. At the
moment, our existing customers, use the site to view new current furniture.
I am a very early beginner and have only just mastered thumbnails! I am
cautious at the moment about creating a link to another page, but I am
practising and when I feel confident (not to lose the whole site) I will
challenge that. The page size baffles a mere novice like myself at this
present time, but so did thumbnails to begin with and now they are a 'piece
of cake' so there is hope. Can I change the page size by entering a specific
size into a specific place or do I have to reduce text and images within the
page - that I am not sure about? Running a business leaves me little time to
spend hours (believe me I have spent days trying to get myself back out of
trouble) working it all out but it would be so simple to instruct a Company
to build the website, but then I have little control in updating it day to
day and, Frontpage markets itself on being easy to create one's own website,
and that is what I am determined to do! Not sure about the 'easy' part! I
could do with a crash Microsoft course on 2003 not one online but in person)
but not sure where they are attended. In between 100 other chores, I DO sit
down and do the odd exercise on Frontpage which are most helpful and have got
me this far - not sure that is a good thing or bad - LOL

Once again, thank you for your reply, it was very much appreciated.
 
Thank you very much - very simply laid out and I will certainly be taking it
onboard- on my practice copy on my hard-disc - perhaps I should have used
Dreamweaver - seems alot more self-explanatory! Thank you. Candy
 
While written using DW, that tutorial is of broad enough interest and
suitability that it will help anyone wondering how to plan the page.

After all, it's not the tool, it's the user.
 
The learning curve for Dreamweaver is much steeeeper than FrontPage. Don't
try it right now!
Eleanor
 
The original webmaster did not serve you well. It would be better to start
all over and not use that page as any kind of a guide.
Have you also seen this:
http://www.thepattysite.com/window_sizes1.cfm ??
By the way, don't underline any text that is NOT a link.
Another suggestion ... don't use all caps for text on your pages and only
use common fonts.
'Hover over the picture for the price' doesn't work in Firefox (a browser).
The moving marques will drive some away!
There are at least 4 pages worth of info all on that first page.
You need to seriously strive for consistency: fonts, colors of fonts, size
of photos, size of thumbnails.
Look over this report:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.oldpine.co.uk/

Take all spaces out of your folder and file names. These spaces are
represnted by "%20" in a name such as this:
http://shop photos14.6.05 022_small.jpg/

Here are some more suggestions:
http://www.eleanorstravels.com/frontpage-dontdo.htm
Especially read the first article by Jim Buyens.

Eleanor
 
My pleasure, candy.

First, as to the size of the page, let's start out with the width. At your
skill level, it would problably be best to go with an HTML table, with a
fixed pixel width of 800 or 1024 pixels (I'm not sure what the average is at
this point, but quite a few are switching to 1024). Note that you will have
to remain conscious of the width, as contents such as images that are larger
will stretch the table, and then the whole table will be wider. You can also
nest tables inside of table cells in larger tables for more refined
formatting. Make sure that the border width of the tables is set to 0, so
that they will be invisible. If using FP 2003, you can use layout tables.

I would suggest starting with a fresh page, making it look just the way you
want it to, and then saving it over the original page, or copying and
pasting its contents over those in the original.

As to the total height, well, scrolling is not that much of an issue there,
but you definitely don't want to make the user have to scroll too far.
Perhaps 2 or 3 times the height of the screen would be enough. Remember that
you can create other pages and link to them. It would probably be a good
idea to think of categorizing the type of information you currently have in
a single page, and organizing your web site accordingly.

The photo of your shop is charming. That should probably be the centerpiece
of the home page. And it might be a good idea to make the web site, in terms
of fonts and styles, sort of "fit in" with the look of your shop.

Try to keep the total size in bytes of the images under 200 KB per page.
Remember that you don't want people to tire of waiting for all the content
to load.

It's a good idea to get several browsers (probably Netscape and FireFox at
least, in addition to Internet Explorer) to view your web pages in, just to
see how they will differ in one browser or another. And along the same
lines, setting your screen resolution to different sizes and re-viewing the
pages might be helpful as well.

Yes, it'a not as easy as the marketing makes it seem, but you can do it! One
thing that is helpful is to know that HTML is simply a text markup language,
and what FrontPage does for you is to write HTML for you. So, you can always
go to the Source code view and see what sort of HTML FrontPage uses for
different things. It's really not that complicated. With a little practice,
you'll have a beautiful little web site in no time at all.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Ambiguity has a certain quality to it.
 
Candy,

It is very easy to "lose" yourself in a new program, especially when you
have no experience in it. Creatiig good website is much harder than most
people think. As Kevin said too big IS better than too small.

Eleanor makes excellent points. One I'd like to add is put the prices on the
page. Don't make it hard for the visitor to ge tnfo they need to buy.
Despite what marketing says creating a website is not ar easyas most people
think. creatind a good one is work. As Eleanor said you were not
well served by the persol whd created the site. Using a framed redirect is
evidence of that. Google doesn't like them so be glad othrs have linked to
you.

Kevin and othrs have mad suggestions on pagee layout. I'm going to talk
about cleaning up you content.

I'd suggest starting by making 2 copies of you site. (How to
http://www.accessfp.net/backupfp.htm) One as a back-up, the other to work
on. Open the copy you will use to edit, File | Open Site.Cnose any nther
webs that maybe open.

Now open you web page. with you mouse anywhere on the page use ctrl + a to
select all (or Edxt | Select all). That should cause your whole page to be
highlighted. Next, from the Format menu select "Remove formatting'.

This should remove all the font tags and related formatting. Save your page,
then save it again under the name stock.htm. Close it and reopen your home
page and delete everything starting with "website under reconstruction" to
the thank you for visiting ...".

That is you new home page. Your page will be very plain but that is where
you stamt to apply some of he suggestions of others in this thread.

Open your stock page and delete everything you kept on the home page. Save,
then save again under a new name. Figure out what you want on that page.
Delete the rest until you have a series of shorter pages, each with a
limited lumber of related items. Group similar items together but not too
many at one time. Don't worry about page layout or links yet. Just break the
content out in a loogical manner where visitors will be abl to find things
and not be overwhelmed by the sheer length of the page and the number of
items n it.

Work through the tutorials and links others are providing. Before long you
will see a dramatic improvement in your site.

--
Cheryl D. Wise
MS FrontPage MVP
http://mvp.wiserways.com
http://starttoweb.com
Online instructor led web design training - Next Session June 26th
 
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