My site is falling apart - halp! Created 15 years ago2009-03-07 15:42:46 UTC by Taylor

Hey guys.

I have a quite irritating issue with a homepage, that I'm currently working on. The thing is, I'm not really a pro at creating websites, so this might have a horribly simple solution.

Ok, so I have a table-based layout, which looks like this in Dreamweaver:

And when I take a look at these pages in Firefox (but this only goes for those pages, where the height of the main cell is greater, than the summed height of the menus at the left) the menus just fall apart, meaning they have crazy big space between them, even though I didn't set any border space. Looks like this:

The funny thing is, that this error only occurs when using Firefox. Google Chrome and IE work just fine - I didn't test it with Opera.

So, dear web designers / coders, what could be the problem?

Thanks

You're not going to like this, but the problem is that you're using Dreamweaver. Programs like DW do unexpected and silly things, and it can get rather difficult to fix.

My recommendation is to start learning about HTML and CSS, and then do it yourself - a layout like that would be pretty easy to do, especially with tables (but tables are not recommended).

If you don't want to redo the whole site, still learn some HTML and CSS, and get the Firebug plugin for Firefox. Then inspect the menu areas and you should be able to find out why it's messing up like that.

I suppose a third option is to work around it in DW. Try putting each menu graphic in its own table cell.

I hate working with Dreamweaver too, though it's the only way I'll ever be able to make a website simply because I don't care at all about learning how to do it the right way. You really do have to trick the program into doing what you want, because it fights against you as hard as it can at every turn. Do what Penguinboy said and put each graphic in its own cell, I'm all but certain that will fix it (I've had similar problems).

My dad's a high status poster on the Google webmaster community.

He frequently tells me about countless posts of people whose sites are not doing what they want, because they either use dreamweaver, frontpage, or the like.

Basically, if you want a site that does anything,other than sitting there and existing, then learn to do it right. There's really no other option.

If you're looking for speed, I can see using Dreamweaver. But if you want it to look nice, you should at least examine all the code when done and clean it up.

Thanks for the input.

I did eventually manage to fix up most of the pages, by deleting all menu graphics, fiddling around with the cells, and putting them back in.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to learn HTML and CSS right now, since the site launches on Wednesday. I thought about it, though I'm always scared off when I take a look at a few lines of code - maybe some other time, when I'll have enough spare time to start learning.

But right now, well...sucks to be me, I guess. I hope the other pages won't turn out having the same, or even worse problems.

Thanks again for your help!