Please help, problem with new site

[miikeremains]

Hello, new guy here, and am hoping somebody can help me out..

Im making a site for my band. Im using photoshop and dreamweaver. I dont know much about html. I made the entire site out of tables.. One big table with the background image as the template i made with photoshop and then the rest are all tables within, holding the content in place..

My problem is..

I cant figure out how to make a scrollable news section. There is only so much room for text on the template i made. So i want the news section to have a scroll bar. How do i do this? I figured out how to do it with a layer, but the layer and tables dont stay in sync when the browser is resized. The layer kinda stays locked where it is, as where the site kinda floats inder the layer when the browser is resized...If you understand what i mean..

The previous site i made for the band, i did with php-nuke. It wasnt that bad, but i need something simpler. Alot of people seemed to be getting lost within it lol.. Ive tried mambo, xoops and a bunch of others. I even tried blog tools like word press and such. But i have no knowledge of CSS to get them to look the way i want. Which lead me to where i am now. I like the design of what i made, but at the same time think its gona be a pain in the ass to update..

Heres the link to my site. Its just a home page right now. http://www.rotfmusic.com/home.htm

Thanks for any insight any of you can give me. I have to get this up and running by new years..

 

[3GN Media]

Look up iframes on Google ;]

or div overflow

Both will work

 

[JustNewbie]

I used iframes.

 

[Gareth]

Yeah, insert an iframe in your content area for unlimited writing room! lol Or even better learn how to code templates so that they are expandable, that would be better in the long run depending on what you plan to do.

 

[miikeremains]

ok i just tried an iframe. I may not have done it correctly. Do i have to make a seperate html file to display within it? Also, can i make it transparent?

is there any way to just get a layer to move with the rest of the template? I can get everything to work the way i want when i align the main table to the left. But i think it looks dumb like that.

 

[harkster]

Here is an example to put a scrolling div inside your table. The height can be a problen -- is why fixed the row height in the example. The scrolling div can go in any cell. Very cool stuff that css.

    <TABLE WIDTH="300px" CELLPADDING="5"> 
      <TR> 
        <TD HEIGHT="200px"> 
          <DIV STYLE="width: 100%; overflow: auto; height: 200px">My problem
            is.. I cant figure out how to make a scrollable news section. There is only so
            much room for text on the template i made. So i want the news section to have a
            scroll bar. How do i do this? I figured out how to do it with a layer, but the
            layer and tables dont stay in sync when the browser is resized. The layer kinda
            stays locked where it is, as where the site kinda floats inder the layer when
            the browser is resized...<BR><BR>If you understand what i mean.. The previous
            site i made for the band, i did with php-nuke. It wasnt that bad, but i need
            something simpler. Alot of people seemed to be getting lost within it lol.. Ive
            tried mambo, xoops and a bunch of others.<BR><BR> I even tried blog tools like
            word press and such. But i have no knowledge of CSS to get them to look the way
            i want. Which lead me to where i am now. I like the design of what i made, but
            at the same time think its gona be a pain in the ass to update..</DIV></TD> 
      </TR> 
    </TABLE>

Example at http://www.hiqnet.com/scroll-text.htm

Interesting site. Just a suggestion -- you could make your 710 height table scrollable but your scroll area shouldn't be over 550px because most people view at a 800 x 600 resolution.

No big deal as you could fit it well in your design. That way you can seperate your posts by line breaks or as individual divs with margins to seperate. That way you don't need table cells for each post and is much easier to update.

BTW in your table height/widths you should add px after the numbers because some browsers don't render properly without a unit provided.

Be glad to lend a hand if you want.

Take a look at http://www.hiqnet.com/rotf/home.htm

 

[miikeremains]

Thanks for taking the time man..

How comethough when i view it in IE its narrower, the scroll bar is black and the background template is being duplicated on the bottom, but in firefox the scroll bar is white?

 

[harkster]

Thanks for taking the time man..

How comethough when i view it in IE its narrower, the scroll bar is black and the background template is being duplicated on the bottom, but in firefox the scroll bar is white?

Didn't notice the IE problems -- IE doesn't render a lot of things properly. Let me tinker a bit. I see why background repeats but the fix evades me right now. I'll get back. This stuff is frustrating but fun at the same time. If was mine I would do without all the tables but quite a but of work involved.

I think that IE looks at background colors and applies to scroll bars. I must admit that the black looks much better on your site. I think there may be a css way to change the FF scroll bars.

 

[miikeremains]

yeah the black does look better. I put the css in there for it to do that. i was just wondering why the one in firefox stayed white..

Im playing around with the template right now in Fireworks. Heres what im doing. Tell me if im on the right track..

I openned the background image and sliced it up according to how im going to go about aranging my content. The areas that i am going to put content, i changed the image in that place to a background image. Therefore there are no tables..

I appreciate your help man, is there a way we can chat on msn or aim maybe?

My msn is [email protected] and my aim is miikeremains

mike

 

[harkster]

Sorry but I don't do chat. I have a disability & typing is so slow & hard to keep up with the flow of conversation.

The slicing up of the background images and placing them via absolute positioning would be cleaner :imho: . That said I have another sample for you to look at http://www.hiqnet.com/rotf/home.htm

I learned quite a bit about how the 2 browsers process margins and padding of divs. I could get it looking just as I wanted in either but not in both. What you see is a compromise. It also required changing some of your table/td from % to px which forces things to align properly.

This little problem is harder than it first appears to be. If I get a bit of extra time I may look into doing this as pure css. Would be done as a 3 column layout with a fixed width/height center column and the left/right colums would shrink and expand as needed while keeping the content centered. Sometimes putting a css site together can be frustrating but once done much easier to update/maintain. BTW not an expert -- just hack away until I get it to work -- http://www.rosevillepottery.biz/ is totally css (except item listings) including the navigation rollover type effects.

I can't help with the scroll bar issue, sorry.

If you want me to zip up the home.htm & email let me know.

 

[Rowan W]

i was just wondering why the one in firefox stayed white.

Because the code to modify scrollbar colours is not web standard code, and changing scrollbar colours brings up usability problems. Scrollbars are part of my Operating System, not your webpage, so I wouldn't want them changed in the first place.

If you use a strict standard compliant doctype then the scrollbars wouldn't be modifiable in IE either, because when IE is in standards compliant mode it actually attempts to follow the standards.