[Yoyi]

What is the difference in designing in <div> as opposed to tables. And does anyone know any good tutorials for desiging with <div>


Also, do you guys mind taking a look at this site. I am a 3d animator/graphic designer and completly new at anything web, this is my first attempt at doing a website. I think its pretty messy but would you guys take a look and let me know what you think I should fix??

I am using project seven menu and image gallery.

The home page needs to have some more done to it in the middle area
Only Products> are sort of finished
The galleries are just test
Advantages needs to be changed also

www
artisticpavers.com/Test/index.html

Edit: Can't post URLs yet

[Yoyi]

Any feedback?

[mgpwr]

Looks like a standard website, with a lot of OTT images!

[pagey]

I think you're referring to Cascasing Style Sheets, or CSS. These are internal, or more commonly external documents that are used to style your web page content.

Useful sites to look up information on are w3schools and htmldog.
If you'd like to see what can be achieved with some graphics programme skills and the knowledge of CSS, try cssbeauty or the csszengarden.

Hope this helps

[Yoyi]

Sorry I am very new what is an OTT image??

I was looking through the csszengarden and I was curious, is the stylized text part of the background itself??

[pagey]

Originally Posted by Yoyi

Sorry I am very new what is an OTT image??

I was looking through the csszengarden and I was curious, is the stylized text part of the background itself??

By OTT, I presume he just means 'over the top'. But I haven't looked at the site, so I can't comment.

Any large body of text on zen garden will not be part of the background, but more likely a certain font. There would however be background images used, and other images too.

[applecro]

Using DIVS helps with SEO, where as tables clutter up your code with information that could be stored in external documents (css) and then linked in.

Your site seems ok however the image sizes (eg - top bar) are a little large and you have no meta tags as yet.

[pgo]

Jesus Christ.

You don't design anything with <div>s.

I'm sick to death of typing that.

You mark up your document with semantic HTML (<p> for paragraphs, <h*> for headings, <ul> for unordered lists, etc) and use <div>s and spans when you absolutely need a division.

CSS is where the design comes from.

I suggest starting at www.htmldog.com

CSS/standards-based design is superior to tables in just about every possible way. The debate ended years ago.

[emil]

One more for pgo. I design using notepad.

also you might want to have a look at http://css.maxdesign.com.au/ (I should be on commission)

[funkyprem]

well I use Photoshop as my coding enviroment and then export to CorelDraw to render the code.

[emil]

Ohh, so you mean corel is better than illustrator? Let's have a poll.

[funkyprem]

to make it a fair poll, shall we throw Fireworks into the mix too?

[Jayx]

Who's for Freehand?

[Yoyi]

::lost::

I been reading thorugh the htmldog site and although alot is rubbing off some things I still can't really grasp. But practice makes perfect, so I have to keep on working on it.



As I mentioned before I am a graphic designer, (IE photoshop, illustrator, etc trooper) and a 3d animator (maya mostly some 3dsmax) and that up there is my first attempt at the whole new monster that is web design. And after reading lots of threads here, it seems that over using the WYSIWYG is somewhat frowned upon, and I am ashamed to say that this is what I am using mainly. Alot of the stuff that I have learned is by using the graphic side and figure out what it did in the code window.



As I am not getting payed for that site upthere by the place in wich I work right now, and I am doing it as a (sort of favor) I am using it as a learning experience while I get payed and learn new stuff.



Now for my personal site that I want to begin building soon I would like to use CSS. And thanks to everyone that linked here they are helping quite alot.


I know most recomendations lean torward learning how to code for the web in notepad but this is something that would just make my eye explode and my brain to cave in. As a graphic designer I got spoiled by been able to see what I am diong. So would you guys think I could use Dreamweaver to learn CSS or should I put my eyes through the missery mentioned?

[Yoyi]

Anyone?

[flashyhorsefoto]

One newbie to another...I too began learning web coding with a WYSIWYG program and have since migrated. There is NOTHING wrong with that at all. In fact, Kudos to you for taking the plunge.

The reason so many like to code otherwise is because those type of programs actually limit your abilities in the long run and add waaaaay more markup than is ever needed.

Yes, DIV tags are far greater and so much more powerful than tables. You are not limited to rows and columns with them as you are with the traditional tables. May I recommend a book, "CSS Mastery" by Andy Budd. It is a very thorough, easy read that makes these DIV tags and CSS styles all come together and make sense. You can also look him up on the web with a google search for his name.

Good luck to you!

[Yoyi]

Thanks for the reply. I will look up that book asap as I am really hooked on this.

One thing I found on the book publisher review is that it's sort of aimed at someone that already kows CSS??