Web Design

[chishnfips]

Hi folks, does anyone know fo any really good web design forums, I joined one the other day but it takes ages for people to respond to posts and questions.


Cheers Chish

 

[helterskelter]

Well ask here we know a thing or too.

I know a little about HTML, ASP, and can do web hosting as a hobby.

 

[nickelplates]

Hi folks, does anyone know fo any really good web design forums, I joined one the other day but it takes ages for people to respond to posts and questions.


Cheers Chish

I have never seen one which is a general web design forum although I know a few specialist sites that deal with specific aspects. Are you after help with the technical side or is it more to do with the graphic design aspects and making a site look good as that is something I tend to leave to others with a better eye for these things than mine .

On the technical (as opposed to design) side I earn a living developing applications using my skills in HTML, javascript, AJAX, asp, asp.net, C#, VB.NET, VBscript, Apache, Perl, IIS, SQL, CSS, Access, VBA, XML, XHTML, SOAP, REST and a few other bits and pieces I picked up along the way so if you want to ask a few simple questions in any of these areas I will do my best to help.

 

[chishnfips]

Hi folks, cheers for the replies, I suppose I just want a place where I can get good technical advice should I need it. I am a grpahic designer and am just trying to get my head around the whole web thing I can do basic sites and make feedback forms using PHP and stuff, but really need to get into the nitty gritty of it all and understand it better. There are loads of question I have about how to stop header injections and what the hell are header injections anyway lol, and how to stop spammers from messing with your form. In the past I have used the no follow script, does that work indefinately?? And the threats/fixes I should really be aware of when designing a site when it comes to hackers and twits who like to mess things up.

At the moment I need advice on flash, I have started to redesign my current site: bloomonkey graphics using flash MX and was wondering how I would get the thumbnails to enlarge using flash, I can do it in dreamweaver, that's easy enough, but I dont know the action script to use in flash so it becomes part of the "movie".

A couple of other things I wanted to know are:

1. How to get a good SEO when using flash. Because a flash SWF file is in effect a flat file so google and other search engines wouldn't recognise the text in it. I wondered if using dynamic text in flash would get this to work, or would I add meta tags (is that right) to the page in dreamweaver before upload.

and sorry lol

2. I have three links on my past clients web page of other sites I have designed, I used the "get url" action script in flash but it seems to use my web address as a prefix and so doesn't go to the site I listed, I just get a page not found. Any ideas?

lol A lot to ask so sorry if it takes time to read

cheers chish

 

[rabbut]

For question 1, would adding an alternative text attribute to your flash object not achive this. The alternative text shows when the flash media you have imbedded cannot be loaded for some reason, or if a viewer has set their browser not to load additional media. Web searching tool like Google will also read the alternative text attributes of media when indexing a page.

Using META tags will make many browsers (Google included) ignore the page or down-grade it's score when indexing, unless they are used to just tell the bot not to index that page/part of that page

Question 2, I'm not very good at flash, so this may not be helpful, but it sounds like Flash is giving a relative link. I.E. it thinks the address you are giving it ois part of your site, so adds the www.yoursite.whatever to the URL such that it is treated like an internal link, in a similar fassion to if you do <a href="/another_page.html"> for an internal link in your site, that is of a relative link type

 

[Davo86]

Question 2

In flash on the button you have made go to the actionscript and add this (think its this, hard to do without being in flash which is on my other comp)
getURL("http/www.website.com", "_blank");

I really like the design of your site although i feel that the top area is being somewhat wasted (could just be the publishing settings you have used though) and i think that if it was moved up then on the folio page for example you would have more room to show your work.

How do you want the thumbnails to enlarge?

 

[chishnfips]

Hi folks, thanks for the replies

Rabbut: An alternative text attribute, cool, I will look into that, I am just getting to grips with flash so got a lot to learn. Do I make a separate web page in html and get it to load as a back up?

Davo86: Magic man I'm glad you like the site, thanks. The links work a treat now, so mega thanks for that too. My code was the same apart from the "_blank" bit.

Do you mean as it sits within the whole page? I was thinking of putting a wee animation along the top bar, maybe something to do with the circles at the end forming a monkey or something lol.

And I will maybe add a page for photoshop tutorials and stuff in the future.

chish

 

[rabbut]

The alternative text attribute is added to the flash item when you embed it in the website. Under Dreamweaver, if you select your flash object, down in the bottom options menu, you should see a alt or alternative text option or something like that. Add the text you want the browser to display if the flash cannot be leaded here. I can tell none is set, as I don't have flash installed, so when I browse to your page, I'm met by a black background and a white box in the centre that invites me to install flash. If I'd disabled media though, I'd see just the background and a little box with a red cross in. As it stands ATM, I can't suggest improvement to the site ATM, as not running flash, I can see nothing of the page.

I hope you don't plan to use just flash for your content? If you do, you will automatically cut 1/4 of your potential audience off. Best practice says you should get most of the info on the XHTML document, and just use flash to enrich the content. Also, using flash does not allow the user to over-ride any of the sizes. These two problems make your page non-w3c compliant, and the law may soon change to force all UK web pages to be W2C Compliant. Also, one firm was recently sued for discrimination when they prevented content re-sizing in their site. It was argued that the said page discriminated against anyone that was of short site and needed the re-sizing to make the page readable. Though the law is virtually non-existent on the web, it's definitely worth keeping the site to W3C standard for public pages, just to cover yourself form any legal eventuality

 

[chishnfips]

Hi Rabbut, cool I am going to look into this as I wanted it working properly for everyone.

Do you think it would be a better idea to have a link thats says something like, "cant view flash player click here for html version" and make the same site but in html?

I take it even if I made rollover buttons and things with flash you wouldn't be able to view them either?

Cheers chish

 

[rabbut]

You can't put links in element tags (excluding h or p tags), and have the site still validate to W3C standards. You may get away with it in an alt tag though, I can't rememer if that is "legal" XHTML

IMO, I think you should code the site mostly in XHTML, and then add on top more fancy "enhancements" in flash, for things that you cannot make be work through XHTML. Try to avoid you media from relying on flash where possible and you hit the most audience you possibly can with the site, and avoid pages or features of the site falling into a cyber space hole for some users

All the best
Rabbut

 

[nickelplates]

Wow lots have gone on since I looked at this thread.

I would agree with the other poster that you want to stick to XHTML for your pages as far as possible, flash is a great technology in it's place but that's where you need to keep it! Only use flash for things that really need that technology otherwise you lose out on useability, accessability and SE visibility.

The details of actionscript I cannot help you with as other people always do that for me , it's one of the few common web technologies I have never really got under the bonnet of, php being the other one, although as a PERL guy I think php would be quick to get to grips with as it shares much of the syntax.

<soapbox>If you are just after getting some good pages on line ignore this remark but if you are serious about web design/development I would not rely too much on dreamweaver, you should be able to do anything dreamweaver can do by hand coding and you should be able to read dreamweavers code and understand exactly what it does and how it does it. Tools like dreamweaver are good slaves and poor masters it is imperative to understand exactly what it is doing if you are to remain the master.</soapbox>