Please Review My New Site Design / Layout / Test In Opera Much Appreciated

Hi, I just finished setting up a new design for my site and got it successfully validated too yippee!
Anyway I used css, along with a couple of embedded css lines for my pages (mainly in order to get them to validate! - darn background tag is not allowed! )

I'd appreciate it if you guys could tell me what you think of the design / text and link colour scheme, and anything else you reckon I could improve on...
All pages are there, and now there is content on every page... yay!

Also, if someone would be able to see what it looks like in opera browser, and maybe anyone with a mac on safari, thatd be great!
It displays how I like it in firefox, and also looks fine in internet explorer, so comparisons to firefox (preferred) or internet explorer please

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Thanks
James.

Edited April 5, 2007 by Jimmy (see edit history)

Well, your site looks just dandy in opera. Your coding isn't the best though. Consider changing to XHTML 1.1 to clean up the code a little bit, and consider writing your site in divs rather than tables for various reasons.
https://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/

I dont have opera but I can tell you it looks good in Firefox. You might want to go with Tetraca's suggestion on changing it to xhtml1.1 and writing it in Divs if you would like to take it one step further. It looks nice though, good job

Thanks for the feedback, its good news it works fine in opera, thats everything pretty much tested.Looking at that link you showed, it does seem a nice idea to get rid of my tables and use the css / divs more throughout.Trouble is, I'm really not familiar with div's that much nor am I the most able css coder, I'll see what can be done though :PP.S. What is the difference between xhtml and standard html?

I use opera and it looks great. If it got validated it should look good in all browsers i guess, so no need to worry. I just have to remind you, that you have a few broken links on the "links" page...that is the worse thing a page can have so fix that as soon as you can..Otherwise a very nice site!Best whishes, Mark

I use opera and it looks great. If it got validated it should look good in all browsers i guess, so no need to worry. I just have to remind you, that you have a few broken links on the "links" page...that is the worse thing a page can have so fix that as soon as you can..
Otherwise a very nice site!

Best whishes, Mark

Yeah thanks Getting some nice feedback.!

I only just got the page up so those links are temporary, so I can just see the layout I may end up with.. they'll be gone soon as long as I can get the content done

I'm in the process of setting wordpress going, may need a bit of help..!! we'll see..

the sites looks really good in opera and firefox even thou coding for opera browsers is not all that good. But the site design and the color scheme is simple and not a lot is going on and it draws attention to the things you want the viewers to see.

Thanks for the feedback, its good news it works fine in opera, thats everything pretty much tested.Looking at that link you showed, it does seem a nice idea to get rid of my tables and use the css / divs more throughout.
Trouble is, I'm really not familiar with div's that much nor am I the most able css coder, I'll see what can be done though

P.S. What is the difference between xhtml and standard html?

HTML is a very loose standard - you can get away with a lot of errors and the browser will do nothing about it. XHTML is a much stricter standard that forces you to make code cleaner - all tags and attributes must be in lowercase + termination marks in single tag tags are the most noticeable differences which were imported from XML. There are also some discrepancies in where you are able to put tags(for example you cannot put <p> tags in <a> tags and you cannot embed tags as so: <p><b>Content</p></b>). Other than that there aren't any major differences from HTML unless you make the server transfer the document as application/xml+xhtml as the W3C wants you to do, which will force your coding to conform to XHTML perfectly or it won't display in the browser(currently if you were to pass correct XHTML with the application/xml+xhtml mime type to an IE browser, the browser will not parse it. This is no problem for Opera nor Firefox, though. I suggest you don't worry about the mime type now until IE supports it.).

I viewed it in Firefox and it looks fine. Going with the previous posters, the code needs to be tidied up. I recommend upgrading the mark-up to XHTML 1.1 it's nicer to understand and look at. I emphasize that you convert the tables to divs and use CSS to place them in the right places. The reason for this is to trim down loading time.Another thing I noticed was the Java applet you have for the countdown time, I recommend using Javascript/CSS to achieve the same result. The reason for this is to allow the viewers who don't have J2RE installed on their computer. It took me a few minutes to view such a small program. If you're too experienced in JAVA and have no time to learn JS, you can use Google WebToolkit which compiles your Java source code to Javascript/HTML/CSS.

If you are using tables, please consider switching to CSS and if your using Dreamweaver, its extremely easy. Css, is the web standerd now and its probly one of the easyiest languages to learn...ex: (HTML) <div id="logoarea">test</div>(css) #logoarea {width:120px;height:323px;margin:auto;}So as you see, its very easy to learn, and even dreamweaver has every bit of code and helpers in it to help you learn! Also its alot funner to do it in CSS because it makes you feel like a real designer, coding and stuff.

I viewed it in Firefox and it looks fine. Going with the previous posters, the code needs to be tidied up. I recommend upgrading the mark-up to XHTML 1.1 it's nicer to understand and look at. I emphasize that you convert the tables to divs and use CSS to place them in the right places. The reason for this is to trim down loading time.
Another thing I noticed was the Java applet you have for the countdown time, I recommend using Javascript/CSS to achieve the same result. The reason for this is to allow the viewers who don't have J2RE installed on their computer. It took me a few minutes to view such a small program. If you're too experienced in JAVA and have no time to learn JS, you can use Google WebToolkit which compiles your Java source code to Javascript/HTML/CSS.

interesting... I thought JAVA was the same as JAVASCRIPT!!!
nope, I'm not experienced in java, so I'll see what google toolkit can do for me.
anyhow I had used the cpanel built in thingy to generate the html code for the countdown!!

I just noticed that when validating online, my site actually isn't valid... the ads put in after the html tag at the end invalidate the thing.
Another problem I have is I cannot get my RSS feed to be accepted as valid (so it would work) through sites like feedburner, which I want to get the latest topics on my home page and be able to incorporate my feed into my own designed "blog" page.
I'm pretty sure the reason my rss feed won't validate is that the php file it is in has the ads put in a table at the end. this wrecks everything.
Also, those damn one line ads aren't actually one line their 2x 1 line ads and a 3 line add in recent activity on my blog page!!!!! > dammit!

I'm gonna hang up qupis and go back to good old Xisto' no ads

And just out of interest if I get my site changed to php and css coding, is that acceptable for xhtml? or is that acceptable anyway as a web design standard?!
If I do this I can smoothly include my wordpress blog well with my site...
Edited March 18, 2007 by Jimmy (see edit history)

When you use php on a site, the php code simply writes the (x)html to the Browser. There is no "validation" of php code, but you should validate its output as (x)html according to the Document Type Declaration on the page. (you do have a doctype or the page will not validate. it will only validate conditionally dependent upon adding the DocType you add)

When you use php on a site, the php code simply writes the (x)html to the Browser. There is no "validation" of php code, but you should validate its output as (x)html according to the Document Type Declaration on the page. (you do have a doctype or the page will not validate. it will only validate conditionally dependent upon adding the DocType you add)

Ah I think I see now.
So a php site is mainly a css coded one that validates (or not as the case may be!) as xhtml... the php merely dictates the code to the browser...??!

Ah I think I see now.
So a php site is mainly a css coded one that validates (or not as the case may be!) as xhtml... the php merely dictates the code to the browser...??!

All that PHP does is spit out text processed by the server that is usually interpereted as (X)HTML by the browser. For example, what PHP does when you view this topic is pull a few template files filled with HTML out of the server directories, then replaces the correct area in the template dictated by a function or marking in it with values it retrieved from a MySQL database. The built page is transferred to your browser. Your browser then sees it just like a normal page. Your browser cannot parse PHP. PHP is processed by the server.
Edited March 19, 2007 by Tetraca (see edit history)

All that PHP does is spit out text processed by the server that is usually interpereted as (X)HTML by the browser. For example, what PHP does when you view this topic is pull a few template files filled with HTML out of the server directories, then replaces the correct area in the template dictated by a function or marking in it with values it retrieved from a MySQL database. The built page is transferred to your browser. Your browser then sees it just like a normal page. Your browser cannot parse PHP. PHP is processed by the server.

So is it possible to mix PHP coding with some xhtml, for example <div>s...? Edited March 19, 2007 by Jimmy (see edit history)