Newbie Needs Advice

[ccoffelt]

My boss has asked me to build a website for our department. The software I have chosen to use is Dreamweaver 8. I took a class on Dreamweaver MX but it has been a few years and things are just slowly coming back to me.

I was wondering if it was better to use frames or tables? I want the Webpage to look the same throughout so I was thinking frames would be the best choice. However, I am not sure I have set it up right. My other question is a stupid one. If I used tables to do the idex page and wanted my other pages to look the same, how would I do that? I have the index page done but can't figure out how to do the rest of the pages to look the same. Do I have to create the same table over and over for each page?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[johnwm]

Welcome to the 21st century - frame design dropped out of active use just before table layout ended (several years ago). Use divs and css to layout a website, only use tables for tabular data. Spend a little time looking through forum215 and forum253 to get a feel for current modern design and layout thoughts.

Frames don't SEO well, don't bookmark well and make internal navigation awkward.

Tables tend to load more slowly, make cross-browser support difficult and are semantically incorrect for normal layout purposes, which means that they are less search-engine friendly.

With divs it is fairly simple to create sites that are consistent across the visual browsers, but still readable and understandable by the non-visual (text type and screen reader). Using CSS allows you to maintain consistent appearance across a whole site (and change it quickly and easily) and present the data in different ways for different media (such as printers and PDAs)

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[johnwm]

There are some examples of div/css layouts that cover most of the popular layouts here:

http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/perfect-multi-column-liquid-layouts

To keep one section of the page constant on all pages have a look at 'server side includes' if your server doesn't do ASP or PHP

___________________________________________________________
If you want the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first.
'If we're supposed to work in Hex, why have we only got A fingers?'
Drive a Steam Roller
Steam Engine Prints