Background colour - blending

[JohnL]

Hey there, thanks for your time. I have a website that I put together and it is very basic. I want to make it look much more professional. One way - I think - is to vary the shading of the background. You know go from a dark yellow on the outside, into a lighter yellow towards the middle.

I am new to HTML so any help is appreciated. Is it best to buy a book or should I just get all the info off the web?

My page URL is: www.topblokeday.com

Any advice, suggestions, slagging off is appreciated. You can't be to nice or to nasty....

I am sure I will be asking MANY more questions here.
On ya,
JL

[brett7481]

Okay, if you want it to look more professional I would definatly stay away from frames. Frames were considered cool in 1996, but since then, in most cases, they're just annoying. Also I would size your pictures down and scale them appropriatly. Your distorting some of the images by cramming them to fit a certain size, and they take longer to load because you have not physically sized them down. I would also drop the marqueed text, that just distracts from other things.

Next, you need to declare a dotype for your page, you don't currently have one; but honestly, I think you should probably just start with a whole knew design. If you really want something professional, I would not go at all with the look you curerntly have. It just reminds too much of the early webpage days.

Finally as for you original question of the background colour, I don't really like the current colour scheme. That's my personal opinion, so do what you want with that. But I don't think a bunch of different shades of yellow would do it any good.

[JohnL]

Thanks for the feedback, I plan on starting from scratch, but like I said, is it best to buy a book to teach me all this stuff or just search via the web? If a book is the best way, what is a good all round title?

Cheers
JL

[Pennimus]

There are plenty of tutorials online for learning HTML, a book is not required.

What is required is a solid design concept before you start. It may be best for you to mock up how you'd want the website to look in a graphics program, then go about converting that into a website afterwards. Suffice to say, if you can't create a professional looking site in a graphics program (and I'm not saying you can't) you won't have a cats chance in hell of doing so in HTML.

It must also be considered that web design isn't just about how a site looks, it's about how it functions as well, and that's something else you evidently need to think about - why on earth have you made your site navigation open each page in a new window :confused: In your own browsing experience, is this something you would appreciate?

- Adam

[mark87]

Check out w3schools.com (http://www.w3schools.com/) - it'll teach you everything (more or less) you need to know to be able to build sites which validate (which yours currently doesn't (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.topblokeday.com)), and are made the modern way with (X)HTML and CSS.

[brett7481]

I would also recommend HTML Dog (http://www.htmldog.com) for learning tutorials.

But honestly the way I learned HTML, XHTML, CSS, PERL, and PHP is by simply downloading free site templates & programs and looking at how they work. If you want to learn some good XHTML and CSS, as well as some good design tips, I would go to http://www.oswd.org and download some of their templates and study the code. I know this approach isn't for everyone, but it has worked quite well for me in the past.

[JohnL]

On ya...thanks for the honesty. The site is just a bit of fun. I orginally done it with Frontpage, then a guy at my work converted it into HTML. I agree the links that open another page are not the best option, but I really had to get the page online as soon as I could before the date of the day.

Thanks again peoples and I am sure you will be hearing from my again....

JL

[Single Paradox]

So.. are you gunna fix the window opening problem?

[JohnL]

So.. are you gunna fix the window opening problem?

What is the window opening problem? It seems to work fine when I just checked it now....

[mark87]

The links opening in a new window.

[JohnL]

Ummm, yeah, but it is what I have till I fix it. I took the comment that the page would not display as such. It works as it is I guess although it may not be the best method. I am going to work on it.
Thanks