help a newbie !

ive actually uploaded it too some free hosting someone gave me but it just shows up as a white page with bad scripting ? any ideas ? website is

http://www.geocities.com/solid_design2003

That just came up with a blank screen, with a Geocities advert. Had a look at the code, which showed a considerable number of tables and other junk...I don't have time to search through the code for the problem right now...Sorry.

I would start by looking through your Javascript for the problem, the only error i got was an external Javascript file (which appears to have come from Geocities) being blocked by IE.

Oh! Just seen something which might cause the problem: All your table widths are set to 100% (even nested ones)...And there are plenty of tables in there! You need to sort that out

heh thats the thing, i dunno what i did and now i cant undo it so much for backups eh arghhh im screwed ! but it works on local drive when i open it its all perfect ??? hmmmm

Well your code leaves a lot to be desired. My advice: Re-write all the code, and make sure you get it right

K, gone through it hadnt closed the head and its actually geocities not liking it i uploaded onto t35/ my isp webspace and it worked fine weird

Ok, ive somewhat fixed it up a bit got it online all working fine, but on my login when i take out password it makes the image perfect when i put password back in it ruins the image, any ideas here maybe shrinking the text size ? site is residual2.t35.com

well if we could see what it look like wwe could probably give better advice

Its funny this hosting when i go to http://residual2.t35.com it comes up with no images but when i go residual2.t35.com it comes up fine....hmmm sorry drua, forgot the link

Well ok i had a look i'm on a mac here so do want you want with what i say. on netscape everything look fine. but on explorer i get a blank page. i noticed that the tag is missing

Right, now that we can see the page what was your problem?

Welcome to TWF by the way - stop by the introductions section and tell us more about yourself.

Drua, i appreciate your help any would be great and yeah i just put the tag back in, now mistress the problem is the login if you see where it says PASSWORD its like skipping something in the graphic but when i take out PASSWORD it changes back to a perfect image yet the size is on 1 and i cant go any smaller, btw thx for the welcome ill head to the intro now !

Weird i still get a blank page on IE for mac

Yeah on geocities when i uploaded it before it was getting a blank screen, i thought it would have been the head tag but i changed it and still no luck, i uploaded it onto t35 now and it seems to be working fine for me on IE

It's not suprising, your coding is terrible...unless you clean it up, it will never display in a reliable useable way on different platforms/browsers!

....this is first time ive actually done html in a site....i have no clue what to clean up, where do i start?

What are you using to create the html?

Try validating your code which will help you to clean up your code and then go on from there.

Well i failed haha, it says to do some doctype yet i have no clue where abouts to put it in my html any chance of some help here ?

I could not parse this document, because it does not include a DOCTYPE Declaration. A DOCTYPE Declaration is mandatory for most current markup languages and without such a declaration it is impossible to validate this document.

You should place a DOCTYPE declaration as the very first thing in your HTML document. For example, for a typical XHTML 1.0 document:

Title

When you use your html editor is there a choice of which standard it does the code to?

Nope, well at the moment im trying to work out what doctype to use....omg so hard this scripting stuff

Ok went through http://www.doctor-html.com/RxHTML/cgi-bin/single.cgi and everything is perfect on the site http://residual2.t35.com besides for the browser errors, it runs fine in HTML 4.0, Opera 6.0 and IE 4.0, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0. If anyone could just have alook at my code and let me know whats wrong id really appreciate it, just wanna get it working with Netscape 6.0 and 7.0 others im pretty sure nobody uses anymore...oh well 3am over here in australia time for some sleep gnight

No, you're not valid: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fresidual2.t35.com%2F

1. you are using CSS with HTML 3.2 -- it's not supported! you have to use HTML 4.01
2. you have multiple body and html tags
3. you are using the attribute type for script elements, it's not supported in HTML 3.2
4. you have some incorrect attributes in there (extra img within an image tag...

See attached. It's not perfect, but at least you're a lot closer. You can handle fixing the other errors and replacing bad markup with proper CSS from there.

heh all i know about css is what i read in a book wouldnt have a clue about it but thx heaps for the semi-fixed file now to work out the css part

Ok....ive got it down to 7 errors but i cant quite figure out how to fix these last 7 heres the link to the results : http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fresidual2.t35.com%2Findex3.html&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=%28detect+automatically%29 anyone know how to fix them 7 errors thx

Sure.

#1: remove height="100%". You can't use that in tags.

#2: replace background="images/topback.jpg" with style="background-image:url('images/topback.jpg')"

#3: <td height="8"><span class="style7"><font size="0.5">USERNAME:</span></td>'Notice how you've opened a font tag, but not closed it before the bit? Add a just before the .

#4: Similar error to #3.

#5: In this case, you're closing the font tag after the . Since was opened first, it must be closed last. Move the to just before the .

#6: Similar error to #5.

#7: Similar error to #5.

Hth

Your a life saver helped me so much although ive got just 2 left that i cant get any ideas ? http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fresidual2.t35.com%2Findex3.html&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=%28detect+automatically%29&verbose=1

Ok alls good in validation now one more question to you gurus out there, if you notice on this page the login down the bottom, see how its fine but just around wrong way, ive tryed putting it as USERNAME - TEXTFIELD1 - PASSWORD - TEXTFIELD2 here but now its got a space between username and the textfield......i tried aligning it to bottom without any luck then i put in vertical-align:bottom; into the style7 up top and it comes out like this but now all its done is spaced it from the top......can someone please help

I've fixed the problem, and cleaned up the table code for you:

Try removing height="28" from the in which you have the textfield for th username.

And congratulations on the (nearly) valid code. I would still remove the height="100%" and alter my design to suit a changing height.

Or what Jeeves said. Good work, 002.5.

Thanks heaps ! id try and validate it but the bloody site went down for some reason and i cant connect to the FTP.

#1 Remove the height attribute from the table (how many times?! )
#2 Check line 142 & 143...You have: (where ... are the other attributes of the tag) this isn't allowed as you haven't defined a and . The first table declaration is redundant so you need to delete it.
#3 See problem 2... You have a redundant tag on line 142, delete and the second 2 errors will go away.

Hope this helps

Hey?! Did you delete your last post? Or am I missing something?

http://residual2.t35.com/index3.html - now how come the site doesnt go all the way to the bottom it like stops a bit ! omg what a bad few days for me and now ive got 4 errors in validation up from 1 arghhhhhhhhhh

residual2, please don't go back and amend/delete your postings as it becomes very hard for anyone new to this thread to understand what's going on and for those involved to keep track of what's happened!

Regarding validation:

I suspect the other errors are related to the above. Very often, several errors shown by the validator really stem from maybe just one or two errors in the code. After all, the validator is only a machine, and if one error throws it off, it'll see other "correct" things as mistakes too. So don't be disheartened by it.

Regarding the height: I think it's better to leave the height flexible rather than filling up the screen. height=100% is not valid, so it may not display the same across different browsers. Also, wait till your site fills up with content before you judge the minimum height. And also, with one image and some CSS trickery you could get the grey bar on the right and the blue at the bottom to repeat so that it appears to fill up the white space.

Especially when you spend ages working out what those errors in the deleted post were and then more time fixing them! Grrr, my patience is running out with this one...

Anyway, stop moaning about getting errors, I've already posted the answer. Fix them - it isn't rocket science!

Abishek:
The last error he got was an unlosed and both table declarations are identical, I advise delete the first declaration instead - what do you reckon?

You're right. I thought about that just after re-reading. Didn't notice they were identical -- likely an accidental repeat. Deleting the first is probably the best way to go.

Ok ive fixed all the errors but #1 the height one, when i take out the height it screws up the tables on the page, any suggestions about that ?

Put it up on the site without the 100% I'd like to have a look at what happens

http://residual2.t35.com/index4.html

OMG this bloody host has gone down again.....damnit !!

Going to have to wait for this host to come back online hopefully soon, cant find any other hosting, geocities and web1000 just comes up as blank pages when ive uploaded it, sorry! .

Host is ok now... I have taken a look, and all seems fine. If you put some content into the main part of the page it'll stretch down to fill the gap.

To be honest my advise would be for you to try and simplify your design so that you don't need background to fill spaces. Get a simple design done, validate the code, sort out the css and get the content added. Once you have done this then you can move on to more complex designs with the basics of a good site under your belt.

yeah ? it looks all weird to me, the actual version with the 100% in is http://residual2.t35.com/index3.html and the one without the 100% is http://residual2.t35.com/index4.html

For some reason when i just tried to validate index4, it came up with the height being 1000%, yet i took it out so i tryed again and reuploaded and its still coming up as 1000% no idea why it would be doing that.

Ok.....i give up this is just annoying now, i delete the height attribute preview it on localdisk its fine then upload it, go to validate and its been changed to height="1000%" so i do it again making sure theres no height="1000%" and it still screws up so i changed it to style height: 100%" and its all fine but then i upload and it changes it again to height="1000%" but without the style........omg someone help me on this

Good point Julia!
Be careful with WYSIWYG editors as well, as it stands your site is 10 times more complicated than it should be, and as you can see: Doesn't validate! It will be far easier for you to learn how to code if you use a decent editor, instead of trying to decipher the mess your current one has created!

Does it really 100% matter if its validated....like only one error :/ but is there also anyway to expand the page so i dont have the white line down the bottom where the page ends, also what kind of editor do u recommend ?

It really depends on who your target audience is. If you're aiming for, or including, say, disabled/impaired people in your audience, then you'll want the site to be 100% valid and also compliant with accessibility guidelines. If you're going for techy people who have and use the latest software, then you can be a little more lenient with the validation. And so on.

Sometimes the validator brings up unrealistic or very nitpicky errors that may be able to ignore, but it's usually possible to come clean on everything.

Imho, the best editor is any good text editor. I build and edit my sites manually. Helps me learn more and get to know the code better. But some others would recommend Macromedia's Dreamweaver because it can produce standard and valid code... there's quite a bit to it. Search the forums for previous discussions on the matter.

Personally use the code view in Dreamweaver, it is a very good text editor by itself
The underling problem to this is the junk code your editor has generated, although not as bad as Frontpage or Word, it still impedes your learning.

Abishek is right - Start off by learning HTML the right way!