Basic Layout - Sidebar without frames [Confused]

OK. Angel Dragon use tables for their layout, so they have used a table to place all their menu and content to where they want them. Consequently, they repeated the same code on each page and simply changed the content coding to reflect what they wanted to appear. To recap, it is simply a coded layout that changes content

Thank you for the reply. And I apologize for the quite simple question.

*nods* Now, might you have a tutorial which could shed more light on the use of tables in this fashion? It would appear that there are tables within tables here, then?

Alright, obviously my problems come from a lack of full knowledge regarding tables.

I'm now doing my research on tables, and how to correctly control them. Bounced, thank you for answering my very simple question. I will let you know the result of my design!

Regards,
Archemedes

I look forward to that and wish you all the best.

Blessings,
David

Server Side Includes are the best answer to the problem.

or PHP includes if you're posher/your server allows it/you can't be bothered to name all you files .shtml!

depending on your server technology and access level you can make any page extension you want handle server side includes, no renaming rrequired at all.

I must just be on deprived servers!

There's actually multiple ways to achieve this sort of result. The first, arguably simplest, but it's definitely been out there the longest, is to use tables as 02bunced is talking about. A quick glimpse at the code behind angeldragon.com reveals that they are, indeed, using tables.

The second method, which seperates the location of the menu out from the actual HTML, is to use an external CSS file. I've done that on the following site: http://www.havencomic.com/

If you look at the source code, there's nothing to indicate where the menu will actually appear. Will it be on the left, on the right, or somewhere else alltogether?

If you have a browser like FireFox (or, I believe, Opera), you can actually view the CSS file.

There are those that would argue that the second (CSS) method is the "right" way to do this. It certainly can be cleaner from a coding aspect and definitely allows for more future versatility. However, if you're looking for something quick that you can get out the door ASAP, I would say that tables are the way to go.

Here's the official documentation from the Web Standards group on tables:

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/tables.html

And here's a page on creating menus with CSS:

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/css/css-navigation-menu.shtml

I only glanced at both of those pages, but they look like they can probably help you.

Oh, and I would argue that although Server Side Includes can be helpful in seperating the content of the menu out from each file (and you'll only have to change your menu's content on one page), that does not seem to be the answer to the question you asked.

I too prefer CSS to tables and use them in all my work. I am just aware they are harder for a beginner to pick up than tables!

Hello again everyone,

Thank you for your advice, as well as your direction to tutorials. It's much appreciated.

Alright, this is what I've come up with so far. Criticism is welcome, as long as it's constructive.

Address: http://www.smokestencils.com/

As it still requires quite a bit of development I didn't quite yet want to post it up for review.

I would like to get rid of the space to the left of the menu, and am still looking as to how to do that. I also was running into an issue whereby naming the width of the or which contains the main content (the text) would result in the menu's table to push all of the text far to the right. I would like to have the content less spread out and grouped together better.

Regards,
Archemedes

PS. The menus are all dead links, save for the forums. The forums are home to a small MMORPG guild. Never you mind them.

It's very black - not a problem (in fact, very nice), but you might consider having a block of white under the text for easy to read. Secondly your rollovers take a long time to load initially. Looks good though!

Blessings
David

well your first 2 tables have padding and spacing of 2, change those values to 0.

by the way Archemedes, you are starting a web design company? would you like to partner? i can garantee that i know more html than you, lol, i could help you a lot...

Looks like you've got the side-menu thing down! Of course, as you continue to mess with HTML and the like, you'll continue to learn more and more things about them. But congrats on what you've done so far!