www.shoptoyland.com: Need feedback please

I'm using NS 4.5 on a Mac and the links in your nav bar are coming out as blue on blue and aren't readable. I can see in your souce that they're supposed to be red, but apparently NS doesn't like how they're being referenced.

The dollhouse didn't work for me. The script says "Navigator 4.x requires that these DIVs not be nested in other positioned DIV or LAYER elements." Maybe that's it or it's Mac vs. PC issue?

Otherwise, it looks pretty nice.

Are the links on the top and side bars blue on blue?

I'll see if I can get in touch with the author of the script and find out why it isn't working for you. I suspect it's a Mac issue since I've had all sorts of people tell me it's working on a variety of different browsers so far. Unfortunately, I don't write scripts myself yet, I just adapt them and fiddle with them. I will see if anyone can help me get it to work for Mac users though if that is the case.

Thank you for your help. Let me know about the links whem you get a chance. The top links are actually graphics, so hopefully those are working. The side links may take me a while to figure out.

Deborah

Welcome to TWF Deborah!

About your site, you need to anti-alias your graphics. They have that jaggedy edge to them because they're not anti-aliased. Your graphics program should have an option to turn on anti-aliasing. Ask in the Graphics and Design forum if you need more help with this.

Don't center paragraphs of text - it makes things hard to read and generally looks unprofessional.

Another thing you should think about is your colour scheme. What I would do with a site like this is stick to a basic red, yellow and blue (primary colours) site. But not the really bright shades, more of a medium colour like #cc0000, #0000cc and #ffcc00 for accents.

Otherwise it's quite good. I like what you've done with the "Toyland" text in the logo.

Thanks. The paragraphs - no problem. Anti-aliasing I just learned about today. I am working on a small monitor so did not see the jagged edges. I use a combination of different programs, all very old, to creat my graphics and none of them have anti-aliasing. Is there a free download somewhere that you know of offhand that I could use to accomplish this? I'm not making a profit at this point, so I can't afford to go out and purchase expensive software. If you know of something, please pass it on. I'd really appreciate it!
Thanks,
Deborah

It really is not bad. I would also agree with the anti-aliasing bit. You just need to do a bit of tweaking to get it right. The graphic next to the logo has potential but it is a bit fuzzy. I would rework it to remove the fuzzies.
The navbars displayed fine on my Netscape 4.7 on Linux machine.

The only other thing that I noticed and this is just purely personal was that the coding was a bit sloppy. For instance, there were 5 different calls that made use the 'script' tags. One of these referenced an external script. One referenced a javascript 1.2. All the rest were javascript. My preference is to have it cleaner with only one script tag calling all of your scripts. It makes it a bit easier to dissect. The other is that you used a partial style sheet with the style tag. In it all that was said was style="text-decoration:none". Later in the body tag, you referenced the v-link, a-link, etc. Then in most everyline in your sidebar, you use the style tag again. You are just overworking yourself. I would just as soon put them in the style tag. You could also build you some classes in your stylesheet to prevent the font tag from being called so many times. I also prefer not to use nbsp or br tags as much as you are doing. Also quite a most of your alt tags say "shoptoyland". They should be a bit more meaningful that that. Writing well organized clean code makes it easier to fix or to add things to your page is all.

Thank you. That's exactly why I joined this forum! CSS I am jus tnopw learning and javascript I know nothing about yet - I use sites such as JavaBoutique and just cut and paste code so I'm always afraid to mess with it if it works. Are there places or people that clean up code for a small fee? Frankly, until my 2 little boys start school it's going to be a few years till I can take some classes online or off to learn some of this! I just started building sites about a year and a half ago, and not only is there so much to learn, but as you go, of course, everything keeps changing. Anyway, keep the tips coming if you don't mind. I'm keeping a list and fixing what I can and noting what I need to learn next.
Deborah

Okay, is there any free sotware I cna download to anti-alias my images? Do I need to make the images transparent first? Where can I find an easy (and free) tutorial on CSS?
Thanks!
Deborah

For imaging software, try PaintShop Pro at http://www.jasc.com You can get a free 30 day trial there. It's a fairly inexpensive for a graphics program, especially considering that it does just about as much as Photoshop does for a fraction of the price. If you like it you might want to consider purchasing it. If you have any questions about PSP feel free to ask in the Graphics and Design Forum.

For a CSS tutorial try http://www.webmonkey.com - they have a good one there that I learned from. It's really very easy to learn and can make your designs a lot more professional and easy to create.

Using CSS for text is very simple. You can get very fancy with it but the browser support is not quite there.

Here is a basic style sheet that you can play with or use if you want. You can paste this between style tags in the head section of your browser or build it as a separate page and call it like this LINK REL="STYLESHEET" TYPE="text/css" HREF="stylesheetname.css"

Stylesheet

The things that start with a . are called classes. They are referenced within a page like this:

P class="big"
or
TD class="big" Table cell /td

Too easy.

You know, that was really nice of you to take the time to break it down like that for me. I wasn't even going to look into css for a week or two, but I'm going to get started on it right away - well, after I take the boys to the pool, my daughter to the mall, finish the laundry - soon anyway.

Thanks again, I really appreciate your help! That will really do wonders to clean up my code and make my pages so much easier to edit.
Deborah

>>Are the links on the top and side bars blue on blue?
The top links are actually graphics, so hopefully those are working.<<

The top links (graphics) are fine. White text on blue. The date in the nav bar is white on blue. The categories are white on red (graphics). It is only the text links in the nav bar that are blue on blue.

This probably has to do with how NS 4.x handles CSS, which is different than IE. I know a lot of people hate NS 4.x and wish it would go away, but I've found that 20-25% of visitors to my various sites use it (and I actually prefer it to IE on a Mac and the mail program is better than Outlook, IMO) and I want them to be able to access the site properly.

I visited a site recently that ran a browser detection script and then actually turned me away to some w3c page (or some standards outfit) telling me why I needed to upgrade my browser. When someone makes the effort to find your site and you deliberately turn them away, well I think that's wrong. It wasn't a commercial site, but if it had been, they'd have lost a potential customer instead of just a visitor.

Thanks for taking the time to let me know exactly what wasn't working. I have to totally redo the css for my site anyway. I had just copied and pasted it from a site, but have heard from a few very helpful people that it is pretty easy to learn. Maybe when I redo it that will fix the problem. If not, I'll make those graphics too. I'm a stay at home Mom with 3 kids, 2 under the age of 4, and would love to make 100.00 a week at this site through the affiliate programs so I can continue to be a stay at home Mom! I certainly don't want to lose any potential customers over something I could fix.
Thanks again,
Deborah

I love the site. Although I didn't get any mouseovers to work (i am using IE5.0) and maybe you aren't using them at this time, I think it looks great without the mouseover. If you are like me I am javascript ignorant and am having a hard time finding mouseover resources that I can actually make work and are cross browser. I have mouseovers on the Fire Department site that I am working on and NS users say the colors look funky.

My husband caught me playing on the dollhouse page...LOL
Can't wait to show my daughter. Your playground is great too. I love stuff for kids anyway. My personnal site is one that I started about two years ago and I have a kids page there. You may find some good links that you can use on your site.

medicmom.com

As for the anti-allias stuff. I have paint shop pro 6 and still can't get that smooth look to some of my graphics. I
am going to look at the Web Monkey site and see what info it has to offer. Thanks Megan for the link.

Overall I think you have done a wonderful job. It was good enough to catch my attention for about 45 minutes. HAHA!!

disaster-master