MUCH BETTER!! The only major change i would now make is the white in the BG gradient, i would use a darker red instead. Nice improvements!!
Worse, I'm a born and bred New England Yankee. What I consider polite conversation people from other parts of the world seem to think is being intentionally rude... Meanwhile I go to someplace like florida and spend half the time wanting to smack the shit eating grin off people's faces and wonder what they want. "Ya can't get theyah frum heeya" isn't a motto, it's a way of life. Ayup. Well... first thing I noticed is it seems to take even longer to load than the last one. That it's grown to 676k in 64 files MIGHT have something to do with that. The menu items are absurdly over-compressed as jpeg - when 8 bit png probably could have handled those lossless. Hovering those items you have that wonderful 'loading' delay since you used separate images for the hover states, and are using javascript on them to do CSS' job. Javascript for hover states is a complete waste of code, time and usually also a waste of time requesting extra files from the server. That the text in those images also has no anti-aliasing makes them look like a trip back to 1995. You still have the problem of using px metric fonts on all your content - so that's an accessibility /FAIL/ right out of the gate. Combine this with the lack of padding around most of your text (in many cases being flush right up against the borders) and it's still quite difficult to read even once zoomed in. That said I do like that you got rid of the massive sidebar for what I assume are going to be 'related links' - providing more area for the content is always a good thing. I do hope those background images will be cleaned up a bit - though I have to point out that due to how you have the bottom of those textured you'll be unable to even do dynamic height - You've created fixed height elements which means you can't do dynamic content, and even just rendering it on some other system like OSX or Linux could result in a broken layout depending on how the fonts end up handled. Though again, a lot of the problems stem from the underlying code. You're nesting tables endlessly for no good reason - EVEN if you were doing this as a table based layout it's too many tables. I mean, for everything you have from the BODY tag down to the end of the table around that text box being closed - some 10k of HTML, there is no reason for that ENTIRE section to be anything more than: </head><body> <div id="pageWrapper"> <h1> History Told Through Movies<br /> <small>The Historical Movie Timeline! Select a time period to see the movies that took place then.</small> <span><!-- image sandbag --></span> </h1> <ul id="mainMenu"> <li><a href="/" class="current">Home</a></li> <li><a href="1500-1900.html">1500-1899</a></li> <li><a href="1900-2000.html">1900-1999</a></li> <li><a href="2000-2009.html">2000-2009</a></li> <li><a href="fullTimeline.html">Full Timeline</a></li> <li><a href="movieReviews.html">Movie Reviews</a></li> <li class="last"><a href="moreMovies.html">More Movies</a></li> </ul> <div class="aboutBox"> <h2>About The Movie Timeline</h2> <p> I use movies as a reference point when thinking about the past. Movies are the best history teacher in the world, as long as your not naive enough to believe everything. It's easy to pick out the parts that have a historical significance. Films that are believed to be entirely fiction can still make an accurate or truthful portrayal of the past. If the movie gives a good approximation of what the life and culture was probably like back then; then it is good for study. I love these kind of movies anyway, so this isn't really studying for me, but nevertheless it sinks in. I now have an excellent grasp of historical time periods and such, and I swear it's because of movies more than any other influence. </p><p> If there are any movies here that haven't seen yet please puchase it and watch it. Send me a message and I'll give you a review of it. I've seen about 80% of the movies on this site, and I'll do a review for everyone of them! Support the website, buy something, or click on some ads. </p> <!-- .aboutBox --></div> Code (markup): EVERYTHING ELSE you are doing there belongs in the CSS. That's 1.7k - when I said four to six times as much markup as needed, I wasn't joking. Seriously, I'm trying to figure out why you would even be using tables on single column elements - unless as I said, whoever/whatever you are learning from is stuck in 1997.
You are what you are, and I don't care if you're rude or harsh or not. You know a s#*t load about websites and even if your advice is harsh, you tell it like it is and actually know what your talking about so, f*** it. Fire Away!! Yeah, I was kind of pissed about that myself. Especially after I resized all of my images that are just being used as thumbnails, and deleted a bunch CSS sheets were not in use either. I added the textured background and a few other images, but I thought I got rid of more stuff than I added. I don't even know how you are seeing the size (676k in 64 files). I'm using a WYSIWYG editor, NetObjects. I've been using it since 2001, LOL. Of course I have the new version, which probably has the capability to do everything your talking about, but I don't think it's the best program and it's kind of a pain to use sometimes, but I'm so used to it that I just keep using it. It gives you the ability to edit raw HTML and the CSS, but I'm not that familiar with it. I have messed with CSS on a few other programs, and I was able to figure out how to make it work for me e, but I don't understand it that well. See, I didn't even know they were javascript. I just insert the Navbar and change the images to whatever looks decent (except for lack of an anti-aliasing option). It's kind of frustrating because there is CSS for the Navbar, e.g. .nof_FarmingRedNavbar4-Regular { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Sans-serif; color: rgb(255,255,255); font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; font-size: 11pt; } So I don't know why it is javascript instead of CSS!? The fonts and the padding are an easy fix, I just don't know what font to use. I researched a few articles and it seemed like Arial was a decent choice. As for the metric px, should I just change it to pt or in, or is the font the problem? I do need to do some clean up the background image, and I'd like to have dynamic height, but I like the look of the textured edges, so what the hell? That is very f@#%^ng irritating, because I can't freaking figure out a way to have multiple colored regions without using tables! NetObjects calls it a Layout Region! I'll look into trying to do it a simpler way, but I've read a sh#% load of their stupid tutorials and this was the easiest, and maybe only way to do it.
<jamie>Well there's your problem</jamie> See what our recently departed friend said about Dreamweaver in my signature? Multiply that by 1000 for an obscure WYSIWYG that still uses tables. It explains almost everything I'm seeing wrong since there isn't a WYSIWYG out there that generates code worth ****, which is why they are relegated to use by nubes. Do yourself a HUGE favor, forget WYSIWYGS even exist, go grab a text editor and learn semantic markup and separation of presentations (CSS) from content (HTML). A good start for that is the book "Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS" which can be found over on Sitepoint. http://www.sitepoint.com/books/html2/ ... and in most major booksellers. First edition is also on shelves in some libraries. From there all you'd need is a flat text editor. WYSIWYG's make such complete and utter trash for HTML that I cannot understand how anyone can make a useful website with one - Oh wait, they can't.
Ok, it turns out that the program I am using can publish code without tables afterall. I didn't have the CSS option checked, so it was all being published with Dynamic HTML. I still plan on learning CSS like you said, but I was just too far along on this website to scrap it. I compressed my site and my images and the site is now only 180K, down from 660K. Just thought I'd give you an update.