redbullmarky

[quote author=neylitalo link=topic=106377.msg442835#msg442835 date=1159413440] [quote]Welcome to the internet. Where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents.[/quote] ;D [/quote] haha that's brilliant  :D

whilst many people (including myself) like to think of Dreamweaver MX/8 as an 'advanced development tool', it is in fact very newbie friendly - if a little intimidating at first. what youre suggesting is kinda like what DW does already - a day spend just "messing" with dreamweaver and a few tutorials (even with know knowledge or manual) is enough to get you going very very quickly. these days i only ever use dreamweaver to hold my projects together in one place and for its integrated FTP, etc. but when i first started, i used many of the features that would do much of this stuff anyway - call it a compromise between purely coding and a wizard. the biggest problem with this, as ober addresses, is that I was throwing all these recordsets and 'server behaviours' that dreamweaver generated all over the place, without even looking at the code to try and understand why or how it worked. so things soon got messy. only when i delved into the code did i really begin to take control over the way a website worked and looked. if a newb really wants presence on the internet, then there are plenty of easy(ish) to use CMS's and blog software that make it a breeze.

something like this: http://cssplay.co.uk/menus/dd_valid_2.html is very similar to what you want, and done purely in CSS. take a look at some of the other menu examples there too, as they're all 100% javascript free.

i agree with yana, however it doesnt look bad. just squashed. also, i'd recommend changing the font from the default - the default font is generally pretty nasty. also, its generally quite common practice to make the top logo as a link to the homepage, just for us lazy people who dont want to hunt for the 'home' link.

have not checked it until now since my last comments, but definitely improved greatly - especially the header (logo). as yana said, your left menu could do with a bit of work, but otherwise its getting there! cheers Mark

[quote author=obsidian link=topic=108966.msg440953#msg440953 date=1159194895] suffice to say, most of the time, people really aren't going to care whether or not a coder [i]feels it is a good term[/i] or representation of a technology, but rather be sure you are using terms and descriptions that are widely accepted. [/quote] obsidian, if i'd have read this bit properly, i wouldnt have waffled on for ages lol still, point well made

[quote] Also just because I don't use ajax all the time doesn't mean that I don't know how to do it [/quote] sounds like the husband justifying to the wife why the toilet is still dirty... I have some thoughts of my own on terminology (although i'm concious that this has gone WAY off topic). Terminology, with regards to programming is generally used for one of the following reasons: 1, to make a coder sound knowledgable. 2, to make the coder sound better than another coder 3, to join the "Web 2.0 bandwagon" (or anything else that's "in" at the moment) 4, to make ones intentions clear to another, by using a generic "language". so if none of the above really apply, then the terminology is somewhat irrelevent - especially as the final consideration comes down to [b]results[/b], not what stuff goes on in the background. The average end user couldnt care less as long as they have a nice, easy browsing experience. AJAX is one of these things that (whilst i like it and clearly can see the benefits) is one of those buzzwords that seem to get used as a 'knowledge benchmark' - "you don't know AJAX? you must be rubbish then!!!!" or "wow!!! you know AJAX!!! you are god!!!"  (trust me, look around on certain forums and you WILL see these type of comments) - my question is though - before AJAX was widely introduced, did that mean coders that werent using it were rubbish? didn't think so. so after all that waffle by myself, my point is that it really doesn't matter whether it's AJAX Coding/AJAX programming/AJAX toilet cleaning/AHAH/AIAWOT. back on to the original point - my files are generally as big as they need to be. I never really get to worried about the size of my pages, as long as it does the job effectively. however, sometimes if a page gets HUGE, i will make a point of putting a kind of index at the top of the file just so as I know exactly whats in there without hunting things down. most of the time i'll do that anyway. Cheers Mark

[quote author=yana link=topic=108838.msg440844#msg440844 date=1159188111] Validating my pages is going to take some time...such a hassle!!!!!! I've just validated the home page...and only a million more pages to go! :P By the way, what is the benefit of having my pages validated? [/quote] less of a hassle for more people. the tools that the blind/visually impaired use are more likely to work properly if your site is valid. also, there's more chance of working across the board on more browsers (standards compliant ones, at least :) ). also, it just looks better (ie, like youve made the effort) if your site validates. to be honest, lots of errors you see when validating your page are a result of other errors. so solving one may solve 1,2, 4,10 errors - so dont be put off validating your site, as it may be corrected quicker than you think...

[quote author=steelmanronald06 link=topic=109009.msg440442#msg440442 date=1159126103] *Feels stupid* Everyone says make your own framework. All I know about a framework is that it is a simpler method of performing a task.  That is really all I know.  Anyone care to shed light on what exactly a framework is. I checked the resource page, but didn't really find a dumbass version of it :) [/quote] answering from a more inexperienced point of view: a framework is pretty much a set of functions/classes that can be applied to any situation. call it a 'project skeleton' if you wish. different frameworks are geared towards different things - so some maybe more geared towards forums, some towards CMS's, some towards more general development, etc. some people may disagree with my description, but it works for me so thats fine :)

to be honest, it's ok but pretty bland. lots of text and not enough to break it up (paragraphs, images, etc). it wouldnt be so bad, but the colours are quite 'cold' colours - not that they're bad colours to use, but they dont do anything to liven things up across the board. the colours will work better when you do some work on the text. menu is ok and works well. not sure what sort of feedback you're looking for here. as long as a menu is intuitive and works properly, it's doing its job properly. cheers Mark

i learnt most of the functions i use from 3rd party software and examples. I first downloaded phpBB and cross-referenced many of the functions i saw with the manual when i wasn't sure. also, when i'm stuck on a problem and see example code as a solution, i'll always make a point of making sure i fully understand how it works before just plonking it into my code. otherwise, many of the other functions i've learned are from the php.net manual itself - especially from the bit that says 'See also...'. i just come across functions and think 'Ah, that'll be useful for what I'm doing'. I'm not worried though about not having 'mastered' it, as you get to the stage where you have enough under your belt to pretty much achieve anything you want. other functions exist to make things 'better' or 'easier', but there are so many that you can generally complete a good project without even looking at. one thing i've also noticed in programming/coding is that when you're doing a project, sometimes you do think to yourself "there MUST be a function for this" - and then it's generally just a case of finding out its name and parameters it uses. like you already KNOW what the language can do without yet knowing the details.

in all honesty, it's a splash screen for advertisements. one of my pet hates is trying to figure out what is the content of the actual site (the reason for my visit in the first place) and what is an advert that's gonna take me elsewhere. coupled with the fact that in many places you use the default font, it makes things a bit nasty. when i see so many google (or similar) text ads mixed in with content, i feel like someone is trying to trick me into clicking them and making them money. out of principle, I don't stick around for too long, and i know i'm not the only one singing from that book. sorry if it sounds harsh, but it just has too many of my own "pet hates", and the download site market is getting kinda saturated now. redesign it with a cleaner, more modern and unique spin, less cluttered with adverts, and maybe it'll make me look again.

[quote author=recset link=topic=108628.msg439481#msg439481 date=1158941160] Thanks for the ref. links [/quote] no worries. one more thing i'd suggest is to move the 'Vacant Lot' advert somewhere else if you can (possibly even into the header), as it takes up alot of space (considering its size) and pushes the content down quite far.

I'd like to suggest this article from Sitepoint (original version here) as it was the first to properly open my eyes to PHP-based template "engines" and how easy it is to make a lightweight template class using PHP as its native syntax. For those a bit baffled by Smarty and suchlike, with the new set of syntax they introduce, the article is perfect. Cheers Mark

[quote author=Jenk link=topic=108713.msg438745#msg438745 date=1158847884] Whitelist your pages. Whitelisting is the most secure method of validation. [/quote] for the layman?

[quote author=Jenk link=topic=107859.msg438742#msg438742 date=1158847490] In response to the "purist" statements. Those "purists" just happen to be more experienced, and usually better programmers than those who argue against well documented and reuseable code, even if it's 3rd party. These people are clearly showing they are still novice and have no experience. "Why reeinvent the wheel?" is something you will experience in everyday life of a developer. [/quote] if that's aimed towards a comment I made about purists and preferring writing things from scratch, then you may have slightly misunderstood me. When i first started getting properly into php, i downloaded a copy of phpBB (before i'd even heard of joomla/nuke/etc) to look at the code. it fried my brains a little, so i decided to do things myself based on what i already knew. this was great for what i wanted to do at the time (my own company website). my past programming experience has always been 'procedural' rather than OOP, but regardless, I was always taught to keep libraries of re-usable code and to design/build with reusability in mind. so as i completed a few more things for myself, i was able to work quicker as i reused the code from before. then i set myself a bit of a challenge, which led to my site (The DinnerTimes). the idea was to use everything i knew and do a bit of a mish-mash. What came out of that was scripts to deal with forums, blogs, users, graphics, databases, templates, etc. All written from scratch. Needing more, and getting more into OOP, I 'class'ed many of these scripts and now have a nice little framework, fully commented, that can now pretty much deal with anything I personally need. So when I say I prefer to write everything from scratch, I think you take me a little too literally (if indeed i was one of those you were indicating). I wrote my own scripts from scratch, and now I use them for everything I do. Sure, each project requires something that the framework doesnt have, so I add to it. But that's the same with many. But in short, I don't personally get anything out of using other peoples code. Not saying it's wrong, but it's like music. One musician loves doing covers of other bands songs. Others like writing their own songs from scratch. It depends on the person and ultimately comes down to enjoyment. Some people just enjoy knowing they did it all by themselves - not just with coding, but with any 'art'. Some dont. So Jenk/obsidian, you're both correct. Time IS money. But for me, "re-inventing the wheel" was probably what made me learn alot quicker than I could have, and now I have a nice little framework, fully documented, ever improving and to be honest I'm pretty proud of it because it's mine - so from that point of view, I'm correct too, because it works for me. Cheers Mark

any more thoughts on how i could go about structuring this?

good thing about jpegs is that you don't always need max resolution/quality to get excellent results. the default is 75 in most cases (i feel you're prob right up to the max), but i generally find that i can get a good quality vs filesize ratio somewhere between 75-85, although it also varies from picture to picture.

[quote author=Jenk link=topic=107007.msg438563#msg438563 date=1158826786] I agree with the 'creating new syntax', but tbh.. it's not exactly difficult to use Smarty's markup.. [/quote] i definitely agree with that from what i have seen - however, PHP's markup for loops/echoing etc isnt that hard either, especially considering the fact that it avoids 'compilation' beforehand. [quote author=Jenk link=topic=107007.msg438563#msg438563 date=1158826786] An example template that I use, based on Zend Framework's Zend_View.. ... No processing or logic at all, all purely layout. [/quote] and the example you gave is more along the lines of what i'd personally do. no fresh syntax, etc. only thing i personally do differently is i never put HTML in PHP (eg, echo '<tr><td>') but thats a personal preference, and i tend to use simpler variables rather than objects, and i never personally use 'include' in templates. the class I wrote has an 'autoloading master template' with the doctype,stylesheet, JS etc, and the templates job is to slot in 'sub templates' which are the ones that differ for each page. works very well and very easy to use. still - however it's done, there's no getting away from the fact that it's not THAT hard to understand either way, and you have the advantage of faster code.

[quote author=Daniel0 link=topic=107292.msg438241#msg438241 date=1158777751] I don't like the flashing new image above the forum button. [/quote] i'd agree 100% with that. animated "statements" on sites - might as well just go back to the dark days of animated GIFs :) otherwise, however, i think you've done a great job and got the style well and it could easily be on a par/better than a renault site itself: [url=http://www.renault.co.uk/CurrentRange.aspx]Renault UK[/url]

all in all i think it looks and works well. however, i think the filesize of your images is far too large, especially (although i didnt check the others, but i just watched them slowly drawing on my screen) the header (80Kb+).

[quote author=jcombs_31 link=topic=108044.msg438127#msg438127 date=1158769343] Yea, I agree on the contact column, but when I bold them it doesn't look balanced.  I'll think about the best way to do it. [/quote] bold but using a lighter grey to take the edge off instead might work. it has for me in the past.

the MVC i kinda understand. how to employ it in my situation is what i'm trying to get to grips with, as like i say i'm pretty much gonna be having the main (desktop) app working (which would be index.php) and also various popup modules working in their own DHTML windows. tasked with doing something like that, what would the very basic file structure be? how would you define a module that works in its own "window"? how would you allow these windows to work closely with the main app? how would you allow info to flow between all of these? Cheers Mark

very nice. only thing at this stage i'd suggest is in your 'Contact Us' column - i think the address/phone numbers need to be seperated a bit maybe just by bolding/darkening the 'Mailing Address:', 'Phones:' and 'Email:' headings. otherwise, i'd personally run with the new one as it looks like a cleaner more modern version of the old (even though the old one is bloody good too!)

[quote author=Barand link=topic=108752.msg437953#msg437953 date=1158761142] I did wonder about the lasers [/quote] haha you didnt install windows on your playstation did you? [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Screen_of_Death#Red_screen_of_death]Red Screen of Death[/url] :)