Web Design

Design? Blunder more like.

Photo from the-eleventh.com

After long and tedious experimentation trying to make the menu and heading float,  that is detach them from the rest of the page so that when scrolling down they stay at the top, success! So now to change more of the one hundred and seventy two other pages, must make them all look and act the same.

Testing fine. Everything LOOKS good. Change the most important page on the site, change the EVENTS page. Done. Looks good. Works fine. Hang on, no it doesn't, none of the links to pages showing event details work! Same on the HOME page, some links work, some don't.

What have I done? Its after midnight.

A night spent wondering what on earth had gone wrong to make most of the links on my web pages cease to work. What had I done in the name of design. All I wanted was for the site heading and the menus to stay visible when scrolling down long, interminably long some might say, pages.

So up in the morning. Take another look before breakfast. Take a look using a Microsoft based machine. That's what most people use isn't it. They work! All the links work!

What a relief. Well if you use a Microsoft based machine it might be, usually I don't.

 All the links work using Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP machine. What if it is a Windows 7 machine with Microsoft Internet Explorer 9. Do they work then? Test this on the Apple using Parallels Desktop. Yes fine.

Take another look on the Apple in native OSX mode. They don't work. Why?

Barney & Krishna

If you have an Apple, I'm working on it. That is I'm scratching my brains out over it.......... All is not lost as the drop down menu at the top of the EVENTS page still provides links to current and future events.

So it works with one browser but not the rest. Why?

On the other hand my new Member's Hound Gallery works just fine on the Apple but in Internet Explorer the drop down menus disappear behind it. Currently the only way to see all of the drop down menus is to first go to another page or simply click on the header menu to bring up a page for that category.

Photos of Member's Hounds with names, yours and the hound's, wanted for inclusion. 

Chris Cooper sent me the two excellent photos above.

Also new, a calendar of events courtesy of Google. This is shown of the EVENTS page and the SHOWS page and attempts to show all Basset related events in or within striking distance of our area, including dog shows, not of interest to all but we try to cater for everyone.

All, or rather most, LOWDOWN pages now in colour. Some page files lacked the information to retrieve the original colour. Just too much prior manipulation by Tony our editor, manipulated to good effect in the magazine I should add, simply no colour information left in the Word files.

Other minor changes.

• Dark blue links changing to red when the cursor passes over them.
• Layout of most pages tightened up and simplified to give a more uniform look.

Should I have left well alone? Would have been easier.

Its now just after 5 pm and all is solved or at least working, working on the Apple and the PC. Still not sure exactly why. It seems that my attempt to include a page heading that stayed in place when scrolling down was a step too far. Taking one step backwards to a header that disappears when scrolling but leaving the menus to firmly attached to the top, somehow reinstated all missing links. I would prefer a heading that did what it was told without interfering with the rest of the page but ......... Any ideas anyone?

Mozilla Firefox

Although as yet I can find no remedy for the problem with the Member's Hound Gallery if using Microsoft Internet Explorer there is a solution, use Mozilla Firefox instead. This can be downloaded free by clicking here and is available in versions for Windows, Apple and Linux.