Table heights inconsistent - Please help!

Question

I'm not at all savvy with web programming. I have lots of
experience creating HTML e-mails in DreamWeaver but this is the
first complete site I've designed and built using DW8.
http://www.10speedstudio.com/testsite
I'm almost done except I cannot figure out why two of the
pages, "contact" and "creative brief", are taller than the other
pages.
http://www.10speedstudio.com/testsite/about_brief.html
http://www.10speedstudio.com/testsite/about_contact.html
Everything checks out in DW layout mode; every container
table adds up to 561 pixels high. However, when I look at these two
pages live (or in browser preview) they are not only taller than
the portfolio pages, they're off by different amounts.
I thought perhaps I had added top/bottom margins in CSS that
weren't showing in DW layout mode but my brief moment of
inspiration was proven to be incorrect.
I'd appreciate your input as to what I can do to fix this.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Yeah - it's not really good news.
Layout Mode makes such a godawful mess on your pages it's
very hard to just
offer a concise solution that doesn't involve the words
"start over". For
example, read this page -
http://apptools.com/rants/spans.php
Then look at the code on your page, and count how many
instances of
'colspan' and 'rowspan' you see. My quick look came in at
more than 10.
Let me just say that your DESIGN for the pages is very
pleasant. It's clear
that you do this well.
And looking at your code, there is ANOTHER huge problem with
this page - you
have not used DW's templates properly. I can see that what
you have done is
to open a template page, insert unique content for this page,
and then
resave the page with an *.html extension. That's just not
going to work.
How do I know this? Look here -
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="doctitle" -->
<title>10 speed | contact</title>
This is from the Contact page - note the "Template" in the
comment above the
title tag?
The same thing is true on the other page -
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="doctitle" -->
<title>10 speed | creative brief</title>
I really don't know what to suggest to you other than to
either take the
time to learn the tool, or hire a developer to work with you
on these
projects.
For what it's worth, I removed the HEIGHT="209" from one of
the table cells
at the bottom of the table, and you can see the result here -
http://murraytestsite.com/10speed-contact.htm
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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==================
"tenspeedsf" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
>>> Everything checks out in DW layout mode
>
> >There's problem #1 - using layout mode to build your
pages.
>
> >> every container table adds up to 561 pixels
high.
>
> >There's problem #2 - using table heights (invalid
HTML).
>
> >> I'm not at all savvy with web programming.
>
> >There's problem #3 - and the root of the other two
problems.
>
> Ouch.
>
> Frankly, I'm not that interested in learning web
programming. I'd rather
> leave
> that stuff to the folks that enjoy it and spend more of
my own time doing
> print
> design work. Thanks for pointing out everything I don't
know. Would you
> mind
> offering some solutions?
>
> I removed the offending heights from my code and, as you
predicted, it
> threw
> my lay-out out of whack.
>
> Aside from spending a big chunk of time I don't have
learning CSS box
> model
> for lay-out (and growing gray in the process) what would
you suggest?
> Should I
> use another table-based mode other than Layout Mode? Or
a WYSIWYG
> application
> other than DW? I mean, if it were any good would it
allow me to use Layout
> Mode
> in the first place?
>
> I would like to fix this issue and launch my site as
quickly as possible
> so
> that I may go back to my billable work. If you can help
me out, I'd
> appreciate
> it.
>