Designing a photo website

[LuigiPasto]

Hi,

First, I am a newbie! Please be kind.  I've taken it upon myself to design a personal photo website in Dreamweaver 8. I've read the missing manual and must say it's easier to go through a tutorial than to sit in front of the computer and design your very own site.

The layout is very simple (a navbar on the left, a banner area with my name in it, a footer area with a copywrite notice, and a main content area containingg the pictures/slide show).  I purchased XML flash slideshow do present the content.  My simple requirements are that the navbar always remains on the right of the screen, the banner and the footer always remain on the top and bottom of the screen respectively.  The main content area must remain centered on the screen regardless of the screen size. Finally, I want a background picture that is continuous across the screen regardless of what elements are placed on it.

The question regards the most appropriate method to layout the site.  So far, I've tried both tables and frames.  I've had great difficulty doing this with tables (my shortcomings no doubt), but did manage to get this to work with frames with one glitch (see below).  I used the letterbox frameset to achieve the centering of the main content area.  Problem with the frames approach is that I can't figure out how to have one background for the entire webpage.  If there was a way to make the individual frames transparent to the main framset page then I could have a background image on the framset page that would show through each of the frames.  I may, of course, be going about this the wrong way.  Any comments or suggestions would be greately appreciated.

Louie

[juresti]

I don't see the need for frames. You start a new file from Dreamweaver and use the predefined Layouts for a Blank Page or Page from Sample. I'm using CS3. Look through those predefined layout and see if that helps. To adjust these files you have to edit the style sheet which you can see in the CSS Styles box on the right in DW. To add a background image you need to set the background image in the body tag style and "body" in the CSS file add the image and choose no-repeat.

THe Style Sheet CSS is what controls the layout. Good luck.

[LuigiPasto]

Thanks. I had a feeling I needed to use CSS layers for layout control. I did read that chapter but it utterly confused me. I started tinkering with the approach but couldn't manage to get a CSS layer to be centered on the screen independantly of screen or window size. Could you point me in the right direction ?

[LuigiPasto]

Just figured it out, thanks....

BODY text-align:center;

ELEMENT margin: auto;

Louie

[juresti]

Use <div style="width:800px; margin: 0 auto 0 auto;"> content here</div>

That's one way to center a box. The dreamweaver predefined layouts might help. You can use a table and use the align attribute align="center". Tables or divs. Tables might be easier for you.

Sent from my iPhone

[juresti]

My code was taken out ugh anyway

Sent from my iPhone

[LuigiPasto]

Thanks for your help! I've managed to center the div (layer?). Positioning these things is not very easy....I managed to force a div to remain at the bottom of the screen (under the main content area) by setting the clear option.  One hurdle remains.  I would like a div that contains a caption to remain on the the right side of the main content div (the one the remains centered) regardless of the size of the window.  I guess I want its position to be set relative to the main content div.  Any suggestions???

[juresti]

float it right or give it a large left-padding.

[LuigiPasto]

I wish this CSS positioning was that simple.....: (   I would like the rightmost div to remain attached or glued to the right side of the center div containg the main content of the page...so as the center div is repositioned automatically in different sized browser windows the rightmost div follows it and remains glued to its right side. I guess I would describe the relation as follows: the rightmost div's possitioning is relative to the position of the right side of the center or main content div. Is this possible....?

[juresti]

I attached a file. THis was taken right from a Dreamweaver sample file.

[LuigiPasto]

Thanks again for all your guidance. I'll study the file you attached and hopefully learn something...

[juresti]

Well there is alot to learn and many ways of doing the same thing. Good luck. If you need me to look at the file let me know I may have some time.

[LuigiPasto]

Thanks again. I'll give it a try and see what I can do. I may bug you

again.....:)