Why I Changed Martha's Web
Every now and then, change is inevitable and usually good. I was pretty happy with the way Martha's Web looked for the most part. Since I was using Internet Explorer and most other folks were using IE as well, I didn't think it mattered. I was wrong!
But once I started using Firefox I could see there were big problems with Martha's Web. The template I was using just didn't render well in either Firefox or Netscape. In order to make the pages look right when they were opened, I had to make some drastic changes that made the pages render with a great deal of empty space at the bottom. Not good! Besides just being poor design, it caused the pages to take longer to load. I am not an expert with html, that's why I use FrontPage. Searching and testing just couldn't resolve the problem, so that template had to go!
I looked and looked for a web template I could live with and make my pages validate. I wanted my pages to look right in every browser.
I tried a template that caught my eye, pleasing colors (to me) and had the coolest popout menus! Well, guess what. The pages and menus looked nice in Internet Explorer, but they looked awful in Netscape and worse in Firefox! Forget that template! I paid for it, too!
So I kept trying. I stripped all of the Javascript from the template and removed all of the theme stuff. Now it validated, but there were still problems with the visual aspect. The page banners looked too much like an amateur and I didn't like them. The pleasing colors started to look too dull. So I tossed the template and started over. This was starting to be a real drag!
Several months ago on a whim I purchased a neat program called Xara Webstyle 4. I had played with it some for another project, but really hadn't done that much with it. So now it seemed to be time to play with it again, this time for real! I did come up with a template that is now the backbone of Martha's Web. It bears little resemblance to what I started with in Xara Webstyle, but I like it.
I have learned a lot about html, but I am still no expert. I have learned a lot about includes, I love them! I have learned a lot about CSS, cascading style sheets, but still have a long way to go with CSS.
So while I was redoing Martha's Web in a new template, I decided it was time to reorganize as well. Outlook Express has a separate section now. Some pages just had to go and some were incorporated into other pages. Some of my screenshots needed to be redone with Snagit. (I love Snagit!) Some of the links no longer went to pages, so they had to go as well. There were some spelling errors to be corrected too! (There may still be some spelling booboos, spelling is not my strong point.)
You may think all I had to do was copy and paste from the old pages into the new pages. Wrong! Every page had to be redone, I copied most of it into Notepad and then into the new page from Notepad. This removed a lot of old bad formatting. Then of course the pictures had to be re-inserted, alt tags named and hyperlinks checked and redone. I have well over 100 pages on this site, so it took awhile!
I hope you like the new look for Martha's Web. (Since I have learned how to use CSS, it may change again!) If you find an error somewhere or a link that doesn't work, please let me know! Just click on the Email Me logo and send me some feedback. If that doesn't work for you, send the email to marthasweb at gmail.com. Just replace 'at' with @ and run it all together.
Change is good! Sometimes. I no longer use Xara Webstyle, and I am using Microsoft's new Expression Web Designer as my web page editor, but everything is done with CSS and Martha's Web is now totally CSS driven. It isn't as pretty, but hopefully that will change, just as soon as I figure out how to do it! I really am web design challenged!
Back to home page