Eskymo

I'll try it! Never had to do that before for divs with background images - I wonder whether it will mess up the layout for the other browsers?

Hi there You can find the CSS here: CSS FILE

Hey All This is driving me nuts! I've got my CSS/XHTML layout working in FF2, MSIE7, Opera but when you look at it in Mozilla or Netscape it goes tits up. Layout Basically underneath the header elements [logo, navigation, strapline] I have a div called 'main' and this has a background image. This background is the white box with the fading purple border. It sits in the correct place in FF and MSIE and Opera, but in Mozilla and Netscape it gets positioned at the top of the page. I've done eveything I can think of, stripping my code back to basics and rebuilding it to see if I've missed things out but everything seems to be OK with the code, to my eyes. I've even taken out elements like the navigation or the footer, thinking they might be causing a problem, but nothing changes the position of this background. It's all very strange. Can anyone see why? E

I've not got round to downloding yet - still working - got three jobs to finish off before tomorrow lunchtim, so a bit too rushed off my feet. Will have a look at it over the holidays though - very excited about it! Where have you been! Not seen you on here for ages!

Working for myself is my dream job and I've nearly completed my first full-time year fo freelancing and it's been hard, but worth it - next year things can only get better.

Hey I got an email from Adobe telling me that I have been selected to participate in the Adobe Fireworks 9 Prerelease Program! Yippee! So if you've got any gripes about the current version let me know as I will try my best to get the issues raised. E

No Problem - Glad to help!

I'm not exactly sure what the problem is - your visual isn't very self explanatory as it just shows one slide on a single row in between two rows of other slides - how is that single slide affected by the text underneath it as they all seem to have a similar text content and text width. Can you exmplain some more?

Not sure I understand MSIE Page Rank to be honest and don't really use it to check the popularity of my site - I use my webstats for that as they are more accurate. I find a lot of these online tools inacurate. I've run my site through a few site checkers and they all say that I have no backlinks into my website which is ridiculous as I've got tons. Not sure you can rely on the information they supply, that's all I'm saying.

Not far off. It was always meant to go live with only the music section having content as the other parts of his business haven't really started up yet. So I've just got to finish the music section off and will be doing that next week. After that it's up to the client to get busy.

Juts installed Firefox 2 so I thought I'd upgrade to IE7 at the same time. My instant reaction to IE& - ABSOLUTELY HATE IT! Plus it's overwritten my IE6 - is there a way to get my IE6 back?

I disagree - you've got a lot of errors in your code which might fix some of your layout issues. You got a lot of lists there that don't have opening and closing tags at all i.e <ul></ul> or <ol></ol> You are also using 'min-height' within your style sheet and I am aware that IE doesn't recognise min-height, but I'm not sure if that is specific to a certain version - do a search on google and you'll get a lot of info on that. You may also have a problem with padding and common box model issues. I used to use a box model hack whenever I specified a div's width and wanted to also add padding to that element as IE would also mess things up for me if I specified a width and also adding padding. But I now avoid using hacks and use conatiner elements to specify widths and add padding to the child elements that don't specify widths at all. Another thing to look at is the clearing of floats and make sure you have these correct as that can always cause problems. Not sure if that's going to help you as it's always difficult looking at someone else's code and trying to figure out errors as everyone codes in different ways. E

I agree - I was going to respond in the same way, but you beat mw to it. I'm redeisgning my own company site at the moment and trying to streamline my content so that it si very specific and to the point. I wouldn't want to add erroneous content here and there for any reason.

Hey cliffsta Do you have time to help me out with this form thing? Muchly appreciated. E

thanks for the link - very well written article with great examples - not read it all yet, but have looked at all the screenshots and get the gist now...it seems I'm jumping on the web 2.0 bandwaggon without realising as the new skin for my own site is featurung user freindly icons, reflections and large text and a client site that I'm doing at the moment is following a similar route - I must be taking it all in by osmosis without realising. The term is now categorised in wikipedia, so I think it's here to stay! As for your design Nic, it's definitely on the way to getting the Web 2.0 look, but I woud work on your right column a little more. I wouldn't angle your graphics so much. Maybe incorporate some funky icons. Or use a gradient background that fades to white as it goes down the page. This would differentiate the content from your main column.

I agree with Pamil Visions - a hybrid site is the best compramise, but ideally don't use flash at all if SEO is your main priority.

advertisers are now moving to the web to brainwash us basically and google are quick to get in there. I think there's been a lot of reasearch done lately and the majority of people spend more time infront of a computer screen than a tv screen...so there you go.

wow - maybe I should myself a blog her then! I've been thinking about it.

I'm lucky to have a friend who is a lawyer and I do get a lot of free advice from him. He helped me draw up my contract template. It doesn't have any over the top legal terms or complicated terms and conditions that are impossible to understand. It's basically a document that sets out the following: 1. date 2. who the client is + their address 3. what the job reference is 4. how the brief was supplied - verbally / in an email etc 5. An outline of the brief supplied by the client 6. A breakdown of the brief by me and what I am going to supply 7. a breakdown of costs and timescales 8. a signature page, where the client signs and dates the document. I send one of these out at the beginning of every job I do and get the client to agree with it and sign it and send it back to me. If you want a copy I'd be happy to pm you a copy of the template, or better still an actual real job, but I'd have to remove client details. E

what exactly is 'the web 2.0 look'? I'm bemused!

Oliver - you've embedded flash into XHTML but your pages don't validate. I couldn't link to anything but the homepage either - guess you're still in the middle of building it... I've always approached the flash / XHTML problem by using a container swf file that pulls my animation in - this is the code that I use: <div id="flash"> <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="headers/container.swf?path=headers/home.swf" width="698" height="160"> <param name="movie" value="headers/container.swf?path=headers/home.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="menu" value="false" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#deedf6" /> </object> </div> Basically this is called the flash satay methid as outlined in this article on the A List Apart site: Flash Satay Method You can also use: <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="images/banner.swf" width="288" height="128"> <param name="movie" value="images/banner.swf" /> <img src="banner.gif" width="288" height="128" alt="banner" /> </object> Which I've found by doing a search on google - here's a link to the page that explains the code: Valid Flash example I've not tried this myself so can't vouch for it, but think I might give this a go next time I need to put flash into my XHTML files. Hope that helps E

I've been freelancing for years and never generated any income from those kinds of sites where you bid on projects...people offer their services for so little money that it's not worth the time and effort to bother bidding half the time. I wouldn't go freelance unless you know you've got work coming in and clients at hand otherwise you will be waiting a lobg time for your first pay cheque and how are you going ot pay the bills etc. I initially gathered a few clients before I took the plunge into freelancing and did work for them whilst I was still working for a company - that way I knew I could get a steady stream of work from them after I went freelance full time. I get a lot of clients via word of mouth - people recomend me to others all the time. But one of the first things I did to get new clients was to look at all the web design companies in my area and study their websites and find out how many people worked at each. I then targetted the small companies [up to 4 or 5 people] and pitched my portfolio of work from the point of view that I could fill in any gaps in their team - maybe they didn't have someone who could do flash animation and it might be something that they would like to offer clients but are unable to. I got a lot of work out of that and still have the same clients on board now almost 4 years later. I also targetted the bigger companies for contract work but also in the same way I targetted the small - mostly with flash animation skills as that was something that seemed to be lacking at the time and it was something that I was very good at at the time. At the moment all the work I have on has come via recomendation, so I must be doing something right.

very nice - I would put the 'new projects' text on the actual polaroid in the large space at the bottom...but other than that it's nice and simple. Doesn't necessarily need colour either.

not sure as I don't code php myself.

Excellent - I've got access to that site - I'll check out the tutorials for PHP. The CSS tutorials on there are pretty good too.