Please... let me redesign the TTDPatch site...

[Patchman]

Unfortunately the few good sites that I know are in french, but see what it can look like :
http://openweb.eu.org/

Note for Joseph : I do not know which browser you use, but if you use NS4 I guess that this kind of site looks quite bad NS4 is really old so it is not possible to use "new HTML" with this kind of old browser.

That site does have nice layout, though it's a bit broken in Opera, some of the sections overlap other sections. That's one of the reasons why I still have a table layout, as opposed to CSS, because at least tables work the same in all browsers. By the way, I have no pity for anyone still using NS4...

[Patchman]

I overlooked this the first time...

And please explain my how the satisfy the damn Doctype or whatever it is!

Now this may sound harsh, but if you don't know what a Doctype is, you shouldn't be designing webpages. If you don't know about it, you'll only get conforming webpages by "accident". Go learn about HTML and XHTML standards first.

Check your conformance at the W3C website.
For the HTML: click here
For the CSS: click here

[antp]

That's one of the reasons why I still have a table layout, as opposed to CSS, because at least tables work the same in all browsers.

My site has exactly the same layout in Opera 6/7, IE5/6 and Mozilla, using DIVs

[krtaylor]

There's no reason to use CSS for the layout. Tables are vastly superior because they stretch as browser windows do. CSS is very useful for font appearance, headings, that sort of thing, but for fixing locations, it is totally opposite in philosophy to the way web pages should work. CSS location was designed by and for old-school graphic designers that were used to designing for paper, which stays the same size. "Yikes! This browser is making all my stuff move around! There has to be a way to force everything to stay put!" Hence CSS. But that is opposite from what browsers ARE. It's better to design pages to adapt to the "stretchability" of browser size, rather than trying to force a set size. Tables are good at that.

[DominionSpy]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you there, ktaylor.

'top'
Value: <length> | <percentage> | auto | inherit
Initial: auto
Applies to: positioned elements
Inherited: no
Percentages: refer to height of containing block
Media: visual

Edit: RTM

[krtaylor]

CSS is supposed to be stretchable as you point out, and maybe it will be if the browsers support it properly, but so far I've had a lot of problems with it. Practically every browser does fine with tables; many have troubles with CSS beyond text attributes. Ergo, I use tables for formatting, and I don't care what the W3C says you "should" do. I do what works.

[Zeiram Wokaydo]

I an saying it for the nth time, this is the layout, I did some pages in XHTML and know the standards, the problem I had was the charset, I veryfied it in W3Schools, it has a great veryfing page and I saw that the problem was in charset!

Ok, so everybody must see that:

IT'S JUST FOR THE LAYOUT

Also, I'll specify the menu text font, but I'll remove the main one...

To be continued...

[George]

Well, I fixed the "head" and the "title" problem, like I said I did this page in 5 seconds and had something other to do so can't be perfect. I have a little trouble with the Doctype, it says that I have errors everywhere, but I don't see any. Now check the first preview of the site:

http://www.zone.ee/ttdw/ttdpatchspecimen.htm

Iknow it's in .htm but it's only a specimen.

And please explain my how the satisfy the damn Doctype or whatever it is!

I like the existing design much more, than this.

[nilsi]

I agree with you George.
The design in the link is not simple enough for liking it.

Nils

[Zeiram Wokaydo]

Ok, the listing stuff is simple: there is no way that I get the same view in css formatting! I tried and the one I did was the best solution. The picture might be big, I'll fix that later, but you have to agree that it's a good layout even if it has to be improved... The black-white style makes an old effect, should I change it for light blue or light green?

[way_2_fun]

I'd have to give this, on a 10 scale, 10 being the highest and 1 the lowest and 5 average, I give it a 4. The layout is ok, I like the real TTDpatch.net better, and the content, I just feel what Josef has is better, unless he would fix it himself. I'm not saying you failed, good job, it's just that I like what we have currently.

[eis_os]

My two cents:
Is nice to have some design ideas but here are some comments:

First don't like pages all looking exactly the same, the design looks like A LOT PHP Content System. I think a site should have it's own character. It's the TTDPatch Site, it should look like the TTDPatch Site.

I like to use tables more than css, css is sometimes very browser specific.
If you have a wrong rendering with a table, it looks ugly but you can use all elements.
In CSS you get problems like overlapping content. I hate these sites.

Ohh, and it's only my personal opinion.

[way_2_fun]

I think, your links section should be gone, and add whats there (TTDAlter and TTD Configurator) to the Tools & Downloads section, maybe put a link to the real site, so if they want, they can refer to the creaters site.

[Zeiram Wokaydo]

Well, guys, I'll continue this project another time, I have a lot of wotk to do. Don't blame me if I start a project that I can't finish, I'll be back in a few days, ok! I did another fast layout page, but it's on another computer... complicated things. Anyway, I'll be back soon!

[BobXP]

- must work 100% without Javascript (i.e. no Javascript navigation)

WHAAAAAA??????? Javascript RULEZ! Are you the saddest person alive or what?

[Dinges]

no, javascript is stupid, I hate it. And I disabled it (atleast the pouops). They misused javascript, while they can do so good stuff with it

[krtaylor]

PROPERLY USED JavaScript is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, like with frames. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of people that attempt to use both JavaScript and frames either have no idea what they are doing, or are doing something evil (like making popup ads).

[antp]

Well, most of the time frames are not useful, and they add more problem that they sove.
Usually it is better to use server-side includes (SSI, PHP, etc.) instead of client-side includes (frames).

[krtaylor]

Not true. Server side includes are vaguely OK but they can be a beast to maintain. With framesets you can rig it so the complexity is in the frameset, not in the pages themselves. Also it is more efficient on the download traffic. Also framesets let you do some very cool and useful things with javascript so as to decrease the load on your own server. But you have to know what you're doing when you're setting it up.

[orudge]

Frames and JavaScript can both be very useful. However, they can both be misused. It's the same with most things these days...