"funky table stuff going on"

I made a web site in Freeway Pro 5.3.2 (on a MacBook running 10.5.6).
Started it in 5.3.1. The site has just been uploaded a few minutes ago
here:

http://www.utmb.edu/cehd/

The UTMB web staff accepted the site for upload but said this about it.*

“There is some funky table stuff going on that really should be
addressed in the design. We would prefer that you use a div-based
layout instead of a table-based design whenever possible for
accessiblity needs and requirements.”

Can anyone tell, by looking at the site, what I may have done wrong in
my use of Freeway Pro? I get that by having CSS turned off, for
everything but the CSS menu on the left, Freeway defaulted to table
based pages, but is there something amiss with the way the pages have
been published? Should I try selecting each item on each page and
clicking “Layer” on the Inspector Pallet? This will wipe out my
rollover menus, I suppose, but I believe I saw a CSS Rollover at
Actions Forge. I could redo the rollover menus, maybe?

Thanks for any info.

Any other comments or criticism concerning the site would be
gratefully received.

This list is great. I joined only a few weeks ago and I’m already
about 3000 messages behind… but catching up. :wink:

*UTMB is recovering but still devastated by Hurricane Ike. Otherwise
this site might have been done in-house.


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On 24 Apr 2009, at 19:49, Steve Kane wrote:

is there something amiss with the way the pages have been published?

I think they’re being a bit prissy. There’s nothing actually wrong
with your table layout, and not so long ago, it was state of the art!

I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s nice of them to point it out, but
unless they really kick up a fuss, I’d ignore them.

Cheers

Heather

^-^

http://www.flickr.com/photos/snaptophobic/
iFlickr

http://gallery.me.com/heatherkay#gallery
A growing collection of personal pixels

http://snaptophobia.blogspot.com/
Blather and bluster about photography

¬_¬


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Sometime around 24/4/09 (at 13:49 -0500) Steve Kane said:

I made a web site in Freeway Pro 5.3.2 (on a MacBook running
10.5.6). Started it in 5.3.1. The site has just been uploaded a few
minutes ago here:

http://www.utmb.edu/cehd/

The UTMB web staff accepted the site for upload but said this about it.*

“There is some funky table stuff going on that really should be
addressed in the design. We would prefer that you use a div-based
layout instead of a table-based design whenever possible for
accessiblity needs and requirements.”

Heh. If they really said “funky table stuff” then I wouldn’t
necessarily write them off - at least they’re not trying to blind the
reader with marketing-speak. :slight_smile:

As far as the table stuff goes, any unlayered object on your page
must be positioned using an invisible table structure. It is NOT
true that table structures automatically equal inaccessible layouts,
however, it can make pages that aren’t quite as elegant and it can
(not “will”) affect accessibility. But hell’s bells - it is perfectly
possible to make a pure CSS-based site that it itself an
accessibility nightmare!

However - unless you’re able to relate this sort of thing over a
coffee or beer and with a friendly grin I don’t think you should
dwell on this; it is one of those ‘perceived wisdom’ things that can
be rather hard to change, particularly as there’s that grain of truth
in there.

Group your rollover items together and make that group item layered.
Then make all other items layered. Test. That should pretty much
eliminate all the table structure layout from your page designs. Ask
here for help if you have any trouble, of course. :slight_smile:

You may also want to try setting the page alignment to Center so that
the layout is presented in a slightly more elegant fashion in larger
browser windows. See the Inspector palette; try doing this to the
master page and see if that does it for all your ‘real’ pages in one
step.

One last thing - they’re probably expecting that this will take a
significant amount of work, but because Freeway doesn’t work in
HTML but rather generates it on demand, this is normally a relatively
simple process. You may be able to score brownie points by turning
this around fairly swiftly and cheerfully.

k


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On Apr 26, 2009, at 6:23 AM, Keith Martin wrote:

Sometime around 24/4/09 (at 13:49 -0500) Steve Kane said:

I made a web site in Freeway Pro 5.3.2 (on a MacBook running
10.5.6). Started it in 5.3.1. The site has just been uploaded a few
minutes ago here:

http://www.utmb.edu/cehd/

The UTMB web staff accepted the site for upload but said this about
it.*

“There is some funky table stuff going on that really should be
addressed in the design. We would prefer that you use a div-based
layout instead of a table-based design whenever possible for
accessiblity needs and requirements.”

Heh. If they really said “funky table stuff” then I wouldn’t
necessarily write them off - at least they’re not trying to blind
the reader with marketing-speak. :slight_smile:

As far as the table stuff goes, any unlayered object on your page
must be positioned using an invisible table structure. It is NOT
true that table structures automatically equal inaccessible layouts,
however, it can make pages that aren’t quite as elegant and it can
(not “will”) affect accessibility. But hell’s bells - it is
perfectly possible to make a pure CSS-based site that it itself an
accessibility nightmare!

However - unless you’re able to relate this sort of thing over a
coffee or beer and with a friendly grin I don’t think you should
dwell on this; it is one of those ‘perceived wisdom’ things that can
be rather hard to change, particularly as there’s that grain of
truth in there.

Group your rollover items together and make that group item layered.
Then make all other items layered.

Do I select all 6x2 rollover menu items and group them all or do I
select each pair and group them? Or should I just rebuild them using
the CSS Rollover action available at ActionForge?

Test. That should pretty much eliminate all the table structure
layout from your page designs. Ask here for help if you have any
trouble, of course. :slight_smile:

Watching Dan Jasker’s box model screencasts is on my todo list. I’ve
taken a stab at it, but my boxes-within-boxes experiments have been a
mess so far. I gather that the item settings are critical.

When I make the body text box and the three footer text boxes layered
there is a problem when text is enlarged in a browser. The footer
boxes stay where they are and the body text box distends downward
over the footer boxes which stay where they are.

The vertical CSS menu on the left swells to the right when font size
is made larger in the browser but I’ve given it enough room for two
font size increases before it overlaps the body text box.

You may also want to try setting the page alignment to Center so
that the layout is presented in a slightly more elegant fashion in
larger browser windows. See the Inspector palette; try doing this to
the master page and see if that does it for all your ‘real’ pages in
one step.

This I can certainly do. The master page feature is tremendous but
every now and then I apparently do something sloppy that causes some
item on some page to become unstuck from the master, so I’ve gotten
used to checking all the pages when I make a change on the master.

I have to manually change page heights and the position of the
footers, in any case, to accommodate the different heights of the body
text box on each page. I gather that in a true box model layout this
would not be necessary(?)

One last thing - they’re probably expecting that this will take a
significant amount of work, but because Freeway doesn’t work in
HTML but rather generates it on demand, this is normally a
relatively simple process. You may be able to score brownie points
by turning this around fairly swiftly and cheerfully.

Ha, well they did ask me to lighten the gray background on all the
pages. Uploading the new site to them took longer than making the
change in Freeway. :slight_smile:


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