Another HTML question

[Zaudika]

Hey all,
I know there was a thread about this the other day, but I went looking and didn't find it, so I started a new one real quick so I could ask a question.

For those of you who know........ on doing a background on a page is there any way to make it 1/3 one color and the other 2/3rds another color. so that the divider between the two colors would be up and down the page. I know you can do this in frames, and I know you can do this with a table (kind of).. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to do it other than that.

Years ago I used HTML constantly.. but its been about 2 yrs, and for the life of me, I can't figure out if there's a way to do this. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Also,.. there was a link put up for a site of basic html commands,.. I probably know most of them that are on that site. But just in case, if it could be thrown up again so I can take a look at it that'd be great.

Thanks a bunch.

 

[Lasher]

I think this is very similar to what you want.

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/sideline.html

 

[Zaudika]

I think this is very similar to what you want.

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/sideline.html

Lasher I could just kiss you!!!!!!.. You're awesome, thank you!!

 

[The Heretic]

For those of you who know........ on doing a background on a page is there any way to make it 1/3 one color and the other 2/3rds another color. so that the divider between the two colors would be up and down the page. I know you can do this in frames, and I know you can do this with a table (kind of).. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to do it other than that.

The article Lasher linked to eventually uses a table. If you want to put text in both colors then using a table is the easiest way for neophytes - just make sure that you use percentages for table widths instead of fixed widths as the example does. There are better ways to do this that work on more than just one browser - but it depends on what you are doing (whether you want content in both colors, etc.).

A lot of website "designers" use tables for such layout, some of them do a halfway decent job. The problem is that tables are a construct meant for tabular data (e.g., tables of financial data, etc.) and non-mainstream browsers, such as auditory browsers for blind surfers (yes blind people surf the net) may not interpret web pages laid out with tables in the way the "designer" intended.

The solution? Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Almost anything you can do with tables you can do with CSS, and in the long run CSS is a lot more flexible and easier to maintain. The problem is that it takes a bit more effort to learn how to use it than a table. For a personal site where you aren't doing a lot of development and don't care about disabled surfers, you may not wish to bother with learning and using CSS to this degree. For a professional/commercial site, CSS is probably a better way (in the long run) to accomplish such layout rather than using tables. Here is an introduction of some of the issues.

Here is an example of using CSS in the layout of content to accomplish something that most "designers" use tables for.

When I am evaluating someone's website design skills, I will look at the source for a page they have put up. If it is a commercial/professional website and uses tables instead CSS then that is one demerit. If they use a fixed width table (as in the URL Lasher provided), that is another demerit. If they recommend this (using tables for layout) as a good design practice then that is two demerits.