Project Six is launched

I launched my newest website last week. I have a few tweeks here and there. The website is about my 1966 Ford Mustang and related media.

Project Six

Project Six Blog

Next, I have to finish my friend's website. Featuring his 1977 Ford Pinto Drag Car

Quick Draw Racing

Final Checklist For Project Six

1 Index - mouseover for blog and contact graphics - DONE

2 Media - content and text for magazine pages

- MF - Done

3 Inline Six - Done

4 Gallery pages - finish and upload menu graphics - DONE

5 Restoration - DONE

6 Exterior - text - DONE

7 Engine - Done

8 Models text - DONE

9 Prototype - Gallery/Text - Done

10 Email - encrypt

11 Validate - Done

12 Google Analytic code - waiting for site to be uploaded to new server - Done

13. Site map and submission - Done

Project Six Website - 1966 Ford Mustang

I just uploaded my first rough draft of my Project Six Website. With in the first 60 seconds, I saw some changes and additions that needed to be made. The website shows off my 1966 Ford Mustang with a 200 six cylinder. Showing it off is part of the enjoyment of having it.

Old website (circa 2002)-

www.project-six.com

New draft-

http://www.dmtportal.net/project-six/index.htm

Project Six Re-Design

My newest web project is re-designing one of my older websites www.project-six.com. The website features my 1966 Ford Mustang. I designed it in 2002 with messy tables and scrambled code. I look forward to launching the new css website.

JBA Performance Center Launches new website

JBA Performance Center Launches new website. Ken Polard from Site Creaters built the infrastructure. I'm bringing over some of the information and graphics from old website.

www.jbaracing.com

BACK IN ACTION

After getting my new computer, I'm downloading CS4 Suite. Its taking forever though.

Just completed my first PHP class

My first PHP class was a little hard. I will be doing alot of reviewing before my next PHP class. I'm digging the server side includes.

MySQL Database

I just started to build my first database. It was somewhat difficult start, but I'm getting the hang of it.

IE6 or not IE6

I'm relatively new to CSS based websites, and I want them to be semantically correct and validate. I find myself spending a lot of time figuring out how to get my websites to render correctly in ie6. I've read many articles about the pros and the cons. What makes the most sense to me is the audience for a particular website. What percentage of them using ie6 would I be turning away? If it is small enough, then I should not worry about them, and just design a clean and effective website. I can't help not worry about that one person who views my website in IE6, and says it "sucks".

First PHP Script

Some of what I learn in web design is from taking a part source codes, and re-arranging it. I just learned why I could never see the php code in an html document. The only thing the Web browser sees within the PHP coding sections is any output from the PHP script. The Web server hides all of the PHP code from the client, and the php codes is not present in the source code.

Cool stuff!

WAMP Server - Version 2.0h

I just downloaded the WAMP Server for my PHP class. Let the fun begin!

PHP and MySQL

Today, I started my first PHP class. Now the fun begins.

Absolute Positioning

So I heard at one of my css group meetings that I can position display blocks using absolute positioning. From what I understood, it is way to avoid IE 6 issues with doubling up on the margins. I tried it on the site I'm working on www.quickdrawracing.com. It works fine in Firefox, but not as well in IE6 and IE7. In IE6 only, the right column is lower than the left column. In both IE6 and IE7 the left column cuts of part of the text in the right.

I found an article on A List Apart that might help.

New CSS Project - PSD Layout

I'm designing the Photoshop layout for a css website. The website is for my friend's 1977 Ford Pinto Drag Car.

The PSD Layout:
http://www.quickdrawracing.com/layout.htm

The current website layout:
http://www.quickdrawracing.com/

My next web design adventure - PHP programming

I'm taking it to the next level. Next month I'm starting my next online class. I want to learn how to create an interactive Web site,
thru PHP programming language. Time to learn new ideas. Create new problems, and learn how to solve them.

New CSS Project

I'm re-designing an html website to a tableless css website. Here is the old layout. (www.quickdrawracing.com) This is how I used to design websites with heavy graphics and tables. They always seem to work out fine, but I never knew how well they held up in different browsers. I should be done with the css layout in a week.

Website is valid

I just uploaded my web pages. They're all html and css compliant. I have to adjust the footer a little. The text is a little jumpy from one page to the next

html validation link

css validation link

Website Validation and Cross Browser Issues

I'm checking thru all my web pages, and making the html valid. I ran into some issues with the list in the content div section. The line spacing was not consistant across browsers. Also, ie6 would cause the content background image to multiply. I found a list that uses background images for the bullets. So far it holding up, and works across browsers. I will double check on my work computer tommorow.

The list can be found at www.http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/vertical05.htm

Web Design Networking

When it comes to networking, I'm on the shy side. Eight months ago, I came across a great networking website called Meetup. It's a networking site for everything thing you can think of. If there is not a group to suit your interests, then just start your own. In know time, you will have a Meetup group. I currently belong to San Diego Web Designers and San Diego CSS Web 2.0 Designers. The CSS group is my favorite. The discusions always tie into what I'm currently studing. At the last meeting, there was a guest speaker who talked about SEO and CSS. I'm just finishing up an SEO class online, so I understood what was being discussed.

Advanced HTML - W3C Standards

In my quest to writing HTML code that is compliant to W3C's rules, here is a link:

Advanced HTML

XHTML vs. HTML

here is a link to a good post about XHTML.

Here is a quote.

Html is still a Standard and the newest version of HTML available. Some still believe that XHTML replaced HTML (something I believed 1 1/2 years ago as well) and HTML is retired. Wrong.

To see the rest of the post go to

www.killersites.com

Cross Browser compatibility with CSS and “if statements”

After finishing an intermediate level CSS class, I re-designed my portfolio website in tableless CSS. I ran into issues with my drop down menus. In IE7, when I would click my drop down menu, it would cause un-wanted scroll bars to appear. This happened in a screen size of 1024 x 768. Also, the drop downs would not work in IE6. Firefox and Opera did not seem to be an issue. So I went to Killersites forum (www.killersites), and some of the members helped thru the issue.

For the IE7 issue I added in my style sheet:

#navbar li li{ float:none; }

My style rule float: left from the #navbar li style was pushing the dropdowns out to the right

-------------------------------------------------------

For the IE6 issue I added an if statement in the head section of my web page:



I then added a behavior file csshover.htc. Downloaded from
http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/csshover.html, and put it in the same folder/directory as the html file.

After adding adding these, my drop downs worked good. I also, learned about
. They helped me with cross browser issues. I created my main style sheet to work with Firefox and Opera, and then added the for IE6 and IE7.

My Web Design Note Pad

I have been playing around with web design for about six years now, but I have much more to learn. I have taken design classes, and used online tutorials and forums. With all this knowledge available, it is easy to forget. This is the perfect place to keep my notes, and to share what I have learned with others. After all, so many other web designers have shared their knowledge with me.