New Template

[Rehsa4]

link to template:
http://media.rpage.net/template1.zip

screenshot at:
http://media.rpage.net/screenshot1.jpg

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Uses tables, since it's what i like to work with, a lot of stuff currently is hard-coded, not a whole lot in the .css file i'm afraid. I know it wont be W3 compatible, but hey, it's something new. Made for my hosting, can change a link in the header if you want since it goes to my page.

I'm happy with it as well. Comments or whatever are welcome, suggestions welcome too.

Enjoy.

[phunkphorce]

It looks good enough to me, just perhaps a bit too dark (but that's just personal taste )

With regards to templates distributed by the development team, we've got a set of stricter guidelines as of LT 1.2 that will ensure that all templates provide the same level of functionality to end users. You can have a look at the guidelines here:

http://wiki.lifetype.net/index.php/Template_Guidelines

This means that unless the template fulfills these guidelines, the development team won't accept it as an "official" template (although you're free to offer it yourself as an unofficial template)

[Rechosen]

I also think that it's too dark. Apart from that, it's nice .

[Rehsa4]

OK, i checked the guidelines.

only a couple things i don't have is:
user picture displayed anywhere, i would rather leave that up to the user if they wish to make their own about page. I have my own picture, which i will use for my own about page, but i guess i can make a genal about page to display this, meeting that guideline.

Bad Behavior isn't in there, quick code change.

Paging in all areas should be there, since i borrowed all the basic pages from the standard template, might need to check my footers just to be safe.

I removed the comments picture if people have it, becuase the size was just too big for my liking, taking too much room, might change it though if it's easy and bring it back in to be smaller and be moved.

I don't have the exact powered by lifetype in there. I do however have a link to lifetype at the bottom, as well as credit to the person who took the picture, and my page since i designed it.


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otherwise i do not see any guidelines for W3 compliance or tables, or a static link people may want to change.

There wouldn't be a static link, but i couldn't find a generic template link to go to a summary page, i found the admin page link, but not a summary one. Searched the wiki, couldn't find one.

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Unless you guys see something else that i didn't follow in the guidelines, i can have it compatible later tonight.

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As for it being too dark, well the picture reference wasn't the brightest out there, i tried to stick with the color scheme, i AM however making it available in 3 different color choices, this is just #1 so far.

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Anything else?

[phunkphorce]

You're right that the guidelines don't talk about W3C compliancy but I'll update them later. We thought that in this day and age, making your designs validate was something people do as part of the design process itself

Regarding user picture in comments and the user picture in the blog, a static template with the user's bio and picture would also do. The main idea behind these guidelines is that all templates offer the same level of functionality in one way or another and their name implies, they're "guidelines" and not "rules" so they can be bent a bit to suit your design. I.e. if the user picture next to a comment is too big for your design you may always reduce its size a bit to make it fit better, and so on.

[Nomad]

You're right that the guidelines don't talk about W3C compliancy but I'll update them later. We thought that in this day and age, making your designs validate was something people do as part of the design process itself

Unless you live in Ireland - designers there don't care a hoot - most have probably never used the validator.... commercial ones mainly -- sad or what eh....

nice template though as said slightly on the dark side... would use it though if it were to be offered as a template.....

reminds me must finish porting the ones I've been working on....

[Rehsa4]

yeah, the only reason it doesn't validate is because the html validator is WAY to picky. this attribute doesn't belong here, when i look at the code, and boom, it's done right.

same with </font> and even some div layers, says there is no open tag for this, or this div is not allowed here, etc. It's the stupid small things that really are pretty dumb...

[jondaley]

That's what Microsoft says too... and just ignores the warnings and makes pages and a browser that can't parse valid HTML.

I don't understand what you are saying when you say it is way too picky. You either meet the standard or you don't. Can you show an example when "boom, it's done right", but the validator says it isn't?

I haven't ever seen the w3 validator make an error, though do have the disclaimer that the XHTML parser has limitations.

[phunkphorce]

I've never seen the validator report something that wasn't a real error either. If it for example says that you've got an unclosed <div> tag, you really have an unclosed tag in your code... Same thing with all other errors.

[Rehsa4]

well, since i'm using tables, it's pretty hard to be compliant with w3. xhtml doesn't know what to do with any of it.

error:

<tr> attribute is undefined

id is not a valid attribute

div is not allowed here
error right afterwards
end tag for div in which one is not open

eh, still haven't updated the template, going on a roadtrip for the weekend.

[Nomad]

well, since i'm using tables, it's pretty hard to be compliant with w3. xhtml doesn't know what to do with any of it.

error:

<tr> attribute is undefined

id is not a valid attribute

div is not allowed here
error right afterwards
end tag for div in which one is not open

eh, still haven't updated the template, going on a roadtrip for the weekend.

Actually it does - you just have to make sure that you don't have tables out side divs - whilst a browser will 'FIX' errors the validator won't. If say you miss a closing div - it will throw your tables generally on td - if you have a closing td missing it will generally say this div is not closed ...

It can be tricky to get the hang of the validator but I assure you that once you do it is a godsend. And it doesn't make mistakes - only you the code writer can do that...

the font one if you write it like this

Code: Select all

say
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<p><font></p></font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>


It will fail because your closing font is in the wrong place. The browser will correct this because it is programmed to do so. The validator won't because it is programmed to tell you that the closing font should be before the closing p. So always close your tags in the corresponding order that you started your tags..

This will validate

Code: Select all

<table>
<tr>
<td>
<p><font><a href="http://www.w3.org">W3C</a></font></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>


Whereas this may not (Sometimes the validator will be slightly leniant

Code: Select all

<table>
<tr>
<td>
<p><font><a href="http://www.w3.org">W3C</font></a></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>


Notice in the second example that the closing font and a tags have been changed around... Thats is not semantically correct becaus ethe order is wrong...

Same applies to all the tags - keep them tidy and in order and they will validate. It's the biggest mistake I generally see anyway and why people complain that the validator is to stringent

[Rehsa4]

Yeah, i'm aware of the tags must open/close in the right order for it to validate. Currently if you validate my current page, it's mostly a problem with the javascript code i grabbed online for my onmouseover commands to display text under the link. I am currently changing it.

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UPDATE:

I have moved to the light side!

Been converting my layout for my main page yesterday on my local installation from tables to divs, and it's quite a bit different way of thinking. Doing everything relitive and getting rid of a lot of coding and moving it to the .css file is a much simpler yet bigger challenge than i thought.

I picked up dreamweaver 8 yesterday, which i am going to buy at my next paycheck because it made things so much easier in terms of understanding and previewing the layout right away without text editing and save/view, see it in real time is much nicer. I had an idea how i was going to do things, but now it's just much easier. I find myself doing a lot of div inside a div thing going on currently, because i still don't know everything the css file can handle, but it validates in xhtml transitional. I may try and get it strict as well.

The layout will be converted to a div layout this week. It'll just take a little while to get it to that point as i am going to transfer my current template first completely.

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New links will be by this weekend of the updated template completely valid xhtml transitional, divs, and all the guidlines met for everyone.

Until then, i should get back to work.


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edit:
as for the validator not working properly, i can confirm it when it comes to my javascript code that i borrowed which i'm pretty sure isn't coded right anyways. But when i fixed the way the <small> and <font> were closing, make sure it's in the right order, it still messed up and thought it wasn't open with the closing tag because of the javascript coding along the lines of

Code: Select all

<font type="vernanda"><small>'+whichcontent+'</small></font>


it says the small and font ending tags shouldn't be there because there is no open tag, it must be because of the '+whichcontent+' which is giving it a hard time.

But the code i mentioned above is for my website only and i can live with it not being perfect, but all the templates i send this way WILL be completely valid xhtml transitional.

[jondaley]

Are your quotes correct for all of that - because really the <small> is inside quotes, so probably the validator isn't able to check it at all. Maybe reading javascript is one of the XHTML limitations?

[Rehsa4]

the javascript is how it is suppose to be, because it pastes exactly what's inside the quotes, and the coding is needed to get the outcome for the quotes. I can try and do it through divs, but how they have it, it's not gonna happen properly on fixing theirs.

This error though is only on my current template, because any templates i submit wont have that javascript anyways, :p