Hi I just converted from Golive 6.01 toCS2and am confused about doctypes and

Hello,
Help....
No one seems to know what Doctype is preferable for all the various browsers (I go to one expert site and get advise and another expert site might contradict that).
Strict, transitional etc,
I using a Mac and have yet to see my website on an IBM using Explored 6-7 or 8. Soon, I shall upload and prototype my pages on an PC..I have my fingers crossed!

I just converted from Golive 6.01 toCS2 and made all my pages XHTML. Golive shows all my pages as 1.0 XHTML transitional which I suppose is OK....

Also should I convert most or all my table to layout grids? To remove td tags and insert div tags (everything I am reading says YES.....currently tables are out of fashion and make my pages load too slowly).
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Mac

No one seems to know what Doctype is preferable for all the various browsers
(I go to one expert site and get advise and another expert site might
contradict that).




As for the first question, I use Multilingual UTF8

Linda

One note on grids. From my experience and what others have said on this forum, it may be wise to not use grids or at least not for everything. They have caused me problems before when trying to get an object to stay where I want it. There may be other issues too. If you will learn the css you can do the same thing with css and not have the grid issues. I'm sure there are other opinions out there.

Whichever doctype you use, make sure that it validates. You can use the built in validator for CS2 for most pages, just mark the right box for the kind of html or xhtml you are using. For most of my pages I use html or xhtml transitional with utf-8 encoding.

You should choose a doctype based on YOUR ABILITY to code to the doctype's
standards. It's important that you have a valid and complete doctype on
each page, but it's not nearly so important that you have one as opposed to
another.

If you are not fluent or comfortable with HTML, then just go for HTML 4.01
Transitional. It will work fine.

> tables are out of fashion and make my pages load too slowly).

Unless you have OODLES of tables, or your tables have huge numbers or rows,
it's not likely that this is happening. What is much more likely is that
you have placed LARGE IMAGES into your tables, and changing doctypes won't
do anything for that kind of worst practice thing. For that matter, placing
a doctype on a poorly built page won't do anything for the page at all,
except insure that the bad display you get in the browser is obtained in
standards mode rather than quirks mode....

--
Murray

Murry,
I was using tables to position just about everything in Golive 6.01. None of my images are over 300x225 and many are just in one table with a caption but lined up down a page.
Perhaps I should preview on a PC and see if I have loading delays or positioning problems before (If I do at all) converting any tables to grids.

All my pages I have validated using an online validation service and look fine in preview mode using Firefox, Safari, and old Mac explorer 5.0.4. Since I have not prototyped the site I do no know if they will load quickly but Adobe is giving me times of less than 1 second using T1-T3 under statistics and that’s my largest most imagine intense page. (HTML byte count 19.7 kb Image byte count 147 kb).

Thank you and all others that answered! (any more suggestions?)
Mac
Stuart Sims aka Master Quark
If you have time check out my videos at
<http://www.youtube.com/user/portaltoindia>

Mac M. McCall:

No more self-promo links in these forums please.

[Forum Host]

> (HTML byte count 19.7 kb Image byte count 147 kb).

In other words the page is 170K. That's too heavy. The ideal weight for a
landing page is 60K or less. Why? Because many people are still on 56k
dialups, and after about 10 seconds waiting for engaging content, they begin
to click away.

> None of my images are over 300x225

That's pretty large....

--
Murray

Murry,
Thanks for the great advice!

To be quite frank, we import one of a kind hand picked jewelry and handicrafts from India. The items are not inexpensive. And I include media pages linked to You Tube to (i.e.) bringing the potential customer along with us, so to speak (which could never be viewed at 56k). What I am trying to say is anybody without broadband could never really got the full experience and if they are still using 56k can they afford our somewhat pricy items.

The only problem is I have an entire section on India travel geared toward the backpackers (more adventurist travelers) and I could care less if they buy anything. It there for my love of India and to share my extensive experience traveling in India and Asia. Perhaps I'll optimized my photos some more, make then smaller or split up the pages......

Thanks again and as I have said before the people on this forum are super!!!!!

Mac
Stuart Sims aka Master Quark

> What I am trying to say is anybody without broadband could never really
> got the full experience and if they are still using 56k can they afford
> our somewhat pricy items.

You might be surprised to discover who is still using 56k dialups, and what
socio-economic stratum they fall into. This approach would be a non-starter
for me....


--
Murray