Web site design advice

[vehelpfulguy]

I am new to web site design and and have taken over updating an existing web site.

Much of the HTML text is simple paragraphs with (p) and (/p) either end.

When the web site is viewed on a 19inch or larger screen with small pixel size you finish up with the text stretched out in one long line.

Many other sites seem to limit the width of the text so it never goes above a certain length, what is the best way to do this ?

Could I enclose the text in an invisible table that only expands to a certain width.

Any other suggestions?

[fo3nix]

forget the tables and things.

HTML is for structuring your site
CSS is for the presentation; the design of the site

so, the HTML should only have tags that say that this bit is a heading, this bit is a sub-heading (you use h1 as the main heading, h2 as subheadings of that, h3 as sub-subheadings. don't use a h3 just because it has the right font size), etc. you also use the DIV tags to separate different parts of your site. so you could have your heading in a set of DIV tags, your main content in a set of DIV tags, the footer of the site in DIVs, and the menu in DIVs

then the magic happens...

in the CSS, you can set the width of these DIVs. so you could set the content DIV to be, say, 500px wide. the browser will automatically wrap the words for you.

[WoWo]

"Could I enclose the text in an invisible table that only expands to a certain width."

Yes you can do that, these days however layout tends to be controlled by a <div> and css positioning.

Without seeing the site as it is now it's difficult to suggest a definative method. it may well be that it is already in a table and you just need to constrain the table width.

[fo3nix]

some useful links with CSS stuff:

http://www.glish.com/css/
http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/bo xes.html

[OBonio]

For what it's worth, I agree with these guys. Tables are so 90s ;o)

Using a table would be a quick dirty fix and will come back to haunt you later when you need to do more updates.

Get it done using CSS. It will benefit you in the long run.