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How to design a good site layout

Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 8:30 am
by aceconcepts
Hi,

Currently I use dreamweaver templates to cater for contant aspects of the site such as headers and footers and also left-aligned vertical menus.

I've tried using includes but it proves a bit tricky when it comes to vertical menus.

I was just wondering if there was a better way of laying out a site.

I would appreciate any insight.

Thanks

Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 8:32 am
by feyd
A template engine?

Template Lite and Smarty are fairly popular.

Re: How to design a good site layout

Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 11:33 am
by Christopher
aceconcepts wrote:I've tried using includes but it proves a bit tricky when it comes to vertical menus.
Why have you found this tricky?

Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 7:36 am
by aceconcepts
When I say i've tried using includes, I mean includes without a template structure.

Trying to use an include in order to display a vertical menu (ideally on the left) does not display inline with the content region (using tables to display the data).

e.g.

The only way I can display includes correctly is by placing an include in <td></td> of a template.

Code: Select all

<!--TEMPLATE STRUCTURE-->
<table width="100%">
<tr>

<td><? include"leftVerticalMenu"; ?></td>

<td><? include"contentRegion"; ?></td>

</tr>
</table>
I was just wondering if there was another way of doing this without a table template.

Thanks, hope you get my point.

Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 10:15 am
by matthijs
I think this is more a client side question. If you show us the output (html/css) we can help some more.

Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 12:34 pm
by aceconcepts
I was just wondering how one might layout a site's structure alternate to using table templates.

I probably am posting this in the wrong place.

Thanks anyway.

Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 2:47 pm
by matthijs
An alternative is using CSS (cascading style sheets). Most of the times you will wrap your main content area's in divs and position those with rules in your stylesheet.