Hi: I know absolutely zero about this sort of thing but have always wanted to try to make a web site. Is with Front Page years ago and had to quit. I read with interest that Coffee Cup was very easy to use and gave it a try. It seems that it is easy… if you already know how. Sorry, but that is my experience.

I am not about to quit though regardless of my advanced years so I can only ask for help bit by bit and hope someone will clue me in.

Here are the first questions I have. When trying to create my Home Page I was able to figure out how to make a table with a few cells and felt good about that. But that said once I have created the table I cannot find any way to adjust the cells or even the text within.

I am attaching a link to a screen shot so you can see what I am trying to do.

I would like to control and adjust the individual cells.

I would like to control the text inside as though I was using word if that is possible. It is very difficult to manipulate the text.

I cannot find out how to access the Table Designer so I can do all the things it allows me to after I have added that table to my page that I could somewhat do BEFORE I add the table to my page.

For example. In the colored box in the Cell “A” how do I split it into cells? Intuitively, I should think I could right click and have access to the Table Designer but that does not happen.

If I wanted to split Cell “E” into four cells how I do it.

I know that there must be an easy way but after spending 24 working hours on this and trying to understand the HTML tutorial I just can’t figure it out.

Remember, I know no HTML and have yet to learn but I think I should be able to do thee things without that knowledge. Please take pity on me and offer any help you can. ANY help will be deeply appreciated. Perhaps someone knows of a tutorial somewhere that will help?

SCREEN SHOT:
http://users.rcn.com/imagespast/coffeecuphelp


Thank you so much,
Ed

If you are just now learning html, don't use tables for page structure. That was so ten years ago. learn CSS for structure. CSS and HTML really isn't that hard. Have you tried the book CoffeeCup has to offer called "My website is better than your website"?

http://www.coffeecup.com/books/my-website-is-better/

Hi Tom: Thank you for taking the time to write and offer your sugestion to me. I would love to be able to use HTML or CSS and will surely try but unfortunately I have a learning disability that would make it almost impossible for me to visualize images from the abstract text I would have to work with. When one works with HTML and CSS I am assuming you can visualize in your head what you are doing and where it is going to go...and all the subtle variations possible. Imagine if you couldn't do that and you will understand my problem. So if I can't make it with tables then I guess I am not going to be able to do this. Thanks again and I do apprecaite the input. Ed

Images, why not use a template and if you want to you can adjust the template to suit your needs, rather than starting from scratch.

There are several templates that come with the program and you can buy extras as well.

The other option might be to download a trial of Visual Site Designer and see if that suits you better.

Images,

I too have a learning disability, and yet, I have been able to master advanced web design techniques. If I can do it, so can you. I do talks on this issue and encourage young kids who have learning disabilities that there is nothing that a "normal" person can do that you can also.

Let me begin my word of encouragement here and say regardless of what your specific disability you can get this!!!!!!!!

You can do it.

Just thinkl of the css as the layout like your tables. Build that first to get the page structure. Then add the page content into to css divs just like you would the tables.

Take a look at the code for one of the prebuilt templates that are done using CSS and you will get it. First look at the html divs and the content iside it, then look at the coorisponding CSS and see how they positioned that <div> using styles.

Play around until the lightbulb comes on.

The problem with CSS is creating a whole site template using it is so advanced this will have anyone on their knees and throwing in the towel. You also have to deal with wonky CSS implementation between browsers, yet another headache for a beginner. The problem with people who know CSS is they think everyone else can grasp it; news flash; they can't. But they can understand a table with cells for placement and use basic CSS for basic stuff like fonts and colours.

My two cents is if you are having issues and aren't a 'computer' person or natural coder, put together something using tables first; learn the basics while putting together something that looks like something, then you can worry about learning advanced CSS later. The people I have helped have followed this maxim and are doing great; it is getting over that hump and if doing something 'so ten years ago' is what it takes, then I say go for it. While tables will eventually be deprecated, so will CSS as we know it; it is all just a matter of time.

I recommend starting with a table with four rows and four columns centred on your page (or pinned to the left, depending on your tastes), then add content using either html or CSS to position the stuff to the left, centre, right or justified (where text spreads evenly across the page) and go from there.

I have created just such a table on a demo page so if you want to download it, it is sitting on this link. Download, unzip the page and open it with the editor to see how I did it, or alternatively copy the snp file in the zip file into the editor's snippets folder and this will then be available in the snippets tab for loading. Save a good copy so if you mess up you can just start afresh. Learning by doing is the only way to really retain it.

Keep in mind I am just a potterer who dabbles with web stuff so I am nowhere near the level of these other gurus, who obviously know far more about it than I do; however, this is how I learnt and I came to it late so perhaps you may also find it useful. If not, no harm no foul, just delete and forget; if useful, good luck and enjoy what is an enjoyable and rewarding pastime.

http://www.davethompson.co.nz/demo.zip

Dave.

Here's a news flash for ya - I'm just offering my encouragement.

Why learn old the old way of doing things if you are learning something new? It's not any harder - just a different approach. Same thing happened when coding went to OOP. And I highly doubt either one of us will outlive CSS as a standard in web programming.

Well as a total novice learner myself, I can also say that OOP is above my head and I've tried grasping it numerous times. I can grasp quite a bit of it, and I can edit it and pretty much say what it's going to do, but it's still way above my head lol. CSS is just below that and I have quite a bit of difficulty with it yet even though I've been using it for a couple years now I still don't totally understand the bits and pieces of it and am actually having a problem with it right now myself.

Having said all that, I would have to agree with Phil on this one Tom, it's not as easy as those that understand it think it is for people that aren't program oriented to start with. I am definitely not a programmer, just a medium level web coder at best and I can say that it is much easier to just use a setup that is already there and play with it for a while to get the "VERY BASICS" of how it works.

CSS basically will setup your website so that you can put things in specific places (basically like a content management system that's all in CSS and HTML). This basically means that it will help you mark off specific sections of your site such as a Sidebar area (left or right) the Footer area, the Header area and the main content area (middle section for the most part) of your site. From there it lets you "style" your content telling it what colors, sizes, and any other styling of the text itself. And it will allow you to specify the backgrounds of each of your areas and many things like this.

This frees you up to basically concentrate on the 'content' of your pages itself without having to change every page when you want a background change, or maybe a different type of font. One change in 1 file (or a few in 1 file depending on what you're changing) will change 'all' the pages for you at once making it much easier to keep your pages updated.

That's pretty much what CSS does for the most part. Having said that one really nice thing about most of this is CSS & HTML have a whole lot of tutorials and classes out there and here's a couple links to help you get started that helped me get started:

http://webtechu.com/curriculum.html (free online classes for lots of things from web to images)

http://www.cssbasics.com/ (CSS from ground zero class/tutorial)

Hope that helps and feel free to ask questions ( I would suggest a new thread for that unless you do a search and find your answers that way though which is always a good thing to do too)

You can try a Google search for "HTML online class" or "HTML online tutorial" or the same for CSS and you will find a ton of links for them should these 2 be not quite good for you.

Thank you all for your responses to my questions. It is so heart warming to know that you are here to help folks work through problems and provide the support we need. My efforts will certainly go forward and I am confident that I will be successful. Thank you so much. Ed