Getting Tables To Display Properly Takes Some Doing When on Web via AOL

By David Fiedler and Scott Clark

Dear Dr. Website®: I'm having problems with tables displaying correctly when viewed with the America Online browser. The tables look fine in Netscape Navigator 3.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, but the table text appears to run together on the AOL browser with the Netscape plug-in.

The problems are in the inadequate AOL browser, not your HTML code (AOL's built-in browser is an older version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which does not display tables correctly; the Netscape plug-in may suffer from some of the same limitations). One thing you may be able to do is include <BR> or <P> at the end of each data cell. That may help to separate your data and make it readable for the AOL browser.

A better choice is to encourage your viewers to use a standalone version of Navigator or Explorer along with AOL's Winsock. The standalone version of either browser will display tables correctly, and according to AOL, most standard 16-bit Winsock applications will work with its Winsock.

To get AOL's Winsock while logged onto AOL, press Control-K to bring up the Keyword menu. Then type "Netscape" and press Enter. You will go to a screen where you will be able to download Netscape (if you do not already have the 16-bit version) and the Winsock file itself, "winsock.dll." When you have downloaded it, place it in your Windows directory. The next time you log onto AOL you can use the standalone Navigator or Internet Explorer instead of AOL's browser.

Keeping It Simple

Dear Dr. Website®: How are you able to show images on your pages in a small size, and then have a button to click on to make them full-screen size? I believe they are called thumbnails.

Also, why is it that the wallpaper on my site isn't always shown when using Netscape Navigator, but always when using Internet Explorer? I used Microsoft FrontPage to do the page.

In answer to your first question: You simply make a resized, smaller version (yes, it's called a thumbnail) of the original image. This smaller version loads faster than the original, but gives users a small representation of that same image that they can then click on to view the original larger image. If you put them both into the directory that contains the HTML file, the code to accomplish your task will look like this:

<A HREF="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwebdeveloper.com%2Fdrweb%2Fimage.gif&y=1999">
<IMG SRC="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwebdeveloper.com%2Fdrweb%2Fsmallimage.gif&y=1999"></A>

This displays the smaller image, but clicking on it displays the larger one. (You can add BORDER=NO to the IMG tag if you do not wish to show a border around the image.) You can see an example of this technique at WebDeveloper.com.

Your second question is a good example of how using proprietary tools from a browser vendor may give you headaches. Some examples of proprietary HTML code are the use of LEFTMARGIN, TOPMARGIN, and BANNER tags. While these are no doubt useful tags, a large portion of the browsers now in use can't utilize them (they are MSIE-specific tags), so you should never depend on these or other such tags. Stick with HTML standards. Make sure your code says what you want, i.e., something like:


<BODY background="/old?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwebdeveloper.com%2Fdrweb%2Fbkgegypt.gif&y=1999">

right at the beginning of the file (after the /HEAD tag). It will work with any browser.

Slow-Loading Graphics

Dear Dr. Website®: I have noticed that on certain Web sites the graphics will not appear until after loading, regardless of the browser's settings. I am currently developing several sites, a few of which suffer from this problem. What exactly is the cause of this, and is there any way to force the graphics to appear while loading?

Take a look at the pages where you noticed the problem. Are the graphics contained in tables, most likely tables with both text and other graphics? It's a good chance they are, and usually, graphics within tables (and text, for that matter) only appear when the whole table is finished loading. Make the table smaller by breaking it down into several small tables stacked on top of one another.

Another possible cause of this can come from users setting their browsers to display graphics only after the graphic is done downloading. This is purely a user preference, and there is nothing you can do programmatically to change it.

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