Optimizing for FF

[Lana]

Anybody know what I have to do to get my site to work properly in FF?
The navigation bars are a mess, top and bottom. Especially on pages 2 and 3.
I've tinkered but I realy am unsure how to fix this without affecting IE which is working fine.
I noticed the other thread started by Hammer about the suprising numbers of surfers coming from FF and I don't want to loose them due to shoddy design.

Thanks guys.

[balls_deep]

your join and what's inside are underlining due to a <u> tag

i'm having a bit of trouble following your bottom menu code, try moving the bg color to a different tag. It looks like you might be coloring the wrong table.

can you isolate just that bottom menu code and post it?

what are the exact issues you are wondering about?

[Lana]

The BG colour doesn't show on any bars except for the top one on the "tour1" page. I'm no coder, but I've moved the BG colour around but no luck. I'll tinker some more.

I just noticed the Flash video on the "tour1" page also doesn't work now.

[balls_deep]

video is working fine for me, I must say i had to watch the entire preview.

the menu at the bottom should be a very simple table structure. maybe you have an open tag. I'd open a blank html page and re-create the menu, then write over your existing code and see if it fixes it. I'm not sure if it's going to be that easy for you though since you have some java elements.

i'd just use a simple table structure like this

<table border="0" width="768" id="menu" bgcolor="#F99999">
<tr>
<td>
<center>item1</center></td>
<td>
<center>item2</center></td>
<td>
<center>item3</center></td>
<td>
<center>item4</center></td>
<td>
<center>item5</center></td>
<td>
<center>item6</center></td>
</tr>
</table>

[Hammer]

Maybe you've already fixed it but it looks ok to me.

[mynameisjim]

I noticed a difference between IE and FF but it doesn't look bad in FF, just a few things missing but I would have never known if I didn't open it in IE.

[Lana]

Maybe it doesn't look bad, but I still know it's there.
Basically what's happening is the BG colour for the navigation bar table (#F99999) is not showing up on the bottom of page 1 and the top and bottom of page 2 and 3.
The BG colour for those bars is the table underneath which makes it look like there isn't even a bar at the bottom.
That's probably why you're saying it doesn't look bad - you don't know it's there. You can barely see it.
Also those links turn red on roll-over in IE.

Well ... back to the drawing board.

[Hammer]

No offense, but the tour looks very good now and I think instead of constantly tweaking and being anal about it, you should spend time finding ways to get traffic to the site.

I'll take a look at the code but I have your site open in IE and FF side by side and the only difference I see is the missing background color in the bar at the bottom.

p.s. All that hidden keyword text at the bottom is a good way to get banned on the SEs.

[balls_deep]

Originally posted by Hammer
p.s. All that hidden keyword text at the bottom is a good way to get banned on the SEs.

thanks for the hint

lana, if i wanted a membership the ghost bar at the bottom wouldn't stop me from signing up.

your tour looks great and i'm with hammer, don't waste time on the bottom of your page when it looks decent already.

The bar at the bottom is an easy fix, but if you can't decipher code then it may prove more work than its worth.

[mynameisjim]

I'm a nonconformist but I have to jump on the bandwagon here. Unless you can fix it relatively quickly I would forget about it.

I know when it is your own site these things jump out at you and keep you up at night but from a surfers point of view it will have no effect.

How long has that hidden text been there?

[upallnite]

Lana
easy fix
You are missing the # in the color tag
see here
bgcolor="f99999">
should be
bgcolor="#f99999">

Chances are the other things you are seeing are of the same sorts.

One thing, you should add
title tags to your links.
<a title="Lana in see thru bra and panties" href="SOME-Page">Bra and Panties</a>
or something as such.............

Also use both title and alt tags on images........

And hopefuly that hidden text hasn't gotten you banned from any SE's yet !

Fill up the title and alt tags with it.....

[Lana]

Ok guys ... point taken, no more sweating the small stuff and work on getting the traffic up. I'm a Virgo - a perfectionist

p.s. All that hidden keyword text at the bottom is a good way to get banned on the SEs.

How long has that hidden text been there?

Since I started the site almost 2 years ago.
I've been quite happy with my ranking on all the search engines.
I've you search the obvious words and phrases that would have relevance to the site you'll see I do pretty good. Of course, I'm not seeing the searches where I don't do good.
I think it was a Google optimisation test or something I tried out a while ago and it said all was OK. You submit your site and it goes through all the tags and whatever, but again it said OK.

But BANNED?!? THANKS HAMMER - Now you've given me something new to worry about! I can now leave the design worry behind and move on to a fresh new SE worry. If I leave the text I might get banned. If I remove it I might loose my present rankings that I'm quite happy with.

Kidding - thanks for the good words though boys

[Lana]

Upallnite, your one awsome dude
You fixed the problem - THANKS

Sorry, now more questions ... How do I add title tags.
I see an alt tag box in Dreamweaver but no title tag box.
Do I have to hand code a title tag right into the html
Before we go any further maybe this thread should be moved to the newbie section - I'm now getting embarrassed.
What do alt and title tags do? I thought alt tags were for the visually impaired. And what do title tags do?
Are they for SE only or other things too.
To be honest, these are things I've always wanted to know but been too afraid to ask
Sorry guys, I know this is really basic stuff but I just don't know.

[Hammer]

I looked over the code last night but Upallnite beat me to the answer.

If you've had that hidden text there for 2 years without getting in trouble then I'd be tempted to say just leave it. But, if you read Google's TOS, it's a definite no no.

The title tags that UAN suggested are simple enough to add. He's just saying to add a 'title' to each of your links, like his example.

Like so:

<a title="white satin robe" href="http://www.lanaslingerietease.com/bu/robe.htm"><img src="images/buttons/pic.gif" width="200" height="90" border="0" alt="white satin robe" /></a>

I'm surprised Dreamweaver doesn't have a title field, but mine makes it very simple to add titles and alt tags with fields I simply fill in.

Even more important than that though would be a better naming system for your links and image.

In the above example it would be better to give a more descriptive name to the jpg image, like white-satin-robe.jpg instead of pic.gif. I would also name the page the pic is on something like white-satin-robe.html instead of robe.html.

Keep your keywords in mind every time you name an image or an html page.

[mynameisjim]

If that hidden text has been there for 2 years I would say leave it. If you are ranking well then it is either working and not triggering a penalty or the algo has already discounted it.

On new pages I would leave it out.

That hidden text is a huge percentage of your total text on those pages so if you remove it I think you would lose rank.

[Lana]

Thanks Hammer - Jim
I'll get to work renaming pics and links.
I think I''ll just leave the text for now and hope it doesn't blow up in my face.

[DosTwo]

Disclaimer: This is my geek humor .. really dont need it in your situation since itll look like spam either way.

To be safe go ahead and make an image that includes all that text and write some css like:

#bottomtext{
margin:0;
padding:0;
widthf image;
heightf image;
background:url("/path/cooltext.gif") top left no-repeat;
}

#bottomtext p{
display:none
}

Then on page code

<div id="bottomtext><p>all your cool hidden text</p></div>

and then wala......

The hidden text will only really be a problem on a hand band unless your really obvious about it but with the technique above you can just argue that you did it for a the blind... screen readers need love too.

Honestly though. I use this alot when my designers get all pretty with their images... if they go too crazy with em... just pull this and you feed the SE's with some content they can index.

[Lana]

Darling ... Are you talking to me???
I'm still getting my head around what title and alt tags do.