nel.250free.com/School/sample.htm

This is my high school website that my frend and i are designing.Its just the header and the nav but take a look at the coding and the css and tell me if everything looks ok. Ill keep updateing it and post it up on this thread. Here is the actual school page that is on the internet right now It stinks. I just helped with the coding last year when i knew nothing about css.

The coding for the site is fine for a few years ago, however it uses many tables for layout and should be revised using css I think, especially a school website - it needs to be accessible and tables prevent this in some circumstances. Try stripping all the tables out and see how it looks and the things out of place use css to reposition

Well unfortunatly at my school we have our "web mastering" class that does the web site. And unfortunatly CSS is not in the curriculm so i had to take the iniciative and take a week to teach what i knew about CSS but we have to use table for the beginners to use and to imput info easier and not really have to worry about div tags and what order there in. You have to think that these are people who prolly dont even know how to make their own myspace layout they just use premade ones and imput it in thier myspace. So you have to think about the people that dont understand what a tag is and all that.

Pretty typical of most schools. Takes forever to change to the latest stuff.

However, this is an easy solution. You create a css version alongside the tables version. When the site is done, you can then take the class through the differences between the CSS and table versions. It will be far easier to demonstrate things with both examples of the same information.

I do find it funny though how you claim to keep it simple for beginners yet you have javascript for the menus and some animation going on. CSS if far easier to learn then javascript, that is unless they were taught how to cut and paste pre-made scripts. Of course, the same copy paste approach can apply to CSS as well.

i would critique... but it says page not found!

The java for the menus are done as pop ups in fireworks so its something that is simple. The whole banner was made in fireworks by our teacher and me and a friend of mine made the flash animation thats there at the front. But what i looked at for the new sample page is a png from photoshop that a student made and im just making it into a CSS/Html page.

The only thing that bugs me is the header. It looks like a poster for a scary movie.

Oh, and don't change my cursor to crosshairs!

Erm, did you ever consider using a ready made content management system if you want to keep it simple for beginners to input things? :P They even come with a funky wysiwyg html editing thing these days too, and is fine for experimenting with while keeping the layout of the site intact. I personally like Website Baker because it's so easy to customize.

Tables shouldn't even appear in a web mastering curriculum these days although I was also subjected to this in my university web class 2 years ago. I ended up fighting with the teacher who thought he knew best but hadn't updated his lecturing material for years.

im sorry to say that there current website is still better than your attempt. Try andrews suggestion of a simple CMS...