Question about fonts, and hosting...

[mjs1973]

I'm still in the process of building my site, but I have a few questions.

Font Question: When I built my site, I have the name of my future photo business, Magic Light Photography, at the top of the page. I built it using DreamweaverMX and I set the title using the font Fastrac Fasion. I love the way it looks on my system, but whenever I view my site from a different system the font changes. I'm no font expert, but it looks like Times New Roman to me. I'm assuming that this is the result of not having the font Fastrac Fasion loaded on the system that I'm veiwing the website on and it's reverting to a default font. Is this true, and if so, is there a way to change it so the text shows up as Fastrac Fasion no matter what system I'm viewing my page on?

Hosting Question: I currently have a limited amount of web space thru my ISP. If I were to get a web domain name from someone like Godaddy.com, could I use the space I have now, with my domain name? Could I leave my site right where it is, and just have the new name go right to it?

[Peter_AUS]

First the font issue.

Yes you will have this problem all the time, as the font isn't available on the computer that is viewing your webpage, so it drops back to something a bit basic that is thinks is close, a fall back plan. If you specially want to use the font, design the image in say photoshop using the font of your choice an then place the image there, everyone will then be able to see the image font as you want it to be.

With the hosting, it depends on your ISP and if they will give you the address needed by Godaddy to point to your website where it is hosted in the name servers of Godaddy.

[mjs1973]

Thanks for the info Peter!

Another question for you. I went back and reread all the advice that everyone gave me about my site when I posted it a while back. One of the comments I got was that none of my pages had titles. They all said Untitled Document in the little button at the bottom of the screen. I went back to every .html page in Dreamweaver, and put a title in the Title: box at the top of the page. (I'm designing in Show Design View mode because I don't know anything about writing code.) When I go to my site, everything still says Untitled Document. How do I get the name of the page to show up in the little button at the bottom of my screen?

[Peter_AUS]

Michael is this still the link to your site. http://webpages.charter.net/mjs1973/

If so I notice you are still using frames which is probably a cause of some of the problems.

With frames, when someone googles you, you might find they pick up one of the frame names pages only and not the others. There is a setting that can be put on each frame to force the page to load the other frames correctly, not that that is your question is it.

When in Dreamweaver and have the index.html page open, you have all the frames showing. If you select view/visual aids/frames, you should see the frames borders. If you select them so they are all seclected, you will then notice that the title name is Untitled in the little box you are refering to. YES

I really would, and have suggested previously that you change your thinking with frames, it is old hat, is complicated when dealing with these sorts of title issues and can become quite frankly "A Pain in the Rear End".

You are better off using layers and placing the information where you want on the page and then having that as your template and design new pages based on the template. That way when you want to make a change you can change the template and apply it to all the pages that are associated with the template.

Also you need to keep consistency with the page name extensions. Your index page has html and the others have htm. You can change this default in the file C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX 2004\Configuration\DocumentTypes\MMDocumentTypes.x ml

There you will see
{ <documenttype id="HTML" internaltype="HTML" winfileextension="html,htm,shtml,shtm,stm,tpl,lasso,xhtml" }
without the curly brackets and make sure the html is before the htm as shown here, I have changed it on mine.

[Peter_AUS]

Where did you get the Fastrac Fasion font from, I don't know what it looks like to see how it looks on your site.

[mjs1973]

Thanks again for all the info Peter. Yes, that is still the link to my site, and yes, it's still in frames. It's only a temp site, and I have every intention of rebuilding the entire site without the frames when time permits. I want to change the galleries and who knows what else... I have had a couple people ask me about weddings so I wanted to get the info. out there for them so I just updated this temp site with the info they wanted.

Yes, when I select all the frame borders, the title box says Untitled Document.

I found the Fastrac Fasion font in the font list in Dreamweaver. Here is a screen shot of my home page with the font showing correctly. I originally had my name centered below Magic Light Photography, but it was always cut off. I'm guessing that is another frames issue. Perhaps the top frame wasn't large enuf. Redesigning the sight using layers will solve that problem as well.

Thanks again for all your help and the great info you have provided Peter. When time permits, the frames will be gone!

[mjs1973]

Is there a way to create layers right in Dreamweaver? Or should I be making these design elements in PS and adding them to my Dremweaver template?

I also have Adobe GoLive CS2 if that would be easier to use... I have never used it, but I'm willing to learn.

[Peter_AUS]

With your heading banner do that in photoshop and save it as a jpg then you can place it in the webpage, just make sure you make it the size you want.

The font isn't part of Dreamweaver that I can see in my system. Could you send me a copy of the font, it is in the windows\system32\font directory as I would like to see it close up other than in a screen shot like you have posted. You must have gotten it from so other program that is installed on your computer. I had a look for the font today my time, sort of found it, but couldn't get hold of the actual font.

Once you start using the real design features of Dreamweaver you will soon see why not to use frames. I understand the time frame (no pun intenteded) involved for getting a site up and running as well.

[steelerdirtfreak]

The font isn't part of Dreamweaver that I can see in my system. Could you send me a copy of the font, it is in the windows\system32\font directory as I would like to see it close up other than in a screen shot like you have posted. You must have gotten it from so other program that is installed on your computer. I had a look for the font today my time, sort of found it, but couldn't get hold of the actual font.

I don't know if you are still looking for this font, but I found it here; except it is called Fastrac Fashion.

Sorry if this is irrelevant now.

[Peter_AUS]

Thanks Paul, he actually sent it to me, but others might be interested. Nothing is ever irrelevant.

[Asylum Steve]

Michael,

You can embed a given font in your web page or site, so that the entire font loads on a viewer's browser cache when they load the page, and any font tags you place on text are then viewed in that font.

Here's a link to one of many online tutorials explaining it:

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...tutorial2.html

Loading the font onto a viewer's web browser takes about the same amount of time as an average graphic image, and it is removed once the browser's cache is deleted. From what I understand (have never tried it myself), this is also something that isn't supported by all browsers, so it's probably a roll of the dice at best...

But I certainly agree with the advice already given here: IMO it is much better to create a graphic to get an unusual or unique text font.

Fonts versus graphic files used to be a very big issue when everyone (or most everyone) was on dial-up modems. Back then, the difference in page loading time between the two was significant, and replacing a page of graphic text with font text would make it load much faster.

With broadband modems, however, graphic images load so fast, the design control of graphic text far outweighs any technical or viewing liabilities from file size...

The best thing about using graphic text is that you can apply any of hundreds of photoshop filter effects and styles to the design as well as completely incorporate the text into bg artwork, something that is tricky if not impossible with font text...

BTW, if you happen to pick up any non-standard fonts in your web travels (and you like them), it's a very good idea to save the fonts files to disc and keep them as an archive. They may not always be readily available if you need to find them again.

I use so many different fonts culled from different sources that I now have about five or six CDroms in my library. When I do a clean install, I simply reload them much like any other software...

[mjs1973]

Thanks for the input Steve!