travisc

What Amadeus platform are you working with? I might be able to point you at something that helps.

You're dealing with a few factors here -- browser differneces, user monitor resolutions, operating system quirks, installed font sets, and possible end-user css overrides. You can't control all of these things, so you have to control what you can. A couple of tips that many experienced web-commerce coders follow -- if you're going to absolute-position everything, design for 800x600. Unless your target market is hardcore geeks, 70% of web shoppers still use 800x600. use external css. Not only does it push you to think in a big-picture sort of way, it makes later site updates/changes easier to implement. test it! Opera, Firefox, and IE are all free. We test, in-house, every site we code in the two most recent versions of each of those three browsers, plus safari and konqueror. We run tests from Windows XP, 2000, Mac os X and 9., and two linux systems. We test at resolutions from 800x600 up to 1600x1200 (except for handhend apps of course.) Know what your customers will encounter before they do. Use a HTML and CSS validator. I like the W3 validators myself. Learn. There are many good css sites out there. After you have a foundation down, find sites you like, and view their source code and css files, you can pick up some good tricks.

If they are following standards, their bot will check a file in your root called "robots.txt" add the following lines to that... User-agent: LinkWalker Disallow: / If that fails, shoult, and we'll work up a htaccess based trap routine for it

Sorry guys, I wasn't clear -- when I said... "I'm searching for a new host right now, because we are developing our new apps in ruby, and it's really irritating to deal with companies which don't know the meaning of "customer service."" I was referring to the new hosting companies I'm checking out, not TCH. It's irritating that I have to switch to a company that doesn't offer real customer service, after having such a positive experience with customer service at TCH.

Been using TCH for over a year for a number of business and personal sites, and overall, they are great. Solid uptime and speeds, easy configuration options, and a very responsive helpdesk. Both times I have asked a question of the help desk, the reply was swift and accurate. The downside is that the company is a bit too conservative with upgrades. If you need current technologies, you'll have to go elsewhere. Staff members are adamant that they will not be adding the Ruby on Rails platform, despite it's widening acceptance in the development world. Worse, they have dragged their feet on moving to PHP 5, instead settling on a stop-gap version of 4.4. The given rationale for this was that they are afraid of breaking customers scripts, but many have been broken in this upgrade anyway, and some of those will again be broken when they do finally move to 5.0, and the increased functionality and security it brings. The only other place TCH falls short is a customer service issue, which is odd because great customer service is what really sets them apart from other hosts. Staff members become irritated and aggressive when asked about moving forward with current stable technologies, insisting that their customers just don't want that. Other than the upgrade issues, TCH is a great choice for a host. I personally find it rewarding to see a company that really seems to be just a bunch of nice guys doing their thing succeed, and growing steadily. I'm searching for a new host right now, because we are developing our new apps in ruby, and it's really irritating to deal with companies which don't know the meaning of "customer service."