go live - website resized itself?

Help!

[tryasimight]

hi all you experts.could you help a desperate self taught novice. I am using go live and created a pretty omplicated website that was doing very well for two years. Then one day , it resized itself, about 3 times larger on the browser. I have not a clue on how to fix it.Any suggestions?

[jbinbpt]

Welcome to Webmaster World.....

Just some ideas......

Check from a different machine?

Just the text or text and images both bigger?

Does the local saved version also display larger?

jb

[tryasimight]

thank you so much for responding......I checked on several other computers and the website is three times the size that it should be on the pc computers. Only on a mac was the web site okay although it "seemed" smaller than it should. I created the web site on a pc and when i downloaded the site it too was too large. I should mention that my problem started when i lost all my originally files to the website when I had to format my hard drive due to a virus and only had the files that I could download from the site too start over.

[jbinbpt]

It sounds like there is an missing piece somewhere, but I don't know what it might be other than a css file.

Do you have any special fonts specified?

Have you tried to upload a new file and is that also affected?

Attempting to reconstruct can be a real pain and errors can creep into it.

[tryasimight]

hi and again thank you for your time. I am going to learn all i can about external css files because so far that has been the most reasonable reason from what i am reading so far. i will let you know how it goes. thanks for pointing me in some kind of direction.abk

[tryasimight]

no, now i know enough to know it is not a css, external or otherwise. It is still a big mystery. One last question? can you resize an entire website using an external css? thanks abk

[tedster]

That is a possibility, if every page calls the same .css file, and that file has rules that force a width change for some element.

I think you should take one page and pull it's code apart until you understand exactly what factor is creating the new size. The conversation as it is going is just too general to locate the problem.

I'd suggest you start by validating the HTML with the W3C [validator.w3.org] -- this might be as simple as messed up table tags.

If you only use GoLive and do not get into the HTML on your own, then this a good reason to choose this moment to move a bit beyond WYSIWYG editing.

One last thought. You haven't mentioned whether this effect is seen just on your machine, or on others as well. If it's just yours, perhpas you re-set the system fonts to a larger size after your re-format.

[tryasimight]

i want to thank you for your time and patience. There is a lesson here and this is it... When you reach the age of fifty and beyond, the eyes start going and denial sets in. you were right! i refused to see that on re-formating I had changed the settings because the fonts were really too small for me to see. It was absolute and total DENIAL! the answer was right in my face and i refused to see it, until you prompted me to really LOOK! I see now the answer was so simple, but i was literally "up to close" to see it. SO THANK YOU. i am profoundly grateful, mortified at my own ignorance and i hope you don't feel like i wasted your time. i am a self taught "older geek" who ten years ago did not know the difference between hardware and software!I guess my learning curve hits glitches every once in awhile! abk

[tedster]

Ah Ha! And now for your next challenge - creating a website that has a nice layout no matter what size the user's fonts are set for.

[tryasimight]

i am a very good and dilligent student. could you point me in the right direction with a key word? abk

[MatthewHSE]

Here are a few key phrases you could search for information about:

Fluid layout (or liquid layout)
Accessibility
CSS
CSS Positioning
Percentage widths
Fixed widths

That may not be a complete list, but it's all the applicable concepts I could think of right off the top of my head. Fluid layout is the way to go these days, and you'll find CSS Positioning quite valuable as well.

Also, if you're going to start creating fluid layouts, you probably will want to leave Go Live behind and work in a plain old text editor. I have found EditPad Pro the best, $39.95 for a license, or a freeware version for personal/non-profit use. Building sites in plain text is much more flexible and gives a lot more control, and also allows for clean, lean markup. Besides that, it will be faster to build webpages in text once you get used to it.

[tryasimight]

okay, here i go......fluid layouts ..... go live allows you to do all the work in its text editor although i really don't think at this stage in my life I can learn all that i need to learn to do that. but, hey, you never know. you are all great! thank you all so much. abk STAY TUNED