After the euphoria of Chelsea's win, I've finally got back to working on my site.
I've updated about a third of the pages into the new look. Still keeping it clean. The main change is the addition of a central "block" of colour for the text area. This stops the text spreading across the page as much as it did before. I've also reduced the font size (and am making it more consistent across different pages).
I'm using tables to do this, which is where Opera comes into its own. I'm aware that tables can cause problems in terms of accessibility, but I'm now testing pages in 'author mode' with tables disabled to check that they read ok. I'm generally using a single table to wrap the text, so that there's very little bloat in the code. I've also removed more of the underlined links (may have mentioned this before). All pages are tested in Opera, IE6, Netscape (7.1 and 4.7) and Mozilla. Looks best in Opera (natch). Mozilla is slightly more demanding code-wise. IE takes anything (including rubbish).
Picked up a copy of something called NetFusion ( a web design package). It comes with my hosting package and looks pretty good (if complex). But at least I got a manual with it. I'm thinking about seeing what it can offer (apart from a zillion pre-prepared templates).
Off now to read the papers to see what naughty-boy Beckham's been up to. Need to keep up with the news if the rumours that he'll leave Real Madrid are true. Chelsea are probably the only team that could afford to buy him… but do we need yet another mid-fielder (we've 16 already). But at least he can score from freekicks (we've haven't scored direct from any this year…. oh for Zola). And he takes a good corner. Is it enough? Probably. I can see Abramovich wanting to buy him.
More later.