A mess with Frontpage tables . . .

[kargrafx]

I am being asked to fix someone else's work, and I have spent many hours now with this headache. They have used Frontpage and some other editor to put this together, then dumped the project mid-stream. I tried to pitch a whole new approach to the site, but the owners want to go with this setup. The page in question is online at http://www.hfmoj.com/gunnpoint.html. The problems are a multitude, but the main few are thus;

A) The left-hand image and text should be offset to the left of the titlebar, with the titlebar's left-most edge about the center of the picture. As it is, they are more or less evenly left aligned, and Frontpage won't let me fix that, but keeps shunting them together.
B) The entire page should scale with resolution, never causing a scrollbar on the bottom of the browser (I always forget which is 'vert' and which is 'horz') - scrolling down is okay.
C) It was very poorly written, and I am apparently not a good enough designer to fix it!

I am not asking anyone to re-write this for me (though I won't refuse such help if offerred) - but I would appreciate pointers on how to fix the code, and how to clean it up. It has to remain front-page friendly, by client demand. Otherwise, I can do anything I want to fix the code.

Thanks for anything you may be able to help me with!

[edit] sorry, the hyperlink grabbed the period at the end of the sentence and wasn't working. I fixed it now.

[bcarl314]

If you must use a WYSIWYG editor, tell the client (or recommend) they use Macromedia dreamweaver. It has much better XHTML support than FrontPage.

If they don't like the $300 + price tag, tell them you can develope it in DW and they can use contribute to edit content which is only $99.

Either way, I'd strongly suggest getting them away from M$ anyway possible. I once had a client who created their web pages in word. I'm not going to say any more, but I basically showed them how the site looking in Netscape and said "I can clean it up, but you can't use Word" and recommented DW / contribute combo.

Just an idea

[kargrafx]

I personally have used Frontpage and Dreamweaver both, and have little preference for one over the other. I am often forced to use a WYSIWYG editor to help design, as my hands don't let me type as much as they used to. However, for a page like this, I would much prefer to code ity by hand, and take the time / suffer the pain. I already tried to convince the client, but it is not them; but their host which is requiring frontpage.

I even called the host, and spoke with them about the whys of it, and tried to explain how it is crap because they are only allowing frontpage for this new site...however they were unflexible. I then tried to offer finding another host to the client, but this one is being provided more or less free to them, so I am stuck.

Thanks for the advice, but in this case I have nmo option but to try and sort this out with M$, or drop the project altogether.