The Comedian Zone

This is my last project before I head for the army. Just to record down how this site is born...

Designing A Site Without Tables, Possible?
I first heard about designing web pages totally without tables during Year 2 of the Poly, but I have zero interest in it. What's the point? Yes, tables was not "meant" for alignment and presentation of web elements (Its original intend was soley to present table) but it was "abused" and gradually designing pages using tables became a "standard practice" for web developers. Further-more, web modules taught us to use tables as well, so there's no point to learn this new thing.

First exposure to CSS Positioning
It wasn't until like 2 months ago when I wanted to do some updates for this site and had to edit the source template. Total stun -_-...not a single table tag. Everything is using CSS Positioning. I tried to edit it because I wanted to add some new columns for the site but I realize I don't even know how to do that without the whole thing messing up, or text starting to overlap one another.

Later on, I went to the library and picked up some books on CSS Positioning, and that's when I come across "CSS Zen Garden" (www.csszengarden.com). It's a super pro site and you wouldn't believe it until you see it yourself. There were hundreds of different site designs, but they all used the SAME EXACT html page. Only the CSS file is different, and they can create such amazing and unique layouts. That's when I made up my mind to learn CSS-positioning.

Motivation to create a new site
Originally I create the byethost site because I try out the phpBB open source forum (introduce to me by my intern mate Nizam). Was successful and later on, I used that site as a practice site for me to learn CSS Positioning. Basically at the start I was taking S.H.E avatar and layering them one upon another. Haha. Doing only very basic stuff without learning much.

The idea came when I visited gamefaqs one day and saw this massive thread (300+ posts) containing lots and lots of jokes. So, ????, why not just take this chance to design a new site completely from scratch. I can apply and see how much I've learnt about CSS Positioning and also revise my PHP.

Re-learning Server Side Programming
Making this site made me discover something - IWED has taught me nuts about PHP. When I was doing that module, everything was just made through the Dreamweaver interface. It's not that Dreamweaver is a bad thing but you just can't learn much with it doing everything for you. I also realized what Dreamweaver can do is extremely limited. In the end I have to dig in the PHP code myself to get the results I want, and I realized I can't even do simple things like combining strings.

The Comedian Zone Birth
So basically, in order to not let those wonderful jokes fade out of existance with the passing of time, I have store and uploaded them into the database~Very good experience and I finally realize how cool CSS Positioning is. I dont' think I will ever want to go back to tables after making this site. Using CSS simply gives more control, is much more neater than chunk of table codes, and is faster as well. The only problem is that it is not supported by IE6. (Blame on Microsoft because Netscape, Opera and Firefox have incuded support for CSS2 long ago)