It's the height aspect that's the bugger. One way to achieve this may be to use a CSS background image to force a minimum height. Make if a few bytes 2-colour (transparent) gif. Then explain to the client that Tolstoy is a great read if you've got the time and impose a maximum character limit which will likely not exceed box height. This way you can retain control of a max box height. If you can do that, you're home and dry.
Alternatively, it may be possible to use a bit of back-end sniffing before the page proper is served if, as you say, you're going for a database driven site. I use ASP (simply because I've got years of VBA under my belt) but you can use PHP (or another) to deliver the pages. The idea being you parse the associated product description string character length then base the size on a look-up table that describes a minimum height (and width if you're going fully elastic -- which I'd advise against, unless it be to permit variable product columns whilst maintaining strict box width) requirement. It'll still be a best guess because there's no accounting for word length or wrap. I was trying to figure a dynamic solution which displayed a dummy or hidden page that would permit interrogation of the DOM tree, find the max height of the various product boxes then go back and serve up the page proper to that height, knowing each product box will be of identical height. Then I re-entered normal space and though How? The trouble, I believe, is there are too many unknowns which creep in when you let those horrible client-type-things free to muck up the design ;o). There has to be a simple solution and I'm convinced it's along the lines of determining the max box height then serving all to suit by adjusting the vertical image height of a bg gif. Mike Pepper Accessible Web Developer www.seowebsitepromotion.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Bert Doorn Sent: 18 May 2004 15:07 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [WSG] Tables are dead? Thanks for all the help, people. Unfortunately none of the examples given solve the basic problem, which is that with anything other than tables, I cannot get multiple boxes across the screen that have the same height on every row, without specifying a fixed height. Mike's example (http://www.english-sofas.co.uk/contemporary_leather_sofas_0.htm) is nice and clean but it won't work in my case - the boxes do not have a predictable amount of text (can be one, two or many lines). Patrick's example that basically turns the table on its side (http://www.splintered.co.uk/experiments/details?id=36) is clever, but has the same problem (and will only work for a small portion of visitors). (But thanks for the tip - when viewed this way, it's quite obvious that I am in fact dealing with tabular data) I'll stick with a table but will try to cut out the empty "spacer" cells. Hmmm -- Bert Doorn, Better Web Design www.betterwebdesign.com.au Fast-loading, user-friendly websites ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ***************************************************** ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
