It was thus said that the Great Peter da Silva once stated:
> > You'll then notice that the "Obligatory Picture" is now below the Amazon ads
> > (which themselves have shifted down) on the right hand side. I did not use
> > floats for either style, nor did I play with layers. Granted, it took some
> > playing around with but since I don't really *care* for IE compatibility
> > it's not all that hateful (just some).
>
> That doesn't look like you're using grid layout to me. It looks like
> you're using packing layout, which is a fine tool for simple layouts but
> it's not very flexible and it requires a lot more playing around and it's
> all but impossible to do a flexible auto-resizing layout that allows stuff
> like aligned multi-columns above and below a spanned column... which is
> trivial with grid layout.
And it still sounds like you'll be using a ton of <DIV>s to replace <TR>s
and <TD>s. And if I understand you right, you want something like:
<DIV> <DIV> <DIV> <DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV> <DIV> <DIV>
I can see how it could be done using fixed position <DIV>s with relative
left and right margins being specified, but I'd have to try it out. But I
never liked using grids for layout [1] myself.
> And... are you sure you didn't use floats?
>
> | DIV.sidebar
> | {
> | vertical-align: text-top;
> | float: right;
> | width: 20em; /*30%;*/ /*auto;*/
> | margin: 0 1em 0 .5em;
> | border: 1px solid black;
> | padding: 0;
> | background-color: #CCCCFF;
> | color: #000000;
> | }
Yes, I do use floats, but not for the main layout you see (check the
current page [3] for any <DIV CLASS="sidebar"> ... you won't find any). The
above <DIV> is used for presenting some aside information within a given
blog entry and not for the primary layout of the page, such as
http://boston.conman.org/2006/06/22.1
with the "Obligatory Keyboard Rant" in a <DIV CLASS="sidebar">.
> I used to find myself on the defensive with this back before Tk had the
> ability to use grid layout, and I had to admit that getting certain
> effects in Tk before the grid layout engine was created was way too
> complex.
Well, one can always use absolutely positioned <DIV>s ...
-spc (Although at times I think the W3 CSS working team is smoking
crack for what they give us ... )
[1] Way back in 1996, I was tasked with writing a Java Applet [2] for a
web company. None of the existing layout managers (which included
a "grid layout" did what I wanted, so I wrote my own layout manager.
I never did like how the "grid layout" manager worked. I suspect
I was the *only* person to ever write a custom layout manager for
Java applets.
[2] http://www.conman.org/people/spc/refs/search/search.hp1.html
[3] http://boston.conman.org/
