[WSG] Clearing issue and IE7 weirdness
Hello, I have just been given the task of cloning an old website into our CMS and have bumped into a couple of oddities that I hope folk can help with. Looking at: http://halfinch.net/content.cfm/MDM+and+ES/General+Information/Other+System+Spur+Gears+-+Modified+for+meccano+-+Part+1 shows a page with no content in it yet but the left-hand menu pushes down below the footer which has a clear:both on it. Can someone tell what obvious bit I am missing? Second question is: why does IE7 put an empty scroll bar on the right when the content is nowhere near filling the screen vertically? -- Yours, Kym Kovan mbcomms.net.au *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Clearing issue and IE7 weirdness
Henrik Madsen wrote: For what it's worth, homepage all good on Mac browsers x4. Good and thanks for checking, our Mac is currently on holiday :-) Try floating both your lh and rh cols, in which case the 'clear' of the footer should work. Thanks for this info, and the same for the others that answered. I had thought that a clear would work on any float above it, now I know better. (and if applying margin/padding, don't forget display:inline (for IE6)). It looks fine on IE6 now, and I did not need the display:inline, maybe because I did not float the RH column, that gave other issues in column width, like there wasn't any! I used a wrapping div that was floated as per Per Allan Johansson's suggestion, that gave the clear and left the RH column the proper width. Suggestion: I don't think you don't need... div class=NavContainer div id=LHnav class=nav Those divs come out of the navigation generating engine in the CMS, not from my template code. Sometimes you need them, but not in this case so they are a bit redundant. -- Yours, Kym Kovan mbcomms.net.au *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] liquid 2-3 column layout
Hi Grant, you wrote: Hi, I'd like to make a site with the option of 2 or 3 columns. The Nav column (left)and content column (centre) would always be present. The news column on the right would be optional. ___ || || || || | Nav |Content | News | || || || || ---| Does anyone on the list know of a way to make the Content fill the whole space of content and nav when nav is not present? Skidoo Too is exactly what you want, the right column can be flipped out with an extra bit of stylesheet, demos at the URL. http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/skidoo_too/ We've used it many times, good code and no strings :-) Kym K ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Web standards as a selling point?
Rimantas Liubertas wrote: On 4/22/05, Stevio [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... Using tables for layout is also a fairly intuitive thing, so using them was not a problem for people making web sites. ... Yes, that indeed was the case. Now web is getting mature, so we have to make sites that are easy to USE (and access), not easy to make. You make a good point but you join two things together there that are not automatically connected. Easy to use - yes, what we all want Easy to Access - yes, again but not relevant to the above point. I have seen many to many sites that have had the most horrendously complex div ... layouts to get the layout that they want that the accessibility has deteriorated to a great degree, just as bad as nested tables. To my mind the object of a site being accessible is that facilities exist for screen-readers and the like to get to content/navigation/whatever as easily as the visual user does. An example is the problem of 3 column layouts, frequently a demand of the client but hard to implement in current css across all browsers. A simple table does that layout in one set of tags compared to several layers in a pure css driven design. That has to be more accessible, surely. What I mull over is the blurring between web standards and accessibility. They are different requirements and often compete. We run an Internet Hosting Provider, a small, specialist firm that provides hosting to mainly commercial entities that make their living out of their websites. In general their main interest is getting their websites available to the largest possible audience, simply that. For them a layout that has one table of 3 columns rather than about 5 divs is better simply because it is less hassle for those last few percent of users that could be clients, and they could have as much revenue potential as any other client.. -- yours, Kym K ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Which editors do you guys recommend?
Hi Mike, You just saved me a heap of typing :-) Its Ditto to for me, plus a bit: ULtraEdit has to be one of the best text editors about DreamWeaver when doing designy type stuff HomeSite+ for pounding out code (my main task in life g) TopStyle for the CSS And responding to Dante's comment, both Dreamweaver and Homesite have the tag-completion you mentioned, and don't like, as well as the tag attribute hint functions that Mike mentioned and in both cases you can turn it off :-) -- Yours, Kym * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Standards Compliance -vs- User Enjoyment
Hi Kay, http://news.awn.com/index.php?newsitem_no=4149 Is the site no longer up? I can see it, and had a good giggle :-) -- Yours, Kym * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
RE: [WSG]
Hi all, I've seen words to this affect quoted several times recently: Tables are for tabular data only, and I agree with that philosophically but what is tabular data? To me the third option from Chris: I would like to see a third version that uses a combination of the two, the best of each method merged.. The Hybrid Approach. is very legitimate. There was a discussion recently where making a 3 column page using a bare table to create the 3 columns was suggested as 3 column layouts that are truly functional across all browsers is very hard to do, and that suggestion was decried by some as not fitting the webstandards morality. I feel that 3 columns of content _is_ tabular and as such is ethically tolerable. Widening the scope of the topic a bit I also ponder the complex use of CSS to create workable layouts across all browsers, divs inside container divs and kludges everywhere, etc., as you often end up with a mess of divs that are just as hard to work through as tables and the accessibility, from, say, a screen-reader's perspective, is often no better than a table-based design. Using the 3 column example I mentioned earlier a single 3 column table holding the column content exactly as you want it (if I remember correctly the earlier discussion was about a layout with a fixed width RH column for news and proportional for the left and centre columns) is a lot less messy than the equivalent in pure CSS. Shouldn't that be the way to go? I'm for accessible hybrids :-) -- Yours, Kym * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Re: Hybrid layouts
Hi Alan, I think part of this debate is because many developers have years of experience and know all the tricks of getting tables laid out how they want. True to a degree. What you really gather over the years is a pool of knowledge as to the way a web browser behaves and ways to handle that. A browser's display is a rectangular object and our basic way of thinking is to put displayable objects within it as rectangles. The old way was to use cells in tables to do that, now we use divs to do the same thing.. The deficiencies of CSS as it stands means that we cannot put things exactly where we want in any complex layout in a way that survives window resizing, browser incompatibilities, etc., so we have to compromise. As soon as you put a div within a div or similar to get what you want then you have put yourself in the same space as the old table layout techniques. The result of that is that content is no longer separated from display, that div-inside-a-div will immediately restrict your options. For someone new, like me, I'm as well to dive straight in and learn CSS rather than worrying about the old way. Most certainly learn the latest, and add to that the historical bits you need to do what you want. (historical aside - some of us have been about so long that we pre-date tables in browsers, and the worrying bit is that it is not so many years ago! g) Don't get put off by pedants on either side, designing to cover the current range of browsers is a compromise, so the tools you use must compromise as well. -- Yours, Kym * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] This sounds really silly BUT
Hi Gary, I am inserting what I think is a plane old link like this a href=#1Item 1/a a name=1Some Text/a I am doing this with Coldfusion on the server but that would be irrelative I would have thought? when you click the link it moves the page to the root of the folder rather than the URL I am currently on? Its driving me mad! to seems so small and silly, i've done these thousands of times before but this time its not having it! Any one care to speculate why? It reminds me of an old CF bug that used to make it throw a wobbly on named links like that. Even tho' you were not in a cfoutput statement the hash threw it. I am wracking my brains to remember the fix and failing I'm afraid but it is probably a CF problem, therefore completely off-topic for this List :-) -- Yours, Kym * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
RE: [WSG] OT: damn I feel old
Peter wrote: I'm definitely not the oldest here at 41! You know that because you know that I officially became old on my last birthday. And then they changed the rules a few months later and now I am middle-aged again! :-) -- Yours, Kym * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
Re: [WSG] Flickering Screens and Section 508 Standard
Hi all, I think I remember Kim worked at (or with) ABC, hopefully you're reading this Kim. Assuming you mean me. it was everyone except the ABC funnily enuf :-) being an oldie I was heading for bed when this post came in, now I have had to fortify the brain with a cheese/salad sambo and accessories and scribe awhile :-) So it looks to me like 2-55 is a good range to stay out of unless you are doing a rave site. There are two aspects to consider: one is the rate of screen refresh, which in the case of CRT displays is referred to as flicker; and the rate of information update on that screen. Flicker: The human eye cannot distinguish brightness changes of a light source when they occur above about 55Hz. The brighter the light the more obvious the flicker. Our Australian TV system has a screen refresh of 50Hz and if you have a bright scene you can see the bright parts flicker but the average scene looks OK. If you go to the USA, and other places that use their TV standards, the refresh rate is 60Hz and you do not really see flicker at all. (There is a long discourse here about interlacing and effective refresh rates if anyone is interested g.) LCD, Plasma and screens of that ilk do not use a scanning dot of light as does a CRT and so the light from them is pretty much steady and this particular problem does not exist. The reason why we use 50Hz for our TV and the yanks use 60Hz is simply because in the early days when electronics were still in an early stage of evolution it was decided to base the frequency on the AC mains, power, frequency to avoid hum-bars and other nasty artifacts. They have 60Hz mains, we have 50Hz, as simple as that. Now we have fluorescent lights and we have another set of artifacts that had not even been dreamt of back in the early days! :-) Back then the technology was not even semiconductors, I grew up with valves! :-), and any frame refresh rate above 60Hz was beyond the capability of valve-based monitors. Now Frame rates over a 100Hz are not a problem so it is possible to have completely flicker-free monitors. Information Update: Here it gets more interesting. One thing to consider is just how long you have to present information to make the viewer see what you want to see (very careful wording there as you will see later). The other end of the scale is how often you want to refresh that information. Here the world of TV screens and computer screens start to diverge. TV is based on moving images with a very tightly specified screen definition in every aspect, resolution, refresh rate, colourimetry, etc. Computers and their displays have no _standard_ specification at all What we are talking about how often you want to change the info on the screen. I have not read the spec yet, just answering a comment about TV screen specs, etc., but I feel that the specs mentioned are probably ambiguous here, particularly regarding the high, 55Hz, rate mentioned. If we consider the less than 2Hz specification on the original post what we are looking at is the rate an image is changing rather than any screen's internal refresh rate. If you flick an image in front of a viewer for a suitably fleeting moment that image can be resolved by the brain but not actually recognised. This is a known effect and is very worrisome, the phrase subliminal advertising creeps in here. In TV/Movies there are very strict rules in this area that no firm would dream of breaking, both ethically and legally. Nearly all TV is recorded so any trickery can be quickly confirmed :-) The spec for TV is that no image can be less than 5 frames long, ie a 5th of a second or the equivalent of 5Hz. This is less stringent than the new 2Hz specification mentioned so that is a definite plus. I have the TV on in the background and there is a jazz combo playing, very pleasant :-) The screen is refreshing at 50Hz (I know it really 25 but ignore that for the moment) but when you look at the information being displayed it is pretty static, a piano in the foreground, bass and drums in the background and bits of the screen moving, pianists hands, drummer's sticks, etc. The overall impression is of a moving image but how do you define what the information changing rate is? I like to feel that we have to define the rates as rate of change of major change in image detail. An example would be cutting from one scene to the next in a movie or TV show, those shows where the action is chop,chop,chop get confusing if it is done even once second for extended periods.. The above vaguely answers the points raised and is generally of a technical nature and does not affect us as designers but there is another layer to go which is much more relevant and On Topic and generally ignored. That matter is the whole area of aliasing, or the interaction between what we design and the display mechanism and the end result in terms of the viewed image. Its a huge area and needs its own
