Re: [WSG] CSS not playing nice in Gecko browsers (PC & Mac)

2006-03-10 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


http://avanimedia.com/onlinemedia/datormagazinse_profile.html
Under the "Specifications", the data is don in table and it shifts to  
the right outside  the #wrapper. However, the table stays where it  
should be in IE, Safari and Opera. I don't understand.


I'd say it is a clearing issue because of the floated 
definitions.  Try adding this to the style sheet:


#ProfileRightCol table { clear:left; }

I know you didn't ask for this, but in my opinion the page 
suffers from a few varieties of "itis".  For example, the table 
could be re-done without all those repeating classes (or at least 
fewer of them) if you use th elements for your row and column 
headings (which would make it more accessible too).


Regards
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Re: [WSG] Quick Site Check - CSS Problem?

2006-02-20 Thread Bert Doorn

David Nicol wrote:

I would appreciate it very much if you could look at this site:
http://www.visitshetland.com/

...

Does anyone else get the same problem as this user?


I can (almost) replicate it.  Accessibility options (ignore 
colors, font styles, font sizes) ticked and text size increased 
gives something very similar.



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Re: [WSG] site check: FONT sizes

2006-02-18 Thread Bert Doorn

Hassan Schroeder wrote:

Felix Miata wrote:


The vast majority of users, even those working in high-tech firms
here in Silicon Valley, *never* change *any* settings -- of the OS
or any applications -- from the supplied defaults.


Where is the data that backs up this assertion?  


That assertion is based on my experience working here in Silicon
Valley since the mid-80s, *doing usability testing* among other
things (including teaching people to use the Web and write HTML,
"back in the day" when it was just coming into widespread use).

You may choose to believe otherwise, but that doesn't change the
behavior I've observed, and continue to observe.


And what we conclude from that observed behaviour seems to be 
what all the arguing is about.


Some conclude the default is too big and ugly so they take it 
upon themselves to change it for everybody.


Others conclude that if people are not changing the defaults, 
they are probably comfortable with those defaults and therefore 
we should not mess with it.


You can't please everybody all the time, but perhaps there's a 
middle ground somewhere.  If you're going to change font sizes, 
do it in moderation.


Regards
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Re: [WSG] site check: FONT sizes

2006-02-17 Thread Bert Doorn

Hassan Schroeder wrote:

Felix Miata wrote:


When your page respects the user's decision what size fonts are most
appropriate for him, your page needs no resizer, because the user won't
need to again resize just for having visited your page. He's presumably
already done that in his browser. 



..which is the utterly erroneous presumption upon which the entire
argument fails :-)


To use similarly strong wording, I sense an utterly erroneous 
presumpton that the designer knows best what suits people they 
have never met.  People who have totally different combinations 
of vision, equipment, software and experience in using it.


As long as we have web designers who want to control everything 
and force their own preferences on everybody else, this argument 
will remain, long after my children have become grandparents.


For what it's worth, yes, I am guilty of adjusting font sizes 
too.  And yes, I find that I often have to adjust my browser 
settings (usually making text larger as my vision is not that 
good) because other designers have gone even further than I have 
in this regard.


Regards
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Re: [WSG] TARGET in 4.01 Strict

2006-02-14 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Serdar Kýlýç wrote:

How does one open a new window with a 4.01 Strict DOCTYPE and have it
be valid? For my weblog I ran the w3 validator and it complained that
there is no attribute called target


The main idea is that one should not open new windows at all, 
leaving it up to the user to decide, which is why the target 
attribute was removed.


But if you want to (or "have to"), either go back to transitional 
or use javascript.  You may find some discussions about it in the 
mail list archives, but the simplest implementation would go 
along these lines:


link 
text


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Re: [WSG] Vertical align

2006-02-10 Thread Bert Doorn

Roberto Santana wrote:
I want to create an horizontal bar with some elements on it, some text, 
a text box for searches, and date & time, just below the top part of the 
page.
What's the best way to create a vertical-center content with XHTML 1.0 
Strict and CSS2?


Don't know about best, but...   If the horizontal bar has a fixed 
height, you can position it absolutely, half-way down the page, 
and give it a negative margin-top that's half the height of the 
bar.  So for example:


CSS:

body { margin:0; padding:0; }
#contentbar {
  position:absolute;
  top:50%;
  width:100%;
  height: 10em;
  margin: -5em 0 0;
  padding:0;
  background-color:#ccc;
  color:#000;
}
#contentbar div { margin:1em }


(x)HTML:


  Content here



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Re: [WSG] IE7 Compatibility Team

2006-02-10 Thread Bert Doorn


Ian Anderson wrote:
IE7 will respect height: 1%, which if not filtered away from it could 
break many layouts. They are retaining hasLayout as an internal property 
and recommend using zoom: 100% for inducing hasLayout as a replacement 
technique for height: 1%.


Which W3C standard/recommendation for CSS defines the zoom 
property?  I don't see it in the CSS 2.1 spec.


http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/propidx.html

If indeed it's not defined in any CSS standard/recommendation, 
are MS effectively saying:  "We recommend you write invalid CSS 
so things work in our new browser which has better support for 
standards"?


Regards
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Re: [WSG] CSS DIV problem, as weird as simple

2006-02-10 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

The page with the XHTML and CSS: 
http://www.2much4u.net/Problem/example.html

...

Why there's a margin with any browser excepts IE6?


Because the default alignment for images in most of the other 
browsers is "baseline".  Add the following to your CSS and see if 
it fixes the problem:


#Example img { vertical-align:top } /* or bottom or middle */

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Re: [WSG] Call for a new (scalable) business case for web standards.

2006-02-06 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

heretic wrote:

Actually, I think some of the benefits touted for large-scale sites
are actually more urgently required and keenly noticed by small
business. In particular...


The problem is that many small/micro businesses don't see it 
(y)our way.  They only see the shiny coat of paint, not the rust 
underneath it, or the engine under the bonnet.  Bombarding them 
with technical jargon isn't going to help.  They just see a web 
page in their browser. It either looks good or it doesn't.



# maintenance
In my experience, standards-compliant sites are far easier (hence
faster and cheaper) to maintain 


Only if the person maintaining it understands standards in the 
first place.  It's no use to a FontPlague jockey who wants to 
maintain his/her own site.



small business really need to minimise costs. Every dollar counts.


Yep, so they want to maintain the site themselves. See above.


# lower bandwidth
Many small businesses have a very small web budget and very very low
bandwidth on their hosting. 


Nearly all my customers are on a very cheap plan with (virtually) 
unlimited bandwidth, so perhaps the rest are paying too much. 
Besides, if they are getting so much traffic that bandwidth 
becomes a problem, they are probably making enough money to pay 
for more.  Of course, having 1MB of graphics or flash on the home 
page isn't going to help, but that's not a standards issue.



# seo
Small businesses need good search engine visibility, far more than
bigger businesses in many ways. 


Sure, a flash-only or frames based site is not SEO friendly, but 
I have seen no clear evidence that a clean, Strict (x)html site 
gets any better treatment than a site with tag-soup.  There are 
many other factors that influence SEO, but this is of course not 
the place to discuss those.



# accessibility


Many are either unaware, don't care or are willing to take the 
chance. Besides, a standard compliant website is not necessarily 
more accessible than a site with tag-soup, although it may help.



# usability


Standards compliant does not necessarily equal usable, nor does 
tagsoup necessarily equal unusable.



Small businesses need more longevity in their website. If they have
decent style/content separation they can redesign in future without
redoing every single page. It'd be like having the ability to change
their stock of letterhead without paying to have it printed again (ie.
just pay for the design).


True, but many of them don't plan that far ahead.


Small businesses often have to prove that everything they do is better
than the big businesses... so their website needs to reflect that. 


Define "better", from the (non web design) small business owner's 
point of view.  I think that's what this whole thread is about... 
   The majority of their customers/visitors to their website 
will not know the difference, so why should the business owner 
care?


Sorry, I'm out of 1 and 2 cent coins.

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Re: [WSG] [Fixed div elements] - Having troubles with IE

2006-01-31 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Andrew Brown wrote:

I changed the doctype to strict locally and still the scrollbar does
appear. I also already have those additional tags added. Do you know of a
website that has enough content that scrolls and has div banners such as
mine only done in css? I cannot say I have saw many that do. I am still on
top of this. 


Kinda like www.sure-kleen.com ?

Don't ask me how I did it - I forgot.  But if it does what you 
want, feel free to reverse-engineer.


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Re: [WSG] The dilemma: tabular data with sublevels

2006-01-28 Thread Bert Doorn

Rene Saarsoo wrote:

Well... I agree, that the proposed markup-structure would be
semantically most correct:

...

But can you imagine working with that sort of list in a browser
where stylesheets aren't available? For example in Lynx it would
look something like the following:

...

Whats so wrong with using good-old table... (skipped summary attribute
and possibly more, that should be added):


If it gets that complicated I'd rethink the setup.  For instance, 
rather than having all those links, lists, tables etc I'd use a 
simple form with select and 3 submit buttons.


[ select category ] [ add ] [ edit ] [ delete ]

You can have option groups in the select. Example:

  

  Select Product
  
Apple
Orange
Lemon
  
  
Carrot
Cabbage
Beans
  




  


But perhaps I misunderstand the function of the page in question.


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Re: [WSG] New to Standards.

2006-01-04 Thread Bert Doorn

Hi Alvaro


Now I'm writing to this list to ask for books, eBooks, links, and
every piece of information that could help me to learn and understand
Web Standards and not feel like an ignorant when I read the posts sent
to the list, and, in a not-far future, help others too.


The Web Standards Group's website has a lot of resources and 
links to sites that deal with web standards.


You might start at http://webstandardsgroup.org/standards/ and 
follow the link "From hacks to web standards - A web designers 
journey".  Sounds like that's just what you are looking for.


Also look at the "Resources" section of the Group's site.

Regards
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Re: [WSG] Negative margins questions

2005-12-27 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I had a feeling someone was going to reply with that suggestion, and 
you're right :) The whole test case I setup was merely to display the 
point that the hr element was no cooperating with the negative margins. 
I'm hoping more specifically for an explanation on why that is, not on 
how to get the desired effect.


Ah, OK.

Well, can't help you on the first question - maybe Microsoft can.

But the question about h1 is easy.  You use relative padding 
(0.8em) - relative to the text size of the element it is applied 
to.  So the margins on the h1 are calculated by the (larger) text 
size of the h1, not its parent's text size.


Hope that makes sense - it does to me :-)

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Re: [WSG] Negative margins questions

2005-12-27 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day



I've setup a test case for the issues I'm having:
http://www.epiphanize.com/NegativeMarginsTest.htm

You'll notice both the hr and h1 "separators" work nicely in FF, and 
only the h1 works in IE while the hr doesn't want to cooperate.


If the hr is only there for decorative purposes (i.e. no semantic 
meaning), why not put 0 padding on the container and apply the 
padding (and border-top or border-bottom) to the paragraphs 
instead?  No need for the hr element or negative margins that way.


CSS along these lines:

#Container {
padding: 0;
border: 1px solid #999;
}
#Container h1 {
background-color:#999;
font-size:1.5em;
margin:0;
padding:.6em;
}
#Container p {
margin:0;
padding:1em .8em;
border-top:1px solid #999;
}

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Re: [WSG] CSS Rollover Flicker

2005-12-27 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I have a CSS rollover flickering problem that not just occurs in IE  but 
all browsers.


Two options I can think of:

1. Pre-load the "hover" images (using javascript)

2. Use a single background image with both states for each button 
and shift the background-position on hover.


I prefer the latter option.

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Re: [WSG] Slight margin problems in IE

2005-12-26 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I wonder is anyone is around during holidays (hope you are having a good
one) to figure something out.


Holidays?  What are they?


http://joomlashack.compassdesigns.net/js_simplicity/index.html
I have this, but the margins on the right hand side don't line up in IE.
They are ok in FF etc. I can't for the life of me figure out why.


I'm not sure what you mean with margins not lining up but...

There are validation errors in the CSS.  While they may not be 
the cause of the problem, it would be the first thing I'd look at 
(the second thing would probably be the nested tables).


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Re: [WSG] xhtml DTD

2005-12-22 Thread Bert Doorn

Spark wrote:


http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/elements.html

 Although is a useful list, it's not good for what I pointed: knowing
what can go inside what. Like "can I put a Heading tag inside a DT?"
(no) , or "can a put an  here in the BODY ?" (no , you can't). Does
anyone have any suggestion ? Might be some page outside W3C (since the
standards move quite slowly, i may use them for a few years :)


http://www.zvon.org/xxl/xhtmlReference/Output/index.html

Or the download version:

http://www.zvon.org/download2.php/xhtmlReference?title=XHTML+Reference


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Re: [WSG] best way to style addresses

2005-12-22 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

sam sherlock wrote:

for more details see the link below
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/address.html


Which is HTML 3 (quite outdated) but says...

"The ADDRESS element specifies such information as address, 
signature and authorship for the current document"


But...

tee wrote:
I am working on a page that involves with hundred of address in  
different locations/cities. What is the best way to do?

unordered list,  definition list  or  table data?


Yes, I've used the address element for such purposes too, because 
I did not know the intention of that element.  But going by the 
quote above, I don't think address would be appropriate here.


A *list* of addresses would probably be best done as a list (ul 
or ol) until (x)HTML comes up with something more semantic.


Maybe even a table would be semantic in this case - sounds 
similar to a database/mailing list where each row is a record and 
each column in that row a field (name, address, phone no. etc).


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Re: [WSG] Dropped DIV dilemma

2005-12-19 Thread Bert Doorn



Paul Noone wrote:

Problem:
http://d81314.i50.quadrahosting.com.au/index.php?module=News&id=cntnt01&cntn
t01action=detail&cntnt01articleid=8&cntnt01returnid=11

The Site Updates div gets pushed way down the page. And I've got no idea
why/ Strangely all is well in IE (with all the hacks in place I'd hope so!).


There's a lot of css to wade through, but as far as I can tell, 
your clearfix class is the cause of the problem.  Removing that 
class (in Firefox dev toolbar, to test my theory) stops it 
dropping down, although it causes problems elsewhere.


With so many divs, classes and id's that's about the only thing I 
can figure out.


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Re: [WSG] IE float quest

2005-12-18 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Hi Bert, no, display:inline-block doesn't work however your  suggestion 
prompted to use the IE conditional comments in my html'  <.head> tag.


Seems a bit of overkill for a single rule.  I avoid hacks 
wherever possible, but if you do need one, it's better placed in 
the CSS file (e.g. with a * html hack).


I haven't got time to look through the whole CSS file 
(reverse-engineering) to find the cause of each problem, but 
given you use exact pixel widths in many places, chances are that 
they aren't adding up (with IE's float bugs adding 3 pixels here 
and there).


I'd give it a bit of slack - maybe some of your problems will be 
solved by removing some of the widths.


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Re: [WSG] IE float quest

2005-12-18 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

So I declared 'display: inline' in the #formWrapper, it solves the  
problem but my background color shrinks to a small square above the  the 
form in Firefox and Opera (both PC and Mac); in Safari and IE,  the 
background color completely gone.


Have you tried display:inline-block ?  It's valid CSS [1], 
Mozilla ignores it and it ~may~ do what you want it to in MSIE.


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visuren.html#propdef-display


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Re: [WSG] weird IE6 doctype switching question

2005-12-18 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

This is probably going to sound really weird but I need this for 
something I'm working on.


Yep, you got that right but I won't ask why :-)

Question: Is it possible to make IE6 use the broken box model for a PART 
of the document?


As far as I know, the only way you'd get that behaviour would be 
if you insert a document (with quirks mode trigger) into an 
iframe (or object) on the compliant page.


Note: just a theory - I haven't tested it.

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Re: [WSG] Frames ?

2005-12-15 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Peter Levan wrote:

I believe you can make use of the position: fixed css property to get
some frame-like behaviour


Which is fine if you have control over the whole page, but not if 
you're trying to display someone else's site within your own (not 
recommended), as asked in the original post.


Just another point to consider (apart from the other valid points 
raised about this practice), if my browser window is 750 pixels 
wide and you're using a 200px frame on the left, you don't leave 
much room for the other site to display in.


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Re: [WSG] CSS in IE Help needed.

2005-12-14 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I feel a site should be fluid to 100% irrespective of 
resolution.


While I agree with you in principle...  Have you ever seen a site 
at 1280x1024 or higher resolution, 100% width and (as some 
designers seem to be keen on), microscopic (12px or smaller) 
text?  Not easy to read.


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Re: [WSG] CSS in IE Help needed.

2005-12-14 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Al Kendall wrote:

Can anyone please tell me how to fix the following script to get the div the
stay in the center of the page in IE.   It works fine in Firefox, but stay
left in IE.


Add this to your existing CSS:

body { text-align:center }
#content { text-align:left }

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Re: [WSG] CSS and the University Syllabus

2005-12-13 Thread Bert Doorn
Tables are only frowned upon when they are used to mark up data that is 
not even remotely tabular, simply to achieve visual layout.


Yep, especially when nested :-)

Just today I came across a site that nests tables up to 9 levels 
deep. With a menu of 6 links that uses 5.5kB of code.  They were 
trying to sell me their software that generates this rubbish. 
I'm telling them that until they clean up their act, I wouldn't 
recommend it if they paid me :-)  But they probably don't care.


Anyway, I digress. If you have tabular data, put it in a table - 
that's what they are for!


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Re: [WSG] Abbreviations and Acronyms

2005-12-13 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Paul Noone wrote:


IMO, provided you are somehow offering a visible definition of the acronym
or abbreviation - be it by use of a specific tag, or the ill-fated title
attribute - I think you have achieved your objective.


Or even the traditional way: Web Standards Group (WSG) the first 
time it is mentioned on the page.



Frankly, at the moment it still seems that ALT and TITLE perform better
cross-browser and also have the added benefit of not being mis-applied or
misunderstood.


The alt attribute is of course only applicable on images, while 
the title attribute does nothing on  in MSIE (Windows), 
since it does not understand .


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Re: [WSG] CSS Driven?

2005-12-13 Thread Bert Doorn

And still - table for layout _is_ a hack.


I'd rather have that single, easy to spot hack, which adds very 
little overhead, than multiple background images and extra divs 
coupled with hyroglyphics in my css file.


Yes, I know presentation belongs in the CSS.

No, I don't subscribe to "Never ever ever use a table for layout 
purposes" although I do frown on nesting them.


No, I don't usually use a table for layout, but I can understand 
people who use a SINGLE layout table in some cases.  If the 
alternative is too complicated, use a table, but don't nest them.


We've had these discussions before, so I'll leave it there :-)

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Re: [WSG] CSS Driven?

2005-12-12 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Miles Tillinger wrote:

Could CSS be used to display that two-column table layout as a single
column?  


td { display:block; }

Works in Firefox and Opera (Windows).

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Re: [WSG] italic and validator

2005-12-11 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Paul Noone wrote:

But now I find myself confused by a couple of the elements listed as
optional (O); namely the HEAD and BODY tags. Optional?


Good question, especially when the same document says:

"Every HTML document must have a TITLE element in the HEAD 
section."  Can TITLE be placed anywhere if there is no HEAD 
section?   Seems that way.


Validator says the following is *Valid HTML 4.01 Strict!* :


Page title
h1{color:red}
Heading
A paragraph of text

Hmmm, so (to go along with the Google debate), we can save more 
bandwidth by omitting html, head and body?  Interesting.



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Re: [WSG] italic and validator

2005-12-11 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

is "i" (italic) deprecated in xhtml?  and even better, could someone 
point me to a w3c page that talks about what is deprecated in xhtml?


XHTML 1.0 is a reformulation of HTML4.01, in which  is not 
deprecated.  However, when talking about "font style" elements, 
the spec says:


http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/graphics.html#edef-I :

"Although they are not all deprecated, *their use is discouraged 
in favor of style sheets*."


Only s, strike and u are deprecated in that section (along with 
font and basefont mentioned in the next section)


and, second part of that, why does the validator validate it if it is 
deprecated.


If it's defined in the spec for the doctype you are using it's 
valid (if properly nested etc).  But...


http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/conform.html#deprecated :

"HTML presentational attributes have been deprecated when style 
sheet alternatives exist "


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Re: [WSG] Problems styling dl's

2005-12-09 Thread Bert Doorn
Can't recall seeing an answer to this post, so I thought I'd have 
a look at the issue.



Eg. http://www.business.ecu.edu.au/schools/mtl/staff/index.htm and
http://www.business.ecu.edu.au/schools/mtl/staff/spettigrew.htm
In IE I get the 3px jog and in FF dd's that are shorter than their
corresponding dt float upwards messing up the alignment.

...

Is this doable or should I be looking for an alternative way to make
lists? I would like to make it work.


I did some experimenting and can't make the 3px jog disappear 
either with the current (x)html structure. However, if you put a 
list (ul) with list-style:none; into each dd that has more than 
one name, rather than using multiple dd's per dt, you may be able 
to solve the dilemma.


Float the dt left, give the dd a corresponding margin-left and a 
height:1% (hack) for MSIE.


See example at http://www.bwdzine.net/test/ecu.html

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Re: [WSG] problems!!!

2005-12-08 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day again


Thanx for your response Bert,
My problem is this: If I display the page on 800*600 it would look
correct, the thing is when I use a higher resolution as 1024*786 or
bigger... the quienes somos text would move right below the bienvenidos
section, I need that the twocols items display on the same line, 


Looking at it with resolution of 1152*864.  I see what you mean, 
if I enlarge the text.


Put a margin-left on #columnMain then, equal to the amount of 
space you want to reserve.  Something like:


#columnMain { margin:0 0 0 120px; }

Or am I looking at the wrong problem?

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Re: [WSG] *Why* doesn't Google validate? was New logo scheme was talking points for standards

2005-12-08 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Michael Cordover wrote:

I think that Google's failure to validate may be due to the simple
issue of bandwidth.  Certainly on the main page, the whole source is
compressed and effectively minimised.  Bandwidth is expensive these
days.  Inserting a doctype, separating style data, that sort of thing,
takes a lot of additional bandwidth when you're dealing with hits in
the quantities that they do.


I don't follow your logic.

Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper, at least where I live.

Getting rid of tables, font elements etc is likely to make their 
pages lighter, rather than heavier, especially when all 
presentation and behaviour is moved into (cached) external style 
sheet(s) javascript file(s) respectively.


Downloading a style sheet once, or downloading all the 
presentational code on every page view - which one is going to 
cost them more in bandwidth?


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Re: [WSG] *Why* doesn't Google validate? was New logo scheme was talking points for standards

2005-12-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Well, it isn't the first thing that occurred to me!
I've often wondered why it is that Google doesn't validate.


I never looked at it closely, but you're right - it's tagsoup, 
tables for layout and deprecated elements and attributes galore 
(font, center anyone?). No DTD either.


Perhaps, like *many* businesses, they look at it and say "it 
works in all browsers, so what's all the fuss about?"  They don't 
*see* the need...


Perhaps it's also a case of "(some) programmers are not html 
coders".  It seems many people who write server side scripts only 
have a vocabulary of about 10-12 HTML elements (html, title, 
meta, body, table, tr, td, center, font, img and maybe a couple 
more).


Yes, I know there are exceptions...   Just thinking Google may 
fall into this category as it's obviously script driven.


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Re: [WSG] Valid alternative to textarea WRAP

2005-12-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Sarah Peeke (XERT) wrote:

Hi Bert
So remove *wrap="soft"* entirely?


Yep - I agree with Lachlan (for a change :-)

"Soft is the default value, so it's completely unnecessary. 
Remove it. "


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Re: [WSG] Valid alternative to textarea WRAP

2005-12-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


The FF Tidy plugin gives a warning on the wrap attribute, and I'm hoping
to do a find and replace to fix it.


Does that (proprietary) attribute actually do anything in any 
browser?  The only values I have seen mentioned for it are "off", 
"Virtual" and "physical" - I've not seen "soft" mentioned before.


If it doesn't do anything (other than invalidate the pages), I'd 
just remove it.


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Re: [WSG] problems!!!

2005-12-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


On this address: http://www.addictivemedia.com.mx/limpeq/
I need to display the "quienes somos" and "Nuestros clientes" divs right below
the photo and bienvenidos section. I already clear them both, clear them right,
left, and it doesnt do it...


I've done a quick test in Firefox (with the web dev toolbar). 
Try removing "clearboth" and don't put a 100% width on "twocols".
AS I see it, by clearing "twocols" and giving it a 100% width 
(plus margins), you are forcing it below the floating elements.


I found it odd that something with id="leftcontent" would be 
floating right.  Try to not use "presentational" id and class names.


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Re: [WSG] A floating menu that keeps folding where it shouldn't (repost)

2005-12-06 Thread Bert Doorn

Hi Seona

I guess one reason you have had no replies is that the page does 
not validate.  This may not be the cause of the problem, but it's 
 a starting point (I'm not blaming, just observing)


For the rest, it's difficult (read: time-consuming) to go through 
a 21kB CSS file to find what may be the cause of the problem.


All I can think of is that it's related to the mix of left and 
right floats, absolute and relative positioning in your #prinav, 
with the ul having no width specified.  Maybe IE is not expanding 
the container to make room for the fourth list item.


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Re: [WSG] talking points for standards

2005-12-05 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Dollars and cents is the language that will convince most, if not all,
sceptics.


The problem I face in that regard is that a lot of sales 
enquiries I get are from people who want to maintain their own 
site, for next to nothing.


They don't want to spend money on a content management system 
(which is overkill anyway, if the updates are few and far 
between).  Many think they can maintain a site with Frontpage, 
which, after all, is relatively cheap.  I can't help them, unless 
I throw standards compliance out the door.


As far as (server) bandwidth is concerned, it only matters for 
big sites with a lot of traffic, or sites with a host that 
provides a ridiculously low quota.


When it comes to search engines, can anyone prove that lean code 
is better? Has anyone done research on this claim? Google is full 
of tagsoup sites that are highly ranked.


I searched for "web design" in Google (pages from Australia 
only).  The top 3 (non sponsored) sites used tables for layout, 
none of them validated and only one had a doctype. They all used 
some CSS but only in addition to the tagsoup.


So where are the benefits?

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Re: [WSG] getElementById() always returns null

2005-12-05 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I was having some trouble finding out why, whenever I call for
document.getElementById(id), it returns null (even if there is a valid
id-matching element). Consider something simple, like this:


The javascript runs as the page loads. At that point, the 
elements with the ids do not yet exist in the DOM tree (as they 
are still to be loaded).  You'll need to delay the script until 
the page has loaded.  Something like:


function init() {
  var toggle = document.getElementById('toggle');
  var onoff =  document.getElementById('onoff');
  toggle.onmouseover = function() {
onoff.style.display = "block"
  }
  toggle.onmouseout = function() {
onoff.style.display = "none"
  }
}
window.onload=init;


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Re: [WSG] XHTML Issues

2005-12-01 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

If you're not using the right MIME type, you may 

> as well be using HTML4, as you're just relying on
> browsers error recovery techniques to understand XHTML.

I code in xhtml Strict and serve it as text/html.  My code is 
future-proof, valid and well structured.  If I code in HTML4, 
there is less "need" for writing properly structured documents.


If at some point in the future browsers understand xhtml served 
as xthml, changing the way it's served is a relatively simple 
operation.  Re-coding from HTML to xhtml (and unlearning bad 
coding habits) is not as simple.


> Plus, I'm sure you've read Ian Hickson's "Serving XHTML as
> text/html considered harmful" article?!

One man's view, based on an assumption that people will write 
xhtml tagsoup. Even if they do, they will find out soon enough.


I can't speak for others, but I write proper xhtml, not html 
tagsoup translated to xhtml.  I think we've had a thread about 
this article already, so will leave it there.



In the case of IE and XHTML, there isn't even limited support
for it, there's none at all.


While technically correct, it is misleading, particularly for
newbies, who might read it as "don't code in xhtml - people with
MSIE will not be able to view your site".  It's not true if the 
page is served as text/html.


> Also, it's very important to be aware of the xml declaration
> issue, beginners must not learn to rely on quirks mode
> behaviour, they need to learn standards compliant behavior from
> the beginning, so it's important that it not be used.

I agree with you on that point.

> I think it's important for beginners to learn correctly from
> the beginning.

Exactly.  Teach them properly structured xhtml 1.0 and serve it 
in a MIME type that the browsers people use can work with.  Ready 
to reap the benefits of X(HT)ML later, when browsers support it.


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Re: [WSG] editor

2005-12-01 Thread Bert Doorn
Before we get a flood of posts along the lines of "my favourite 
editor is" and "mine too" ...


Have you looked at the resources section of the WSG website? 
http://webstandardsgroup.org/resources/


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Re: [WSG] Margins and floats

2005-11-29 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Ended up, because content comes first, making the margin for the right side
menu 67% left.
#content {float: left; width:65%;
  margin-right: 15px;
}
 #links {padding-right:10px; margin-left: 67%}

This seemd odd to me but it works...any comments, is this ok?


Why not use % all the way (e.g on the padding)?  That way you 
won't have to worry about whether 15px is more, or less, than 2%


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Re: [WSG] :after, IE, and link text wrapping

2005-11-23 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Ok ok, I know I said I'd given up, but I tried this, and it finally worked.
Still ... it's weird that it didn't show up before. And in fact, when
I move the  back to get this ...


Probably because you have an empty inline element (nothing inside 
the span).  Browser says: there's nothing there so I'll display 
nothing :-)  Maybe if you put a space in it (hoping MSIE doesn't 
decide it's unneeded whitespace)?  Or give it 
display:inline-block, with a width.


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Re: [WSG] :after, IE, and link text wrapping

2005-11-23 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Paul Noone wrote:

Set a width or padding on your exit class that is sufficient to display the
image. 


And get the class name in the html matching the css.  In fact, 
the span doesn't need a class at all if you do this:


a.external span { /* whatever styles needed  */ }

Blah 

FWIW, I don't like the idea of adding extra, non semantic markup 
for presentational purposes.


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Re: [WSG] starting ordered lists from a number other than 1

2005-11-22 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

> We need to start an ordered list on a page from a number
> other than 1, as the lists could be quite long and so will
> be chunked into a set per page.
...

What do people suggest?


Use a transitional DTD (whether XHTML or HTML) so you can use the 
start attribute while keeping the document valid.


Using divs to insert the numbers is IMO worse than using a (for 
transitional DTDs) valid, though deprecated attribute.


In theory, you could use counters in CSS, but as far as I know 
very few browsers actually support it at this point in time.


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Re: [WSG] A little help with a charity site please

2005-11-21 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


PS. I got the transparency working after I gave the container a size.
 
Still haven't figured out the 1pixel space.


Change the image alignment from "top" to "bottom"

img {
  vertical-align: bottom;
  border: 0;
}

Incidentally, the html doesn't validate, partly because you have 
no alt attributes on a number of images.  If they don't need alt 
text (i.e. they are just for visual effect), consider putting 
them in the css as background images.


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Re: [WSG] Inline link padding in IE6

2005-11-18 Thread Bert Doorn

Gunlaug Sørtun wrote:
It is difficult to give a link layout, but 'zoom: 100%' will work. 


Question: Which CSS standard defines the "zoom" property?

I don't see it in CSS2, nor in the CSS2.1 working draft.  I 
suspect it's a Microsoft invention and its use will invalidate 
the CSS.


You could use { display: inline-block } instead.  At least that's 
defined in the CSS2.1 working draft.


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Re: [WSG] snug a border around diff sized pix

2005-11-16 Thread Bert Doorn

Tom Livingston wrote:
Just out of curiosity, why would a div not be the same size (or 
"hugging")  the image inside it if it has no styling of it's own? Box 
model issues?


I may be mistaken, but...

A div is a block level element by default.  If it has no styling 
of its own, its width should be 100% of its parent's inner width.


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Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP

2005-11-14 Thread Bert Doorn

Tim Burgan wrote:

Just a quick note that'll help:
In the URL, the special characters (such as ampersands, question marks, 
etc) need to be converted to html character entities. 


Question marks do not need to be converted.

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Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders

2005-11-13 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I would have thought that you would want to make your scripts check for 
leading _and trailing_ spaces.  Mouse users will often click into the 
start of a field.  When they enter text, they will end up with a 
trailing space.


Although I tend to click somewhere in the middle (rather than do 
gymnastics to move my mouse to the beginning of the box), it's a 
good point.


Not everybody is like me (which is just as well :-)

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Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders

2005-11-13 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Thanks for all the replies, you've confirmed my suspicions. It's 
unfortunate that online accessibility/quality checking tools 
still insist on this (especially when you have a client who likes 
to see a mass of ticks with every tool you throw at his site).


I have the same concerns others voiced about there already being 
data in the field - it's confusing and may cause more problem 
than it fixes.  I hate having to manually select text already in 
an input, to overwrite it.  Yes, that can be overcome with 
javascript, but I'd rather not fix a problem by introducing 
another potential problem.


I might settle on adding value=" " (space) - shouldn't be hard to 
change my scripts to strip leading spaces when checking if a 
field has been completed.


Geoff, I know exactly what you mean with the greyed out fields. 
Came across it myself only yesterday - a form where all inputs 
had a grey background.  It wasn't until I clicked in one of them 
that I realised the field was not disabled.


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[WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders

2005-11-13 Thread Bert Doorn
Is it really necessary for accessibility to "include default 
place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas" per WCAG 1.0 
Checkpoint 10.4?  Is that an obsolete guideline?


10.4 *Until user agents* handle empty controls correctly, include 
default, place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas. [Priority 3]

   For example, in HTML, do this for TEXTAREA and INPUT.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/#tech-place-holders

Have we reached (or largely reached) the "until user agents" stage yet?  
What implications is ignoring this guideline likely to have (other than 
not getting "tick marks" from various automated tools), given I use 
properly coded labels and (where needed) fieldsets for the inputs? 

It seems crazy to repeat the label text (or slightly amended info) in 
the input for people to overwrite (and some will perhaps leave it in there!)


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Re: [WSG] Bridging the gap in IE

2005-11-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I'm using image replacement on a H1 element. The problem I'm having is
that the content under the H1 is fine in Firefox, but is pushed much
further down the page in IE6. An example shows it clearly:
HTML: <http://timburgan.com/css-test/index.htm>
CSS: <http://timburgan.com/css-test/css/style.css>
Is this a common issue, because I always seem to run into it?
Does anyone have any ideas as to what this is caused by and how to
overcome this?


A few possible causes:

1. invalid HTML
2. invalid CSS
3. default font size and line height on the h1
4. margin on the paragraph following the h1

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Re: [WSG] css title styles

2005-11-05 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I like the idea of linking back to the content once the reader has read
the relevant footnote, but there are many instances when more than one
footnote is attributed to a portion of the content (see example below).
Also, the same footnote reference is referred to in different portions
of the content.


One option is to use some javascript to bring up a "pop up" 
message (hidden or dynamically built div, at the mouse location) 
that retrieves content from the relevant bookmark/footnote.


I did something like this in 2002, although it was IE specific - 
using window.createPopup().  It doesn't work in other browsers 
(wasn't much of a consideration for me in 2002) but could 
probably be amended to work in other browsers.


See http://www.klikbooks.com/Communication.html for an example. 
Look for a link with the text "PECS" and click on it.  Perhaps a 
variation of this method (so you get a similar effect in other 
browsers) would be an option?


Yes, I used a table for layout back in 2002.

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Re: [WSG] form hidden field ?

2005-10-28 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I have a hidden field in a css styled form and when you view the page it's
shown as a line in firefox, any ideas?


In your css:

input,textarea {
color: #ff;
background-color: #58829A;
border: 1px solid #27455f;
display: block;
etc

I'd say this is why you see the line - your hidden input will be 
given display:block, with that border.


Removing display:block should fix it.


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Re: [WSG] Never ending cross browser problems! Lets just do IE!

2005-10-19 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Background bug solved, only thing left is the space between the top banner
and the one underneath, there is a one or two pixel space breaking up the
words "The right way" and only in Mozilla.


The problem is that by default, images (in Mozilla) have a 
vertical-align of "baseline", which leaves a bit of a gap.


Try adding: #content img { vertical-align: top; }

...or anything other than baseline.

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Re: [WSG] Couple of question - Image Map etc.

2005-10-16 Thread Bert Doorn


Taco Fleur - Pacific Fox wrote:


Thanks, but that's what I did, whatever is there, does not make any sense to
me at all, for example;
Line 43 column 11: document type does not allow element "H2" here; missing
one of "OBJECT", "MAP", "BUTTON" start-tag.
What does that mean?
 

If you keep reading the validator page, it provides further 
information   I quote:


One possible cause for this message is that you have attempted to put a 
block-level element (such as "" or "") inside an inline 
element (such as "", "", or "").

--

A quick glance at the code shows that the validator is spot on with its 
"possible cause".   Let me re-write it to suit:


-
The cause for this message is that you have attempted to put a 
block-level element ("") inside an inline element ("").

--

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Re: [WSG] Firefox caption madness

2005-10-11 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I'm getting a weird problem when I try and absolutely position something
in a table caption.  
...
Table 3.1 Performance results: 

Have you tried validating the (x)html?  


A caption can only contain inline elements and h5 is a block level element.   
It's possible your problems stem (at least in part) from this invalid coding.

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Re: [WSG] Header text problem

2005-10-05 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I can't seem to fix the UTF problem. Any ideas?


If you mean the first of the 35 validation errors, have a look at what 
the validator suggests:


   ...perhaps you meant to "self-close" an element, that is, ending it 
with "/>" instead of ">".


So,  instead of 

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Re: [WSG] Header text problem

2005-10-05 Thread Bert Doorn

Not sure what exactly you're asking, but:

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.zachinglis.com/ZachInglis.html

It's broken code, which may explain why you are having problems.

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Re: [WSG] Flexible Font sizes in tables in ie

2005-10-04 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Either way I still have the problem of the table cell text either appearing too 
large in ie, or too small in ff.
Without resorting to setting text size in pixels in my table, I can't find any 
other way to prevent this from happening, I thought perhaps there might be a 
hack out there that will pass 0.8em to ie, but not to firefox?
 


Yes.  Use something like this in your css:

* html table { font-size: .8em }

Only MSIE will use this rule.  I'm not sure whether on a Mac has the same 
problem (someone else may know), but if it does not have the same problem, 
there are other hacks/filters to stop Mac IE from using the rule above.

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Re: [WSG] Top Ten Web Design Mistakes - yeah, right!

2005-10-04 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Much as I hate to... and I'm trying hard not to but ...yes "awkward to 
use". Let me pick an example:


All I see is an overwhelming mass of links, even on the home page.  

But then, I'm just a casual observer who stumbled on the site as it was 
mentioned on the mailing list.  It may be different for someone who went 
there looking for something this site has to offer (whatever that might 
be - I can't see it at a glance).


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Re: [WSG] css variables

2005-09-28 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Thierry Koblentz wrote:


And as a side note, with MSIE, it is possible to give an ASP extension to
the styles sheet to use scripting logic within that file.
 

ASP, PHP or whatever server side language you use, as long as you set the appropriate content type on (in) the file (be it css.asp, css.php or whatever) it should work in more browsers than just MSIE.  

I just ran a test and it worked fine in Opera 8, Firefox, MSIE6 and MSIE5 PC.  If it's served as text/css and the output is valid css, it shouldn't matter what the extension is. 

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[WSG] CSS validator updated?

2005-09-26 Thread Bert Doorn

Has the CSS validator (the W3C one) just become a whole lot more pedantic?

Sites that previously came out with a clean slate now throw up lots of 
warnings.


I mean..   You'd expect sites made by people in the Features section of 
the WSG site to be perfect.   I checked a few of them at random.  All 
had warnings, some only a dozen or so, others had a long long list.  Not 
that I want to single anyone out, but one would have thought Westciv 
would be OK.  Or maxdesign.   But no, even the W3C site gets a long list 
of warnings.


Has the validator become too pedantic all of a sudden or was it too 
lenient before?   Should we ignore the warnings? 

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Re: [WSG] Need help on css positioning

2005-09-24 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


As you can see I intend to set the width of the container and the banner
into 75% and push them to the left. I intend to reserve the space available
in the right after that for the sidebar whose width is set at 25% and
positioned to the right. But unfortunately, the sidebar has floated to the
right but it is always positioned under the banner.
 


A couple of things you might try:

1. Float the sidebar left instead of right
2. Don't float the sidebar at all.
3. Give the sidebar a little less than 25% width (e.g. 24%),  Some 
browsers cannot add up


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Re: [WSG] Semantics of ?

2005-09-23 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I'm just wondering how you all use the  element, or how you
think it -should- be used? 
 


There are several threads in the list archives about it.  Here's a couple:

http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg@webstandardsgroup.org/msg11099.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg@webstandardsgroup.org/msg17576.html

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Re: [WSG] 3px Space problems

2005-09-22 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I have a problem on my pages where there is a space between the navigation
and the image, there is like a 3 pixels space, but only when I view it in
anything else but Internet Explorer.
http://www.pacificfox.com.au 

Add this to your style sheet:   img { vertical-align:top; }(Or just 
for images in a certain section)


Firefox (and perhaps other browsers too) have a default image alignment 
of "baseline" which leaves that gap at the bottom.


Incidentally, you might want to have a look at the site with images 
disabled.   Or load it over a dial-up connection.


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Re: [WSG] Click here--reference

2005-09-19 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I'm working on a site that has lots of "click here" links. I believe  
it's considered bad form to use "click here" rather than making the  
link on words that better represent the title of the page being  
linked. Does anyone know a rule I can point to (and send my client to  
read) re accessibility and "click here"?


http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-meaningful-links :

13.1 Clearly identify the target of each link. [Priority 2]

   Link text <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#link-text>
   should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context
   -- either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text
   should also be terse. For example, in HTML, write "Information about
   version 4.3" instead of "click here".

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Re: [WSG] The Big Lie about CSS

2005-09-18 Thread Bert Doorn

I wrote:

Changing the css filename is not a good idea as you would then need to 
edit every html file to point to the updated file?


Unless like you (John)  mentioned, one uses an include (I missed that bit).

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Re: [WSG] The Big Lie about CSS

2005-09-18 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

  a) it's more efficient because the style sheet only gets downloaded 
once!

  b) you can reformat your whole site just by changing the CSS file!

and what, we just hope nobody notices that they contradict each other?


To me it's only a contradiction if you read "once" to mean "once in your 
lifetime" while I'm sure the intention is to say that the presentation 
does not need to be reloaded with every (x)html page you load on the 
site during a visit.


Having said that, I don't know how long browsers would actually cache 
the style sheet - I have had plenty of cases where I've updated it and 
had to resort to Ctrl+F5 to see the update (in various browsers).  That 
might just be a server setting, but I don't know.   Changing the css 
filename is not a good idea as you would then need to edit every html 
file to point to the updated file?


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Re: [WSG] images in html or css

2005-09-15 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Is the  tag still widly used among list members. Should
we put as many of the images we can in the css as backgrounds etc.
Right now i put most sitewide images in the css and the page by page content
in with the  tag.
 

My approach is (generally) that purely decorative images should ideally go in the css as backgrounds.  


Images with meaning (e.g. photos of products, mugshots of staff, graphs, etc) 
should be placed in the (x)html via the img element, with appropriate alt 
attribute.

But I am only speaking for myself - others may have a different 
approach/opinion.

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Re: [WSG] Style a parent element based on an id selector of the child element

2005-09-14 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Is there a way to style the td element with a background colour if an
 element has a active_menu id?
 

As others have said, you;d need to resort to JavaScript to do this, or 
change the setup so the id is on the container you want to change.


One thing though...  Is this in a data table or is part of a navigation 
list?  If the latter, I'd use a list (ul or ol) rather than a table. 

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Re: [WSG] td != div

2005-09-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

By what you're saying, I could simply have my outer wrapper for the 
margins/bg stuff, and then the  id'ed to replicate the whole 
header, and the ul id'ed to the nav list.


This makes sense.


Image replaced title here


...etc...

I'd even drop id="header" and just style the h1 element.  Unless you use 
more than one h1 per page...


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Re: [WSG] Tables and divs and soon

2005-09-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


1. How many were generated with a WYSIWYG editor?


Why would that matter. Not even the tools can get tables right?


If a large portion of the sites' developers used a flawed tool, it 
explains partly why a large portion of them had the same problems.  
That's why it matters. 


2. How many were generated by some sort of server side script?
So script writers can;t get tables right either?


Well, what does your research show?   I have seen plenty of script 
driven sites that do not validate, whether they use tables or not. 


3. How recently had they been updated?
Why would that be in any way relevant?


If a site is 3-5 years old, do you expect it to be written in the "new way"?


4. Were they "nested tables rule!" types (which I hate too)?
Some. So now some tables based layouts are good and some not? Which  
ones are they? Why?


Conversely, are all div based layouts good?  Why?   I'd rather see a 
simple, clean two or three column table than a page suffering from 
divitis and classitis (like the Barclays home page mentioned in another 
thread). 

It's a bit like statistics - they can be used to prove almost  
anything, depending on how you interpret them :-)


Or rhetoric, which can be used to convince oneself of just about  
anything.


I've seen plenty of evidence of that in this debate, from both camps.  
So here's a little more of it.


In the end it is a matter of choice.  A matter of what "Standards based 
design" means to the individual web developer.   In your case it seems 
to mean "never use a single table for page layout".  In my case it means 
"only use a table for layout if the alternative is proving too difficult"


Tables are only as complex as you make them and yes, I have seen plenty 
of astoundingly complex table based layouts.  I have also seen awfully 
complex css based designs. 

Anyway, I've said enough.   I'm happy to dwell in the middle ground, 
doing what I can with what I know.


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Re: [WSG] Tables and divs and soon

2005-09-07 Thread Bert Doorn

This thread is getting longer by the minute, but I enjoy the debate :-)

I have found a very high correlation between malformed documents and  
the use of tables (with the errors occurring in direct association  
with table code).


OK, you found a strong correlation, but are you drawing the right 
conclusion? 


1. How many were generated with a WYSIWYG editor?
2. How many were generated by some sort of server side script?
3. How recently had they been updated?
4. Were they "nested tables rule!" types (which I hate too)?

It's a bit like statistics - they can be used to prove almost anything, 
depending on how you interpret them :-)


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Re: [WSG] Tables and divs and soon

2005-09-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day again :-)


http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20050630/#layouttables
unless of course you would argue the difference between "should not" and 
"not allowed", in which case I guess you would win.


It's a working draft, not a recommendation or a standard and you're right.  I used to work as a QA Auditor (ISO9001).  In standards parlance, "should not" has a different meaning than "must not" or "shall not".  Still, if you want to use that document   

"*Generally*, display technologies such as [CSS2] 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20050630/#CSS2> can 
achieve the desired layout effect with improved accessibility."   
Generally?  Meaning there are exceptions?


"However, *when it is necessary to use a table for layout*, the table 
must linearize in a readable order."   So there are times "when it is 
*necessary* to use a table for layout"?  

Keep reading...   
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20050630/#layouttables-avoid


"It is *recommended* that authors not use the |table| element for layout 
purposes *unless the desired effect absolutely cannot be achieved using 
CSS*."


I rest my case.
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Re: [WSG] Tables and divs and soon

2005-09-07 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

This is called the web standards group. I imagine that those here  
essentially adhere to the value of web standards, and discuss things  
in this context.


And we are.  Where in the standard does it say we are not *allowed* to 
use even one table for layout? 


3.3. of which says: Use style sheets to control layout and presentation.


A table's presentation can be controlled with CSS.  No need for bgcolor, 
background, border etc in the (x)html.


5.3 of which says: Do not use tables for layout unless the table  
makes sense when linearized


See that word "unless"?  

The "CSS is religious" thing is a straw man. 


The way some people preach against using ANY table for layout as they 
are evil sure makes it look like a religious obsession.  But maybe it's 
politics rather than religion.  Right wing or left wing?  Can't sit on 
the fence or keep changing camps based on our needs, or can we...


From the get go the tables for layout approach was a hack 


Call it a hack if you like.  CSS layouts are usually full of them too.  
HTML (and CSS) did not and do not (and may never)  have anything that 
will just as reliably give all people the layout they want and need in 
the browsers that most people use.  Horses for courses.


History  teaches us that such things, regardless of their present 
usefulness,  we usually come to regret.


I am sure history has plenty of examples of quite the opposite too :-)

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Re: [WSG] braindead - iframes???

2005-09-06 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Kenny Graham wrote:

Objects of type text/html (or application/xhtml+xml) are what I use. But 
good luck getting them to work in IE. In my experience, IE will only do it 
if it's a local (x)html file.
 

Works fine for me in Firefox and Opera 8.  Works in IE6 Windows as well, 
if served as text/html.   Don't know about IE5.x


If you're serving application/xhtml+xml it's not going to work in IE 
because IE doesn't like application/xhtml+xml.


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Re: [WSG] braindead - iframes???

2005-09-06 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


What's out there that displays the contents of a URI and validates?
 



Alternative content here


Give the object a width and height with CSS

#Something { width: 40em; height: 30em; }

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Re: [WSG] Tables and divs and soon

2005-09-06 Thread Bert Doorn

Not that I'm into "me too" posts but here's my 2 cents.


I don't think "using tables is a very good way of raising the risk of
invalid documents" as John suggested, but rather people that use tables have
got an old-fashioned mindset. 

Until a few years ago, I used tables for layout, exclusively.  However, 
I made sure my pages validated to html 4.01 strict or xhtml 1.0 strict.  
Table based designs are not the cause of the errors, nor is it more 
difficult to make them valid than documents without tables.  

John: "using tables is a very good way of raising the risk of  invalid 
documents."


I agree that most sites that have invalid markup use tables (or even 
frames) for layout.  That makes sense, since people who know how to 
design without tables would more than likely understand the importance 
of validation. But I don't agree with John's conclusion which seems to 
reverse that thought. 

In *many* cases sites that are full of validation errors are either 
produced a WYSIWYG editor or by some server side script.  Indeed, many 
scripted sites are littered with nested tables and validation errors.
So "Using programmers is a very good way of raising the risk of invalid 
documents"?Nah!


Anyway, ICSS is not a religion to me and I will use a simple layout 
table if it helps me achieve what I need to achieve :-)  And yes, it 
will validate!


Regards 
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Re: [WSG] Expanding height of left column to fill space

2005-09-05 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day again


Once upon a time it was NN4, now it's IE6, and tomorrow who knows? And
that's the point of designing to web standards. As for what the client
wants, I say it's two of: good, fast, cheap.
 


Yep.  And some of those have difficulty with non table based layouts :-)


However, I doubt very much that the big driver is the visual design Bert,
and I doubt most people visiting or commissioning a web site give two
hoots as to how its built. 

The vast majority of my clients don't care whether I use a table or divs 
(and would not even know the difference).  But they do often want a 
particular layout and all except a few do look at it with a graphical 
browser. 


For the record, the people paying my bills *do* want standards based
design - I'm working in e-govt - and they want content that is usable by
people, and *easily* manipulated by machines.
 

Standards based (good) does not rule out using the occasional table for 
layout if it's the quickest way to get something out there (fast and 
cheap).  


("e-govt"  - is that the real world?  LOL)


If a 2 column CSS layout with a band of color down one side is difficult
to implement with todays technology, shouldn't we instead look for designs
that work with the technology we are using?


If it's your own site and you are happy to have a different layout, sure.  Or 
if you can convince the client that your way is better.  But if the client 
wants a particular look, We should give them what they want.  If that means 
using a *single* table to get two columns of equal length and with different 
background colors, I will use the table.


setting a background on one or two div's *still* uses less code than the
equivalent markup for tables.

Show me an example?*  *Take into account not just the html, but also the 
css and the file size of any images you might use for the background 
color(s). 


No, it's not a crime, but really if
your design needs a table in the strucutral 
layer to support the visual design, should 
you not revisit the visual design?
 

The visual design is not always negotiable, so I use the means available 
to me to deliver what I am paid to deliver in the most efficient way I 
can.   To me that means CSS based layouts *most* of the time.


Regards 
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Re: [WSG] Expanding height of left column to fill space

2005-09-05 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

we have created an expectation of how a design will *visually* render 
in a browser. 

Quick reality check  What do most people use when visiting a 
website?  What do clients who pay the bill want?


The whole concept of using tables for layout is flawed 
...

adds unneccessary weight to the design

On those sites that use tables nested to the nth degree you're 
absolutely right.  But a simple 1 row, two (or three or ...  column 
table with solid background colours (via CSS) is likely a lot lighter 
than multiple divs, background images, hacks, conditional comments,  
javascript etc.


It's not that CSS is hard, it's that the implementation is buggy in a lot of browsers. 

And since we live in the real world, where real people use those buggy 
browsers, we do what works best.  Sometimes that means a table.   I 
agree tables SHOULD not be used for layout but it's not a crime to use 
one occasionally especially if the non table approach "adds unnecessary 
weight to the design".


Regards 
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Re: [WSG] tabbed content within content pages

2005-09-01 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


unlike the other site I mentioned
http://www.miavanloon.be/huifkartochten/essen/ which has tabbed content
actually within the page.  
 

It may appear that way, but unless I'm missing something, there are 3 
different pages:


1. There is a delay (loading a new page) when clicking on a tab
2. The links (in the tabs) are to different urls. 
3. There's no (i)frame, object or JavaScript anywhere in the source


Regards
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Re: [WSG] Suckerfish nav moving page background image

2005-08-30 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Here's a screenshot of what I'm experiencing
http://media.compliance.org.au/data/jumpy_bkg.gif
Note that you also need to have the page set to the centered layout
for it to happen.
 

Uhmmm.  What do you mean with "have the page set to the centered layout"?  Is this some obscure browser option or plug-in?  


I do get the jumping horizontal scrollbar, which is a direct effect of the 
content expanding with the long text on submenu items.

Regards 
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Re: [WSG] How do I combat extra padding?

2005-08-30 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


I had to create a table for this piece of our templates but am finding that
firefox, netscape 7 and opera are adding extra padding under the images in
the top row of cells.   So far my fix has been to give our mozilla
stylesheet margin-bottom: -4px for these images which has worked but I would
like to know why firefox, netscape and opera are adding the extra padding.
 


I recall having similar issues myself with table based layouts in the past.


From memory, Mozilla, gives the images a vertical-align of "baseline" unless 
you override it.  Try giving them (in css) a vertical-align:bottom.


Regards 
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Re: [WSG] Two column left navigation

2005-08-30 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I have a web site with a left navigation system consisting of images 
and text in 2 columns.
The image is displayed on the left, with the text link to the right of 
it.

...
The width of the container is fixed (at 220px), and the size of the 
left images is 100px.


Why not use a simple (unordered) list?   Since (as I read it) all the 
images are the same size (width AND height?)  you can float the image 
left.  Something like:


ul#nav li { height: 100px; } /* add whatever else you need */
ul#nav img { float:left; width:100px; height:100px; }

Regards 
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Re: [WSG] Online Resources for HTML Beginners

2005-08-28 Thread Bert Doorn

Tags?

There's elements and attributes.  Consider "The title tag" - are we 
referring to the title element or a title attribute?  There's also the 
cite element and attribute and there may be some more but these two come 
to mind straight-away.


Always refer to elements and attributes to avoid confusion.   Elements 
have attributes, they don't have tags and are not tags.


Regards 
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Re: [WSG] Site which only works in IE?

2005-08-27 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I'm working on the first three pages of a new website,  
www.zebragraphics.co.uk/tcs, which seems to only work properly in PC 
IE6 and breaks in  Firefox (PC & Mac) and IE5, Safari and Camino on 
the Mac. I'm used to this being the other way around...


If you're referring to the issue of the panel on the left not 
stretching, try adding this to the style sheet:


#container:after {
   display: block;
   content: " ";
   clear:both;
   height:0;
}

Incidentally, your use of heading elements (particularly the h6) seems a 
little odd.  It's almost as if they were used for presentation.  But 
maybe I'm mistaken..


Regards 
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Re: [WSG] weird three menu on IE 5

2005-08-23 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

Dwain, the url was shown at the bottom of Setiawan's email:

   for more detail those code was in :   
   http://embun.net

   http://embun.net/style/style_black.css
   http://embun.net/script/script.js

Setiawan, it would indeed help if you would tell us what part of the 
menu looks weird to you.   The only thing that looks odd to me in IE5 
(PC) is some extra space between the (background) bullet and the text  
in the menu items


IE5 / 5.5 PC is not used by that many people.  They would not know how 
it is ~supposed~ to look and the menu works fine.  But if you do want to 
fix it, the auto left margin on the ul and problems with the IE5 box 
model may be part of the reason for it (no guarantees).


Note for "YW Webmaster": a 34kB email to say "Can you describe what its 
doing wrong in IE 5 and 5.5?"  seems a little over the top.


Regards 
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Re: [WSG] Need recomendations for CMS system

2005-08-17 Thread Bert Doorn

I thought this thread was CLOSED?

Regards 
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Re: [WSG] html design - best practices

2005-08-16 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

That's a very curious thing for the W3C to publish. I am not aware of  
any HTML standard in which b and i are deprecated. Can anyone cite  
such a declaration?


Cant find one myself.  The closest is:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/graphics.html#h-15./2 (which talks 
about some "font style elements"):


//Although they are not all deprecated 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/conform.html#deprecated>, their use is 
discouraged in favor of style sheets./

/
/So tt,i,b,big and small are not deprecated while strike, s and u *are* 
officially deprecated.


Either way, as standards advocates, I believe we *should* avoid these 
(and other) presentational elements and attributes in our (x)html, 
whether deprecated or not.


Regards
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Re: [WSG] Forcing Display of Block

2005-08-15 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


   Very simply:

   
   Hello.
   
   

   Is there any way to have the second "p" appear without
   inserting a non-breaking space?
 

Question: What's the (semantic or otherwise) meaning of the empty paragraph?  


If it's only there to add extra white-space, why not add padding-bottom:1em (or 
whatever you need) to the div?

If it's there for another reason, you could try giving it a height (through CSS)

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Re: [WSG] CSS rollover with dynamic drop down menu

2005-08-15 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I'm trying to combine a CSS image rollover with a drop down menu. 
Everything is working fine bar the css image rollover.


For some reason the a:hover is not being read. I've probably missed 
something very simple but just can't see it.


Your HTML: 


 

Your CSS:

 #Home a:hover {background: url(Menu.gif) no-repeat 0px -14px;}

That rule will be applied to a hovered link *inside* another element that has id="Home".  
However, in your HTML *the link itself* has that id.


To fix it, either put the id on the list item (li) or change the css to 
#Home:hoverSame goes for the other links.


Hope this makes sense.

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Re: [WSG] Spacing Issue

2005-08-12 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


Thanks for the replies.  I actually took a step back, re-evaluated the
suggestions I got and came up with this test page which appears to work:

http://www.olpguitars.com/index2.asp

The top links all work and I retained the graphic designer's sliced image.

oh yeah...it VALIDATES!

A step in the right direction (in my "classist" opinion anyway).   I 
won't go into all the remaining issues - you're probably aware of them 
anyway and have done the best you can with what you know.


One thing though, what's that tiny text on the left?  Is it legalese 
fine-print you are trying to hide from potential customers, or is it 
important information they came to the site  for?  Spare a thought for 
visitors who use MSIE (which likely will be most of them) and don't have 
perfect eyesight (which may be many of them).  

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Re: [WSG] Firefox JS Image function

2005-08-02 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


The following website uses a Javascript function and a target layer to
display a new image every time the page refreshes.

http://www.theleadsgroup.co.uk/

This works fine in IE browsers and in Firefox/Mozilla browsers it seems to
not display the images at all?

Anything I am doing wrong or any advice?
 

You're using MS proprietary Javascript (namely innerHTML). 

Either use the DOM or simplify things by putting a placeholder image 
(1x1 transparent gif stretched to desired dimensions?) into the html and 
changing its src attribute in  your javascript. 

e.g.  document.getElementById("randomimage").src=imageArray[picknum];  
(and just put the file names and paths into the array)


Note: I haven't tested it, but it should work in theory (except in very 
old, pre DOM browsers) 


Regards
--
Bert Doorn, Web Developer
Better Web Design
http://www.betterwebdesign.com.au



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Re: [WSG] Site Check: VVE

2005-08-01 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day


 http://testdrive.fueladvance.com/vve/
<http://testdrive.fueladvance.com/vve/Dashboard/Default.ashx>   


Pretty good (looks clean, code and layout wise).   I don't like using as 
many classes as you do, but that's personal preference.


The only real problem I see is accessibility - a number of links with 
the same text [read more] going to different URL's.   (Checkpoint 13.1)


And there's a couple of errors and warnings in the CSS.

Regards
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Re: [WSG] background images fluid

2005-08-01 Thread Bert Doorn

Bruce wrote:


I guess I cannot communicate what I mean.

I was wondering if an image would stretch as a background image in the
stylesheet as a background. That's all.
 

Short answer: No, you cannot, with CSS and HTML as it is today, resize a 
background image.   


The only properties available for background are:

 background-attachment
 background-color
 background-image
 background-position
 background-repeat 

There is no CSS property "background-size" or "background-zoom" or 
similar in CSS2.


So for now, if you want to stretch it you will have to use a 
(foreground) image and use trickery (absolute positioning, z-index etc) 
to make it appear behind other objects.


Hope this answers your question
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Re: [WSG] link ?

2005-07-27 Thread Bert Doorn

G'day

I'd say your problem is here:


 #navwrapper li a:link, a:visited {


See the a:visited?  That affects ALL links on the page.

I think you meant to say:

#navwrapper li a:link, #navwrapper li a:visited {


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