On 6/24/07, Reg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi all,

I have spent an entire weekend diving into CSS positioning.  I'm a
table layout whiz and it is killing me that I can't seem to master
even the simplest layout using CSS.

I have two pages using the SAME stylesheet and DIV
structure.  However, I am not receiving the same results and, for the
life of me, I can't figure out why.

Here they are:

        (1)  This is a view source dump from a web application page using
the new CSS layout.  It has all of the .NET junk and that may be
causing my problems. But -- THIS PAGE IS WORKING:
        http://www.littletownmart.com/css/index-sat.html

        (2)  This is the "bare bones" page with just the DIVs and a little
bit of text.  THIS PAGE IS NOT WORKING!!!
        http://www.littletownmart.com/css/index_Simple.html

        (3)  Here is the stylesheet:
        http://www.littletownmart.com/css/main.css

Welcome to the list and to css. It does get easier but it takes a
little time to change how you think about issues.

Lets start at the top. First you need an entire doctype; yours is only
partial. You are throwing IE into quirks mode. Essentially you are
asking the browser to guess at what you want to do not telling it what
set of rules to follow. I'd suggest using the strict html 4.01
version. Doctypes can be found here (you may already have all of these
links but I can't know that so forgive the repition):
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html

Second, don't develop in IE. IE6 and lower are notoriously broken in
terms of css. IE7 is better but still not top of the line. Use Firefox
or Opera then corrupt your code to make it work in IE. Get the
developers plug in for FF, the Peppersack plug in, allows in browser
editing so you can immediately see the effect of changes.

Thirdly, have a look at http://www.positioniseverything.net (often
referred to pie).It has an entire section devoted to known bugs in IE6
and 5x. Most of the bugs have several methods of dealing with them.
The ones shown are pretty much the latest and greatest but there are
simpler ways to manage things. Mostly you have to watch the width of
things and you have to clear floats. Anything floated is out of the
flow of the document. With IE6 you have to watch the "hasLayout"
problem discussed in pie. For a discussion of floats, I've always
found this document at brain jar makes sense to me:
http://www.brainjar.com/css/positioning/

Fourthly, if you look at css sites you'll find that absolute
positioning isn't widely used for full layouts. There are problems
with using it since it takes things out of the normal flow of the
document and leads to the always aggravating unintended consequences.
Take the plunge and go with normal positioning and floats. Its worth
learning the value of position:relative in layout (covered in part in
pie).

So, start with the doctype, it won't seem to help much but it does,
and then do the pie articles. At that point bring back your questions
and this group should be able to help. It's a struggle like Riva said,
but it's worth it.



drew

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