How to detect table width or height?

[Dennis]

Is there some way --using, say, DOM or javascript-- to detect the
current pixel width and/or height of a relatively sized table or of
one of its columns or rows. I'm going to be writing javascript to
adjust my page to the viewer's browser window dimensions and this
would sure be great information to have.

Thanks ....
Dennis

[Martin Honnen]

Dennis wrote:

Is there some way --using, say, DOM or javascript-- to detect the
current pixel width and/or height of a relatively sized table or of
one of its columns or rows. I'm going to be writing javascript to
adjust my page to the viewer's browser window dimensions and this
would sure be great information to have.

With IE4+, Netscape 6+, Opera 7 you can read
element.offsetW idth
element.offsetH eight
of any element in the page. So try
var element;
if (document.all)
element = document.all['elementId'];
else if (document.getEl ementById)
element = document.getEle mentById('eleme ntId');
if (element) {
// read element.offsetW idth/element.offsetH eight here
}
As your question and the answer is not about HTML but JavaScript I have
crossposted to comp.lang.javas cript and set follow-up to it.

--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[EightNineThree]

"Dennis" <theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com> wrote in message
news:vv******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

Is there some way --using, say, DOM or javascript-- to detect the
current pixel width and/or height of a relatively sized table or of
one of its columns or rows. I'm going to be writing javascript to
adjust my page to the viewer's browser window dimensions and this
would sure be great information to have.

Why resort to BS javascript trickery when you can just use a flexible
layout?
--
Karl Core

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not
cease to be insipid.
Friedrich Nietzsche

eightninethree AT eightninethree. com

[Stan Brown]

In article <vv************ *************** *****@4ax.com> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Dennis
<theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com> wrote:

I'm going to be writing javascript to
adjust my page to the viewer's browser window dimensions

Oh god, here we go again.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Brian]

Stan Brown wrote:

In article <vv************ *************** *****@4ax.com> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Dennis
<theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com> wrote:

I'm going to be writing javascript to
adjust my page to the viewer's browser window dimensions

Oh god, here we go again.

Not me. I'm steering clear of this one. :) (Note to op: use Google
to search for recent threads on resolution, browser window, and design.)

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Dennis]

I have a long list to put up, and I want as much of it as possible to
be viewable to the user without scrolling. So the wider the user's
window, the more columns I can put up. Now, if there was a setting
that would collapse a table's column at a given width, I could work
with it that way too, but I'd still need javascript to find out how
many columns had been collapsed (eg, had 0 width) --so I'm sort of
back where I started.

On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 08:15:44 -0400, "EightNineThree " <uc*@ftc.gov>
wrote:

Why resort to BS javascript trickery when you can just use a flexible
layout?

[Eric Bohlman]

Dennis <theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com> wrote in
news:op******** *************** *********@4ax.c om:

I have a long list to put up, and I want as much of it as possible to
be viewable to the user without scrolling. So the wider the user's
window, the more columns I can put up. Now, if there was a setting
that would collapse a table's column at a given width, I could work
with it that way too, but I'd still need javascript to find out how
many columns had been collapsed (eg, had 0 width) --so I'm sort of
back where I started.

I think we've got an "XY problem" here. An XY problem occurs when there's
confusion between ends and means. Your first problem states your goal in
general terms: you want the user to be able to see as much of your list as
possible without scrolling. That sounds, in the absence of more specific
information about your application, like a reasonable goal. Your next
sentence gets a little more specific: you want to display the list in
columns, with the number of columns increasing with browsing window size.
That's starting to move from ends to means, but it still sounds like a
fairly reasonable implementation. So your "X" is that you want to display
a list as multiple columns, with the number of columns varying according to
window width.

However, you've now jumped from that requirement to the notion that you
need a table to do it, and that you need to dynamically resize the table
with scripting in order to do it. That's your "Y" (a specific
implementation) , but it's not necessarily the only means of achieving your
end. There may be some "Z" that would do a better job. A lot of people
here, through their own sometimes bitter experience, realize that the
particular "Y" you've picked tends to be difficult and unreliable in
practice.

The solution is to tell us about your "X" in more detail. There's a very
good chance that if you do, one or more people here will recognize that
they've already solved the problem in some way that doesn't resemble your
"Y" at all and they'll show you how.

[Dennis]

Sure, I'm for anything that works. I got into the table idea because
I've read that detecting the user's overall browser window dimensions
(speaking of X,Y ...) can't be reliably done --or at least efficiently
done without a ton of code. And that was my initital "Y" approach.
My objective here is to have the number of columns increase so as to
accomodate the user's browser width. Actually, given the importance
of reading text, you would think HTML would have a "multi-column wrap"
feature, but apparently it doesn't.

Dennis

On 11 Oct 2003 18:23:53 GMT, Eric Bohlman <eb******@earth link.net>
wrote:

Dennis <theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com> wrote in
news:op******* *************** **********@4ax. com:

I have a long list to put up, and I want as much of it as possible to
be viewable to the user without scrolling. So the wider the user's
window, the more columns I can put up. Now, if there was a setting
that would collapse a table's column at a given width, I could work
with it that way too, but I'd still need javascript to find out how
many columns had been collapsed (eg, had 0 width) --so I'm sort of
back where I started.

I think we've got an "XY problem" here. An XY problem occurs when there's
confusion between ends and means. Your first problem states your goal in
general terms: you want the user to be able to see as much of your list as
possible without scrolling. That sounds, in the absence of more specific
information about your application, like a reasonable goal. Your next
sentence gets a little more specific: you want to display the list in
columns, with the number of columns increasing with browsing window size.
That's starting to move from ends to means, but it still sounds like a
fairly reasonable implementation. So your "X" is that you want to display
a list as multiple columns, with the number of columns varying according to
window width.

However, you've now jumped from that requirement to the notion that you
need a table to do it, and that you need to dynamically resize the table
with scripting in order to do it. That's your "Y" (a specific
implementation ), but it's not necessarily the only means of achieving your
end. There may be some "Z" that would do a better job. A lot of people
here, through their own sometimes bitter experience, realize that the
particular "Y" you've picked tends to be difficult and unreliable in
practice.

The solution is to tell us about your "X" in more detail. There's a very
good chance that if you do, one or more people here will recognize that
they've already solved the problem in some way that doesn't resemble your
"Y" at all and they'll show you how.

[William Tasso]

Dennis wrote:

Please don't top-post.

...
My objective here is to have the number of columns increase so as to
accomodate the user's browser width.

set a width to the elements in question and employ CSS: float

--
William Tasso

[Barry Pearson]

Brian wrote:
[snip]

Not me. I'm steering clear of this one. :) (Note to op: use Google
to search for recent threads on resolution, browser window, and
design.)

Ensure that your read the following, which didn't get an answer from Brian. It
asks how a person should decide what size to make pixel-oriented content such
as images & photographs:
http://groups.google.c om/gr************* *************** ****@newsfep1-gui.server.ntli .net
http://tinyurl.com/qkqe

Have a look at one of Brian's own pages:
http://people.umass.edu/btrembla/jardin/garden.html
http://tinyurl.com/qkqt

If you view that page, and contract the window on your browser, you will find
that, at about 864 viewport pixels, a horizontal scroll-bar appears. Brian's
page is really designed for quite large screen sizes. That is partly because
of Brian's CSS. Switch off the CSS, and the horizontal scroll-bars don't
appear until the viewport width is down to about 688 pixels.

The basic reason is simple - the photograph on that page is 661 x 391 pixels.
There is nothing wrong with that! There are very few people with 640 x 480
screens, so why bother to cater for them? Nearly half of web users have 800 x
600 screens, so it is a good idea to cater for them. I cannot fault Brian's
decision to base his image size on the screen sizes of the vast majority of
web users. IF that is how he arrived at the particular size! (I hope he didn't
simply make a random decision).

My own view is that, having made the decision to have a photograph size that
fits onto the common screen size, it is wrong to cause further problems by
requiring even larger screen sizes. I wouldn't have CSS that did that. With my
own photograph pages, using photographs that are 700 pixels wide, there are no
horizontal scroll-bars at 800 pixels. But - Brian is allowed to choose
otherwise - his valid choice.

I recently did a brief survey of the widths of web sites. See:
http://groups.google.c om/gr************* *************** *******@newsfep 1-win.server.ntli .net
http://tinyurl.com/qks7

Right across the world, major web sites have been (and presumably are still
being) designed on the assumption that the available screen width is up to 800
pixels. There appears to be an implicit assumption that media-type="screen"
means "800 pixels", even among people have who never heard of media types.

Those 800-pixel-wide web site are of all types. Tableless & tables. With &
without CSS. Old & new. Structured with hn, etc, and not. Strict,
Transitional, or no DOCTYPES. HTML or XHTML. The paradigm is "screens are up
to 800 pixels wide".

What are the implications for how we should write HTML & CSS?

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/