loose.dtd & quirks

[Chris Sharman]

I've got the following url (centre generated by cgi, and including
banner, menus, etc designed by someone else) -
http://services.ccagroup.co.uk/upbin...whsmithwedding
This looks as intended on a fair range of browsers (the dark blue menu
separators are about 5-6mm).

here's identical html, but with the loose dtd referenced on the doctype-
http://services.ccagroup.co.uk/proofs/unquirktest.html
This gets lots of unwanted padding - the menu separators are about 12mm,
and the blue bar above the menu is missing.

I believe the absence of loose.dtd triggers quirks mode, which I'd
prefer to avoid.
I particularly don't like being reliant on quirks mode for the desired
appearance.
I'm guessing that cellspacing & cellpadding get ignored when I move into
standards mode - am I correct ?
Can anyone tell me what CSS replaces them ?
I've tried various combinations of padding & border-collapse, without
success.

Thanks,
Chris

[Lauri Raittila]

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Chris Sharman wrote:

I particularly don't like being reliant on quirks mode for the desired
appearance.
I'm guessing that cellspacing & cellpadding get ignored when I move into
standards mode - am I correct ?

No. As your code is so horrible to look at, I can't say much. But the
problem is likely that you set some widths somewhere, and don't take
account paddings, which are always added to width. Cellpadding is
padding.

Propably easiest way to fix is build it ground up. As you create
something with cgi, I really hope you didn't hardcode too much
presentional stuff in it...

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Utrecht, NL.
Support me, buy Opera:
https://secure.bmtmicro.com/opera/bu...tml?AID=882173

[Chris Sharman]

Lauri Raittila wrote:

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Chris Sharman wrote:

I particularly don't like being reliant on quirks mode for the desired
appearance.
I'm guessing that cellspacing & cellpadding get ignored when I move into
standards mode - am I correct ?

No. As your code is so horrible to look at, I can't say much. But the
problem is likely that you set some widths somewhere, and don't take
account paddings, which are always added to width. Cellpadding is
padding.

You're talking about the stripping out of spaces & returns, or something
else ? That's a feature of my include - it throws away superfluous
indentation from included header files - seemed like a good idea at the
time.

It's something like:
include(banner);
include(menu);
blah blah
include(footer);

Propably easiest way to fix is build it ground up. As you create
something with cgi, I really hope you didn't hardcode too much
presentional stuff in it...

Thanks, but no thanks - if that's "easiest" I'll leave it in quirks
mode, I think.

Chris

[Eric B. Bednarz]

Chris Sharman <ch***********@sorry.nospam> writes:

I've got the following url (centre generated by cgi, and including
banner, menus, etc designed by someone else) -
Well, that's where you actually should fix things. There's a truckload
of bogus markup, including decorational table cells, spacer GIFs and
totally redundant P elements.
http://services.ccagroup.co.uk/upbin...whsmithwedding
This looks as intended on a fair range of browsers (the dark blue menu
separators are about 5-6mm).

Oh dear, as everybody knows the only appropriate length unit on the web
are feet (for optimal results you still need to sniff the
accept-language header since Italian feet are much smaller than those of
the rest of the world). :->
Anyway, as far as stylesheets are concerned, the differences are mostly
due to margins, a oneliner like

td p,td form {margin: 0}

gets rid of most of them in Mozilla, but you need to remove the cause,
not the symptoms, really.
--
| ) Più Cabernet,
-( meno Internet.
| ) http://bednarz.nl/

[Lauri Raittila]

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Chris Sharman wrote:

Lauri Raittila wrote:

No. As your code is so horrible to look at, I can't say much.

You're talking about the stripping out of spaces & returns, or something
else ?

Yes.

> Propably easiest way to fix is build it ground up. As you create
> something with cgi, I really hope you didn't hardcode too much
> presentional stuff in it...

Thanks, but no thanks - if that's "easiest" I'll leave it in quirks
mode, I think.

Actually, rebuilding sites take very little time - you already have
graphics and colors, all you need to do is write stylesheet. Takes maybe
half hour.

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Utrecht, NL.
Support me, buy Opera:
https://secure.bmtmicro.com/opera/bu...tml?AID=882173

[Johannes Koch]

Eric B. Bednarz wrote:

Oh dear, as everybody knows the only appropriate length unit on the web
are feet (for optimal results you still need to sniff the
accept-language header since Italian feet ^^^^^^^^
Italian speaking feet
are much smaller than those of
the rest of the world). :->

--
Johannes Koch
In te domine speravi; non confundar in aeternum.
(Te Deum, 4th cent.)

[Eric B. Bednarz]

Johannes Koch <ko**@w3development.de> writes:

Eric B. Bednarz wrote:

accept-language header since Italian feet

^^^^^^^^
Italian speaking feet

English speaking feet. Italian speaking, piedi.
(you could have checked that first with a feet validator :)
--
| ) Più Cabernet,
-( meno Internet.
| ) http://bednarz.nl/

[Chris Sharman]

Eric B. Bednarz wrote:

Anyway, as far as stylesheets are concerned, the differences are mostly
due to margins, a oneliner like

td p,td form {margin: 0}

Brilliant, thank you: "td p" does the business (a missing # on a bgcolor
attribute :( was the cause of the missing bar).
Can't see any impact from "td form" - don't think there is any in the menu.

I'd like to sort it all out, but the guy who's responsible for the
design is only slowly weaning himself off dreamweaver, so the bad shit
has a way of creeping back in.

Now I can make it look right, we can keep incrementally creeping in the
right direction.

How many Italian feet to the mm ? (on a wet Thursday) ?
Cheers,
Chris

[Chris Sharman]

Chris Sharman wrote:

Eric B. Bednarz wrote:

Anyway, as far as stylesheets are concerned, the differences are mostly
due to margins, a oneliner like

td p,td form {margin: 0}

Brilliant, thank you: "td p" does the business (a missing # on a bgcolor
attribute :( was the cause of the missing bar).

Now valid html+css !

Thanks again,
Chris