"Brian" <us*****@julietremblay.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:yk**********************@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Will Hartung wrote: The blocks have elaborate headers (large images), and small content
areas that will hold little blocks of text.
That sounds like an odd design choice. Are the headings so important
that the remaining content should be shafted?
Imagine, if you will, a small frame with an elaborate border (like a picture
frame) with a blurb of text in the middle. The frame is essentially static
and fixed, the text needs to be replaceable. The top parts of the frame, for
example, has says something like "Recent Letters" in pretty text with a nice
little folksy letter icon, or "Latest News" with a newspaper icon against a
star filled background. Stuff like that.
Currently, I have this done with pixel specific tables within tables
within tables, using the images as backgrounds of the repseective
TD's.
Presumably because you cannot do it with css?
Specifically because I have yet to figure out how to do it with CSS (thus
the search for "best practice" and technique).
But beyond that I'm just curious what others are doing for this kind
of layout.
I use css to suggest layouts to clients.
That's the overall goal, but my primary goal is to get it working as best
and quickly as practical.
<table style="text-align: left;" border="0" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0"> <tbody>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top; width: 191px; height: 65px;"
background="web/cc_letter_header.gif">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<!-- cc_letter_body.gif is 1 pixel high -->
<td style="vertical-align: top; width: 191px; height: 191px;"
background="web/cc_letter_body.gif">
</td>
</tr>
That doesn't look much like tabular data, though.
Nope. A pure layout jail.
The basic problems are simply that you have a director who last worked on a
website 4 years ago using a design team with a history in the print market
implemented by someone with extensive backend experience but little front
end (me). My goal at this stage is to do what they want, the way they want
it, and go from there.
I find CSS able to do some things, but difficult to do others. Most typical
is getting all of my columns expanded properly:
========
## #### ##
## #### ##
## #### ##
## #### ##
========
Typically I get:
========
## #### ##
## #### ##
__ #### ##
__ ####
========
( == are hdrs/ftrs, __ are "spaces"...hard to line up in a proportional
font).
I could probably do this entire page using absolute positioning of the
graphics and elements, in fact I know I could. I was playing a bit with that
last night and had reasonable success.
With regards to positioning, absolute positioning is relative to the screen
origin, and relative positioning is relative to the original element
position. Is there a technique to place an object relative to its containers
origin? Absolute positioning removes an item from the flow. It would be nice
to be able to create a box element (like a div tag) that is IN the flow, but
place elements "absolutely" within it, so when, say, a header expands, all
of the positioning doesn't get mucked about.
Is there a technique for that? Or do I need Javascript? Javascript is a last
option.
I could pin down all of the elements absolutely, but I want the items to
flex in the mostly text areas. This one page I'm talking about, though, is
pretty static. Since the site as a whole is rather static, that's why I
picked specific browsers.
Oh, I'm doing this all by hand. Most sophisticated tool I'm using is Mozilla
Composer.
Thanx for any pointers.
Regards,
Will Hartung
(wi***@msoft.com)
