ASP/HTML client layout / design

[John Spiegel]

Hi all,

I'm hoping to get some pointers to resources. I'm a long time Windows
programmer who's been in the past year or two dabbling/reading/practicing
ASP.NET-based Web apps. The problems I keep running into are more front end
layout issues. A specific example is how to set a static size of one table
cell while setting the next to absorb whatever space is left. I've had a
case where setting the widths to 100px and 100% on these columns still takes
up closer to 200px for the first column.

Of the half-dozen Web development books I've read, they all give the
"mechanics in a vacuum" telling me that this setting is used for that
scenario (if you want your width proportional to screen, use %, otherwise
use px). But my biggest challenge always seems to come down to issues where
the combination of techniques doesn't do as I'd expect or I do something
like setting an attribute to left-align something and it appears to center
it anyway.

Any recommendations on books or sites with the tips, tricks, workarounds and
other ugly details of getting your page to show the way you want it to?

TIA,

John

 

[Eliyahu Goldin]

John,

As you probably already know, when it comes to column widths, the browser
treats your instructions as recommendations. You can sometimes trick it
though. When I want one column to take exactly width of the widest word in
it and the other column to absorb the rest, I set the first column width to
1px and the second to 100%. Works perfectly in IE.

Eliyahu

 

[John Spiegel]

Hi Eliyahu,

Thanks for responding. In the specific case, I had tried varying the
explicit size but not down to a single pixel. I'll give it a shot.

Have you found any good resources that delve into these sort of
considerations, i.e., client design? All I seem to find seem to treat the
layout of the page as nothing more than an excuse to then return to the
server-side programming.

Thanks again,

John