css positioning question.

[Daryl]

I want an 800px content section of my webpage always centered no matter the
viewer's window size. I've resorted to a single celled centered table with a
fixed width because css doesn't handle this properly in IE6 as far as I can
tell. Inside this content table I want to place <div> sections with certain
widths and height side by side and stacked. I guess I have to use relative
positioning but once I start doing the left and top attribute adjustments
any unmodified <div> sections remain way at the bottom as if the other
modified sections were still stacked by default. Better yet, check it out
here.
http://www.dreamscape.com/lyradf/index2.htm
The top two sections are dandy. Its all the other ones to follow that are
going to be a pain.
Is there an inline html tag that I can set the width and height on other
than <div> that I should be using? I tried <span> and that failed.

 

[mbstevens]

I want an 800px content section of my webpage always centered no matter the
viewer's window size.

What happens if I'm doing more than one thing on my desktop and have my
browser window set to 650 px wide? Will I have to do a horizontal scroll
to read each line of text?

 

[The Eclectic Electric]

What happens if I'm doing more than one thing on my desktop and have my
browser window set to 650 px wide? Will I have to do a horizontal scroll
to read each line of text?

But if they use %ge width then IE6 bugs limit what he can do in the div.

+e

 

[Daryl]

Your window will display the left most content and you would have to scroll
to the right to view the rest. Im not concerned about that. That is pretty
typical of all web pages.

 

[Neredbojias]

Your window will display the left most content and you would have to
scroll to the right to view the rest. Im not concerned about that.
That is pretty typical of all web pages.

Au contraire, mon ami. Today's "typical" web page is fluid and text flows
with the size of the matte. However, yes, a certain minority percentage is
archeolithic.

 

[mbstevens]

But if they use %ge width then IE6 bugs limit what he can do in the div.

+e

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/index.html

Or better yet, modify your design to be a website instead of a magazine
layout.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Your window will display the left most content and you would have to scroll
to the right to view the rest. Im not concerned about that. That is pretty
typical of all web pages.

Not well designed ones.

 

[Kevin Scholl]

Au contraire, mon ami. Today's "typical" web page is fluid and text flows
with the size of the matte. However, yes, a certain minority percentage is
archeolithic.

That's a rather subjective view of "typical". There is no concrete right
or wrong when it comes to fixed-width vs. fluid.

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200611/resolution_vs_browser_size_vs_fixed_or_adaptive_width/

That said, the willingness of the OP to allow horizontal scrolling for a
user running a maximized browser at 800x600 is a bit disconcerting.

--

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======================================================
Kevin Scholl http://www.ksscholl.com/
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Daryl]

How crappy webpages must look when their content and images are smooshed
down in a "fluid" manner to a window size much smaller 700px, not to mention
when a portion of the display is likely to be taken up by the typical left
navigation column....

This is not a sacrafice im willing to make, my content all distorted.
Especially given the amount of traffic the page will receive, very minimal.

Im still looking for help if there is any available apart from the
criticism.

 

[Daryl]

With my content at 800x600 i expect very little scrolling required. I
actually expect the adjust final width to round off at 790 or so so a
maximized window on an 800x600 screen setting should not require scroll.

 

[dorayme]

Im still looking for help if there is any available apart from the
criticism.

Your original question:

http://www.dreamscape.com/lyradf/index2.htm
The top two sections are dandy. Its all the other ones to follow that are
going to be a pain.
Is there an inline html tag that I can set the width and height on other
than <div> that I should be using?

Why are you saying other than div? A standard way to centre stuff
is to wrap in a div that is then centred by things like
div#wrapper {width:800px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;}

 

[Daryl]

This link is a perfect example of my rebuttals to the critics. It stays
fluid as the window size decreases but at some point it realizes how
ridiculous the content will look and it begins to require h-scroll.

 

[Daryl]

I tried the auto margin left and right. IE6 doesn't handle this correctly.
Not when I tested it anyway. The problem with the div tag is that it
assumes a break between sections and stacks them. It doesn't keep them as
inline items. Otherwise, I never would have had to ask for advise.

 

[dorayme]

I tried the auto margin left and right. IE6 doesn't handle this correctly.
Not when I tested it anyway. The problem with the div tag is that it
assumes a break between sections and stacks them. It doesn't keep them as
inline items. Otherwise, I never would have had to ask for advise.

OK, it is not obvious quite that anyone understands what you
want. They may but maybe are unsympathetic for various reasons.

Do these things and you will get help:

Isolate the problem further in a url and ask how can one centre
"this" where "this" is obvious.

And don't top post

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Daryl wrote:

Please stop top-posting

How crappy webpages must look when their content and images are smooshed
down in a "fluid" manner to a window size much smaller 700px, not to mention
when a portion of the display is likely to be taken up by the typical left
navigation column....

It is a matter of design and concept. If you approach it properly your
page can look good at 500px or 1500px

This is not a sacrafice im willing to make, my content all distorted.
Especially given the amount of traffic the page will receive, very minimal.

Another factor that you are not taking into consideration when you shoot
for pixel-perfect design is what happens when the visitor does not have
the font displaying at the size you specified. BTW don't use POINTS for
display, use % or em. Or doesn't even have the fonts you specified on
their computer and a substitution is made? What of your design then? How
will it look on WebTV?

Im still looking for help if there is any available apart from the
criticism.

This is a newsgroup where issues are discussed. Folks here do web design
as a profession, I would expect their criticism would be both useful and
desired.

 

[Bergamot]

I tried the auto margin left and right. IE6 doesn't handle this correctly.

Please stop top-posting. Learn the accepted conventions of this
newsgroup and you'll have a better time of things.

IE6 doesn't handle margin:auto on your test page because you are
triggering quirks mode. Get rid of the xml prolog on the first line and
IE should switch to standards mode.

Better yet, don't use XHTML in the first place. Stick with HTML 4.01 Strict.

 

[Daryl]

Best advise yet. The prolog was being added by Tidy. Ill look to see how to
stop it. Thanks.

 

[Kevin Scholl]

>
With my content at 800x600 i expect very little scrolling required. I
actually expect the adjust final width to round off at 790 or so so a
maximized window on an 800x600 screen setting should not require scroll.

With browser chrome and a possible vertical scrollbar, the space you
have for a maximized browser at 800x600 (assuming no sidebars) is about
770px. If you make your content 800px wide, you WILL get a horizontal
scrollbar.

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[Kevin Scholl]

>
This link is a perfect example of my rebuttals to the critics. It stays
fluid as the window size decreases but at some point it realizes how
ridiculous the content will look and it begins to require h-scroll.

No, what that article and its comments say is that every project is
different, and requires proper analysis and planning to arrive at the
BEST solution for that problem.

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*** Remove the DELETE from my address to reply ***

======================================================
Kevin Scholl http://www.ksscholl.com/
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Daryl]

I wasn't talking about what it said. I'm talking about what it did when the
window was at different sizes.

I read the whole page. it seems this was the wrong place to get advise for
someone who isn't making a commercial site as everyone is just coming across
as telling me that my dumb little personal page that will get little to no
traffic needs to be designed to suit all the demands of a billion web
browsers.

I have gotten little advise on how to manage centered content within
formatted div tags (except for removing the xml prolog and possibly xhtml
altogether). I will likely resort to the more basic, more manageable table
rows and columns.