HELP: Table height in the new XHTML???

Arthur Dent · Dec 23, 2005

I am completely baffled... i cannot for the life of me get the HEIGHT style
to work on a table in the new 2005-supported XHTML.
I put a HEIGHT: 100% on my table so that my footer row will also show up at
the very bottom of the page (unless content pushes it further down).
But when the browser renders the page, its as if there was no height
specified on the table, it all just shrinks up to the top of the page, as
short as the content will allow.
Ive tried the height as an inline style attribute, a document-level style
tag, and a css style sheet. They all fail.

I cannot imagine the standards-writing-people would kill something like this
without providing a new way to accomplish it... especially seeing as
*almost* every professional and/or corporate site i ever look at has this
style of layout, with a footer which always shows at the bottom of the page,
or bottom of the browser if the content is shorter than the window.

HOW CAN I DO THIS?!?!? its driving me crazy!!

Thanks in advance,
- Arthur Dent.

Bruce Barker · Dec 23, 2005

in xhtml, the body does not have a default height, just a default width. for
a percentage size to work, it needs one of its perents to have an absolute
value to be a percent of, otherwise its ignored.

take:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<body>
<div style="width:100%;height:100%;background-color:red;">
</div>
</body>
</html>

now you might expect this markup to create a full screen div thats red. it
won't, but rather create a div thats the width of the page, and the height
of one text line. this is because there is no specified height anywhere

compare to:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<body style="height:200px;">
<div style="width:100%;height:100%;background-color:red;">
</div>
</body>
</html>

here we specified a body height, so the div will fill it.

note: this is the expected behavior of html 4.0 also.

-- bruce (sqlwork.com)

Arthur Dent · Dec 24, 2005

Okay, but that still doesnt answer the q. of HOW do you make a page with a
footer which always shows at the very bottom of the page between resolutions
and window resizes? Hardcoded sizes are fine, if you know exactly what size
the window will be ALL the time, but thats impossible.....

Can you use expressions as height, so something like HEIGHT:
document.clientHeight; or something like that? or what? what is the new way
to do this???

Alan Silver · Jan 3, 2006

I cannot imagine the standards-writing-people would kill something like

this without providing a new way to accomplish it...

It's worth pointing out that the standards people didn't kill anything.
There has never been a height attribute for tables in the HTML
standards, certainly not for many versions (and I suspect never). The
only reason why you are coming across the issue now is that MS have
finally decided to conform to standards instead of breaking them.
VS2005/VWD reports validation issues, so you start noticing them where
you never did before.

especially seeing as *almost* every professional and/or corporate site
i ever look at has this style of layout, with a footer which always
shows at the bottom of the page, or bottom of the browser if the
content is shorter than the window.

AFAIK the way people have abused HTML in the past was not used as a
basis for setting standards for XHTML.

simon · Jan 10, 2006

Alan, In my example I would like that red table would be streched to
the bottom of parent table(when you see my page you will know what I
mean). It won't work. I have been trying for hours. Nothing helps.
Please can you help me?
(If I remove xhtml11 declaration, than it would work.)

Thanks ,Simon

My page:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head></head>
<body>
<table border=1>
<tr valign=top><td>
<table height=100% border=1 style="border-color:red">
<tR><td height=100% valign=top>
test
</td></tr>
</table>
</td>
<td>
<table>
<tR><td>
<table border=1>
<tR><td>test1</td></tr>
<tR><td>test2</td></tr>
<tR><td>test3</td></tr>
<tR><td>test4</td></tr>
<tR><td>test5</td></tr>
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Patrice · Jan 10, 2006

AFAIK XHTML uses stylesheets instead inline attributes. Google for CSS,
"StyleSheet"

SimonZ · Jan 11, 2006

I tried also with css, in fact, I use inline attributes here just because of
ease of example.

The problem is not because of inline-css.

The problem is standard which define:

"for a percentage size to work, it needs one of its perents to have an
absolute
value to be a percent of, otherwise its ignored."

But in my aplication it's impossibble to set absolute value of parent (only
if I use client script).

So I create one very simple example with the same problem.

I wonder if there is someone who can solve this problem using standars(xhtml
1.1).

Otherwise, I'll have to use old declarations.

If that doesn't work by xhtml 1.1 than that is a big lack of functionallity.
"Percent of" is very usefull and sometimes I can't do without it.

regards,
Simon

Guest · Jan 17, 2006

The only way I found is the client script that applies actual browser window
client height to the BODY element making all content to look as you expect.

Here is an example:
I call this function as soon as client page is loaded i.e. via
RegisterStartupScript method of the Page.ClientScript object on my ASP.NET
2.0.

function BodyHeightSet()
{
var objRegulatingElement;
objRegulatingElement = document.body;

//I don't know if it is working on browsers other then IE 5+
objRegulatingElement.style.setExpression("pixelHeight",
"document.documentElement.clientHeight");
document.recalc(true);

//!!!!! for other browsers !!!!!
//You will have to catch the resize event from the body element and
execute it all the time.
//objRegulatingElement.style.pixelHeight =
document.documentElement.clientHeight;
}

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HELP: Table height in the new XHTML???

Arthur Dent

Bruce Barker

Arthur Dent

Alan Silver

simon

Patrice

SimonZ

Guest

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