Preserved Topic: Netscape table woes.

Ok here is my dilema, I am working on the site for Mott college in Flint and I am making the site expandable. In Explorer everything went off without a hitch. Netscape is another story. On the right hand side I have a line that goes down the side of the page to close the content in, but in Netscape it is not lining up with the lines above and below it. I used a background image in that cell so I could achieve 100% height, so I can't just align right.<P>Any help would be greatly appreciated. The address is:
http://leto.mcc.edu <P>View it in Explorer first so you can see how it is supposed to look, then in Netscape to see the problem. Thanks allot in advance.<P>-Swan <P>"Make extra money in your spare time, blackmail your friends."
<p>[This message has been edited by Swan (edited 25-05-2000).]

Whoa! What a ... interesting collection of tables within tables within tables, etc...<P>What kind of editor did you use to create this page? Certainly not by hand coding, I'm assuming. I just spent about 30 minutes poking at this page on an offline version, and I can't even begin to grasp just which table is supposed to be doing what. I'm at the problem area, but what tweak is necessary to make it work properly is beyond me. I do know that Netscape is quite picy about what happens if the width values don't add up correctly, and we have both fixed width and 100% widths all through this page. If this were a client site, and I was the guy who had to fix this page, I hate to say it, but I would rewrite all of the code from scratch, using a *much* simpler table structure, this is just too much.<P>Design-wise, I'm not sure I like the table touching both edges of the screen, it seems to me it kinda needs some air on either side to help dfefine the space you've blocked out, that thin black line up against the right edge in IE is not a nice detail to me. Glad this isn't my page! (Sorry!)<P>Oh, BTW, I *did* get the random quote generator to work, all of the javascript had been run into one really long line, and the comments // mucked up half of the code. Good luck to you, let me know if you want me to forward you that random code!
<P><IMG SRC="http://www.ozones.com/forum/siggie.gif" border=0>

I agree I shouldn't have tried to cut corners using Dreamweaver and I am going to be hand coding the shell. Dreamweaver is actually a pretty good tool sometimes, but sometimes it kind of freaks things out. Anyway thanks for the comments. By the way as far as using the fixed and 100% table widths that's the way to acheive expandability without losing the design quality of the edges. <P>According to Que in Using HTML 4 Special edition page 450: "One way to reach for the best of both worlds is to combine fixed and dynamic approaches", "ensure that only one cell is fixed to a percentage width, and that width should be 100%. This approach will help you maintain the shape of the layout but will allow for dynamic positioning of text." an exerpt from their example is this: <P><table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><P><tr><P><td width="75" align="left" valign="top"><P><img src="images/spacer.gif" border="0" width="75" height="1" alt=""><P><td width="100%" align="left" valign="top"><P>content content content<P></td><P><td width="50" align="left" valign="top"><P><img src="images/spacer.gif" border="0" width="50" height="1" alt=""><P></td>
</tr>
</table><P>So it does work. I do however appreciate the advice about moving the edges away from the sides, you are right about that.<P>And finally, I wasn't aware that the random tip wasn't working, of course I haven't checked it out on a Mac yet. It might have come through kind of weird because it's a Server Side Include but if you got it looking better I would love for you to send me the file. I appreciate you taking the time to rewrite it. If you want to see the original file it is at: http://leto.mcc.edu/include/random_quotes.html <P>I really appreciate you taking the time to look at my problem for me, and reply to my post. Thanks again.<P>
-Swan<P>"Make extra money in your spare time, blackmail your friends."<p>[This message has been edited by Swan (edited 26-05-2000).]

Ok I took your advice and am hand coding the shell, but it is still having the problem. Here it is: http://leto.mcc.edu/shell.shtml I don't have the bottom attatched but that's ok it's not the problem anyway. Like I said I handcoded it so the code is alot cleaner and should be easier to go through. By the way I noticed that the code isn't as clean online as it was when I uploaded it (using WS_FTP) does anyone know what might cause this?<P>-Swan<P>"Make extra money in your spare time, blackmail your friends."

I finally figured out what was happening and got it fixed. This is very interesting, for some reason it didn't matter what size I set the [td width] to be, Netscape was displaying it as 9 pixels wide (even though when you look at the code it says the same thing that I put in). So what I did was created a background image that was 9 pixels and went in and set the [td width] to 9 pixels wide and it cleared it right up. Pretty strange huh?<P>[mr_rogers_voice]So let this be a lesson children, just because the source code in Netscape says it's diplaying what you told it to doesn't mean that it is.[/mr_rogers_voice] If you have images that aren't lining up set your [td bgcolor] to #000000 (or whatever contrasting color) and see what it's actually displaying it at.<P>I hope that little peice of advice saves somebody the countless hours and days of frustration that I just endured.<P>-Swan<P>"Make extra money in your spare time, blackmail your friends."<p>[This message has been edited by Swan (edited 30-05-2000).]

The only thing I can suggest after seeing the "working" site is that you cache the rollover images. It's taking a second or to to display them on the first mouseover.

Just my .02

Pat Richard
Web weenie
http://www.gurusnetwork.com
ICQ 23113317