Topic: Stupid whitespace making me crazy (Page 1 of 1)

Hi Guys, I haven't been around for ages. I'm doing a site for a friend and in IE there is a stupid whitespace on the bottom left that I can't figure out. The cell height of the two cells is the same. I put the background image in both table and cell to see if that would help. Naah.
The other problem is that in Netscape and Mozilla the California poppy picture skids up and down the navbar. I would like it to stay at the bottom corner but I don't know how to do that. As you'll see I did it by shoving in a zillion empty paragraphs. I knew it was funky but I thought it would work.
Here's the url if you could help me with this - http://onenessmovementsb.com/index.htm
Thanks a lot,
Pam

Hi Pam,

Well, you shouldn't be using tables to do the layout of your site. Tables were designed to display tabular data, not position elements. For that you should be using CSS. Try searching the FAQ for "CSS" and you should turn up some links that will be able to help you out.

[Edit: By the way, if you do redesign this with CSS, getting that image to "stick" to the bottom will be easy. You simply define its position with a bottom: 0 (or 5px, or 1em, or whatever) value, or even something like top: 90%. As long as it has position: relative, it will go to the bottom of its parent element. That might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves if you're not familiar with CSS, but it is ultimately the solution.]


___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup

(Edited by Suho1004 on 03-10-2006 03:03)

Thanks, Suho, but I don't have time to learn css right now.
Can anyone help me within the tables I am using?
Please.

Not too sound too harsh, Pam, but I think it might be a little hard to find a sympathetic ear around here. Yes, it might be possible to achieve what you want with tables, but it is far from the ideal solution. And even if you do get it working in IE, who's to say it will continue to work in the next version (which is now in beta)?

You say you do not have time to learn CSS. Well, I suppose that's your call, but if you're planning on building a house, wouldn't it be a good idea to learn the skills of carpentry, masonry, etc. Complaining of a layout problem with tables is like building a house of straw and then complaining that it falls down every time the wind blows.

Personally, I think it's worth the time and effort to learn CSS, especially since basic CSS isn't all that complicated. All you are doing, after all, is applying styling to HTML you already know (although it will definitely require a new way of thinking about structure). Personally, I think it is always more important to get it done right than it is to get it done quickly. And you say you are doing this site for a friend, and not a client, right? Might not your friend understand if you wanted to invest a little more time in the project?

Maybe I'm being idealistic. I do wish you the best of luck and hope you find a solution, one way or another, to your problem. Sorry if this posted sounded harsh. I was hoping to be persuasive, not negative.


___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup

I have looked at this page in Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox, and cannot reproduce the 'skids up and down'.
The error in IE - I would recommend changing the 'height=130' to 'height=!00%'. Can't say for certain that'll do it, but it seems like a start.

Honestly though - there is so much bad practice going on in this code it's just silly at this point. You are basically asking "what's the best way to do this the wrong way?". It is very difficult to devote time to fixing something the wrong way. It's difficult enough keeping track of how things work the right way

You say you don't have time to learn CSS....but you are designing web pages? That's a lot like a mechanic saying he doesn't have time to learn about disc brakes...
The technology evolves, and at this point tabled designs of this nature are outdated to an extreme and are just plain old bad.
It's also important to note, that although you haven't been around for ages, the last time you were here asking for help you were pushed in the direction of CSS.

It's really, at this stage, a do or die issue.