Align DIV center?

In newsbt1q0l5kmkregh5gbpbrnvrkg5vgm87rj (AT) 4ax (DOT) com,
Stephen Poley <sbpoleySpicedHamTrap (AT) xs4all (DOT) nl>wrote:

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:02:14 -0000, "Phil Thompson"
philSPAM (AT) doublonegative (DOT) com> wrote:


Oh my god, sorry. I didn't realise I'd just brought about the
apocalypse. Fluid is a great idea and yes it works sometimes but
there are times, when <big breath> shock horror, a fixed width
layout works best.

Perhaps you'd like to offer a few examples of sites where this is the
case?

(I originally posted this exact text in <cna6b5$rf8$1 (AT) titan (DOT) btinternet.com>,
but had no follow-up (possibly because I changed the subject as well?))

I'm interested in this. Whilst fixed width design, I agree is not a good
thing; what are your feelings on divs with percentage widths (see e.g. one
of a set of pages I'm trying to put together for a small project at
<URL:http://www.stephanbird.org.uk/Album/caravans1.html> )?

On a related note, is it possible to find out the height (of a horizontal
scrollbar) server-side i.e. without javascript or variants (naturally things
like height: 110% don't work)?

Stephan
--
Stephan Bird


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"Andrew Thompson" <SeeMySites (AT) www (DOT) invalid> wrote

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:12:29 -0000, Phil Thompson wrote:

Thankyou Gus. Fact of the matter is my solution was a bit shit but I
didn't
think I deserved the abuse I got.

Excuse me?

"If I understand your CSS correctly, it will only work for a page
that is 500px wide. Please drag yourself into the third millenium!

Given the effort that people who contribute to this group put
into encouraging fluid layout and having everything exactly
as big as the *user* wants, it is disappointing to see people
encouraging fixed widths that would lock the size of the page."

Which part of that represents 'abuse'?

asking me to 'drag myself into the third millenium' was less than nice and
Lauri comment of 'No. Please don't answer any posts until you have a clue. '
was also quite nasty. I wasn't asking to be talked to like that. I simply
offered an alternative solution as a benefit to the guy who originally
posted you should have pointed out the pitfalls in my solution and the
benfits in the the fluid method.

But seems how it came from such excellent designers
http://www.1point1c.org/

Thanks! You might also have listed my other three sites though
(and if you follow the link to my personal site, you could add
three more).

Where's yours?
snip /

I chose not to leave my url at the bottom of every post so as to not make it
seem as though I post just for hits. Not that people would do that. Yes I
checked out all your sites and they all have the same template so it didn't
need me to link all of them. N.B. It must be pointed out that
lensescapes.com doesn't and actually looks good.


Lets put this to rest now. You think that fluid is best and I think that
although fluid is great it doesn't always work out and that a fixed-width
design is sometimes the nest solution. Lets agree to disagree.


--
Phil Thompson
http://www.doubleonegative.com/

"Lauri Raittila" <lauri (AT) raittila (DOT) cjb.net> wrote

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Phil Thompson wrote:

"Lauri Raittila" <lauri (AT) raittila (DOT) cjb.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c0b274923bc548c98a182 (AT) news (DOT) individual.net...

No, fixed width works never best. Totally fluid is not best always
either, but it is much better than fixed width

Well it actually depends on the design. I notice that the perosnal
websites
of the two people haranging me, for advocating fixed-width design, aren't
very image intensive.

That is because they aren't. That irrelevant.

Why is that irrelevant? Your preference for fluid layouts affects your
design decisions blatantly. If you were to start making your site more
image-intensive you will come across more dificulties trying to make your
design fluid. Please read why alistapart.com uses a fixed width design
http://www.alistapart.com/qa/#question21

A design with few images is a great candidate for a
fluid layout but a site with lots of background images (giving a design a
bit of character) sometimes needs fixed width.

No, it doesn't. It sometimes needs some fixed elements. But I have yet to
see any sensible reason to fix width of whole page to some width...

Read other peoples opinions here:
http://www.designbyfire.com/000032.html

http://www.htmlhelp.com/cgi-
bin/validate.cgi?url=http://www.designbyfire.com/000032.html&warnings=yes

Don't take advice from people that use nested blockquotes to indent
stuff. CSS1 was published 8 years ago, and margins were supported good
enaugh in very first implementions.

Have you see this man's resume? http://www.designbyfire.com/andrei.php I
think I will take advcie from him. He seems a lot more knowledgeable than
me
and you put together.

So, he has been doing webpages since 1999. That is just 5 years less than
me. He mentions mambo.com, which did not succeed. Then he mentions
impresse.com, which doesn't seem to have same UI anymore. Then he has
done web application. So, there is no website in public done by him,
exept his own?

See what person with real knowledge say:
http://www.useit.com/

What you have go to remember is to design for your audience, this site
has
an audience of web professionals who probably are goig to have very
similar
settings to the designer, that means large screen resolutions. Amazon and
Google et al have a wider audience and so must design with that in mind.
Google can't afford to make their site inaccessible to someone with a
screen
resolution of 640*480 but designbyfire.com can.

Well, designbyfire.com would be very easy to make more fluid. And only
thing people would miss is ability to scroll to see that right margin.
His problem is that he sees this issue black and white. Either totally
fluid or totally fixed. That is common, as all arguments against liquid
layout depend on that.

Because said site uses fixed layout, I get scrollbar, and can scroll to
see about 30px of orange margin on right. It looks much better when I
force it to fit window. If this had been done differently, it would not
force me to scroll to see margin.

What screen resolution are you using? 800*600?

Resolution is 1600*1200, which is irrelevant. Viewport is about 800*1150.
But that is not the point, the point is that I get unnecessary scrollbar.
There is absolutely no need for it.

Once again why is that irrelevant? Your resolution governs the maximum size
your browser viewport could be.

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts

"Phil Thompson" <philSPAM (AT) doublonegative (DOT) com> wrote:

Once again why is that irrelevant? Your resolution governs the
maximum size your browser viewport could be.

Why stop there? I could expand the browser to span all six virtual
desktops I use.

Bye,
Martin

Axel Dahmen wrote:

Set the width to something smaller than 100% and the margin to auto e.g.
div.someClass {
width: 100%;

That should have been e.g.
width: 80%;
of course.


I tried your solution (actually I'm
a floating design evangelist myself *g*), but it doesn't really seem to work
in IE6 (although on Firefox it does)... Is there some "bullet-proof"
solution?

With IE 6 you need to make sure you get it into standards compliant
rendering mode, then it should work. You get IE 6 or other newer
browsers like Mozilla or Opera into standard compliant rendering mode by
including a DOCTYPE declaration (referring a HTML 4.01 DTD for instance).

--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Phil Thompson wrote:

"Andrew Thompson" <SeeMySites (AT) www (DOT) invalid> wrote in message
news:seeb2cp60h0p.1nq8rrglh3a6v$.dlg (AT) 40tude (DOT) net...
On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:12:29 -0000, Phil Thompson wrote:

Thankyou Gus. Fact of the matter is my solution was a bit shit but I
didn't
think I deserved the abuse I got.

Excuse me?

"If I understand your CSS correctly, it will only work for a page
that is 500px wide. Please drag yourself into the third millenium!

Given the effort that people who contribute to this group put
into encouraging fluid layout and having everything exactly
as big as the *user* wants, it is disappointing to see people
encouraging fixed widths that would lock the size of the page."

Which part of that represents 'abuse'?

asking me to 'drag myself into the third millenium' was less than nice

IMHO, that was not good. But that is quite mild. I have called people
idiots and I have been called idiot many times here...

and
Lauri comment of 'No. Please don't answer any posts until you have a clue. '
was also quite nasty.

That aimed against your *very* clueless way to center things. And I still
mean it. If you don't understand why that was such, the advice is still
valid.

I wasn't asking to be talked to like that. I simply
offered an alternative solution as a benefit to the guy who originally
posted you should have pointed out the pitfalls in my solution and the
benfits in the the fluid method.

Your solution was exeptionally bad. Much worse than something like "wrap
it to table, put another table inside the first table and then use
align=center".

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Phil Thompson wrote:

"Lauri Raittila" <lauri (AT) raittila (DOT) cjb.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c0b3a0074cecf5598a183 (AT) news (DOT) individual.net...
in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Phil Thompson wrote:

No, fixed width works never best. Totally fluid is not best always
either, but it is much better than fixed width

Well it actually depends on the design. I notice that the perosnal
websites
of the two people haranging me, for advocating fixed-width design, aren't
very image intensive.

That is because they aren't. That irrelevant.

Why is that irrelevant?

Because in Internet, there is n+1 pages. The fact that 2 people have non
graphic intensive pages, means nothing. Of course, even fixed layout
advocate understand that page with just text shoudl not be fixed width.

And if you used some other browser than IE, you would notice that my page
does not have overly long lines.

Your preference for fluid layouts affects your
design decisions blatantly.

No, my design has little graphics, because I don't have digital camera,
and I haven't bothered to do layout images for my personal site. I am
working on quite complex, more graphic intensive site though. Will
hopefully be ready before new year. It is of course not fixed.

If you were to start making your site more
image-intensive you will come across more dificulties trying to make your
design fluid. Please read why alistapart.com uses a fixed width design
http://www.alistapart.com/qa/#question21

I know that they are getting it wrong. There is no need to fix whole site
to limit text lenght, which I think I have said you at least twice.

As usual, they see just the opposite ends.

A design with few images is a great candidate for a
fluid layout but a site with lots of background images (giving a design a
bit of character) sometimes needs fixed width.

No, it doesn't. It sometimes needs some fixed elements. But I have yet to
see any sensible reason to fix width of whole page to some width...

So, you didn't have answer to this question. I am not surprised.

See what person with real knowledge say:
http://www.useit.com/

Again, when real authority does something, you have nothing to say?

Resolution is 1600*1200, which is irrelevant.

Once again why is that irrelevant? Your resolution governs the maximum size
your browser viewport could be.

But, it does not mean that I use window that size. The window size is
meaningful, not the resolution. Of course, I can make my viewport bigger,
and quite easily too. But what is relevant is still the size of viewport
(viewport = windows client area, where website is drawn)

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>

in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, Martin Honnen wrote:

You get IE 6 or other newer
browsers like Mozilla or Opera into standard compliant rendering mode by
including a DOCTYPE declaration (referring a HTML 4.01 DTD for instance).

Transitional DTD whitout URL won't work though, use one with URI or
strict.

--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:01:28 -0000, "Phil Thompson"
<philSPAM (AT) doublonegative (DOT) com> wrote:

"Stephen Poley" <sbpoleySpicedHamTrap (AT) xs4all (DOT) nl> wrote in message
newsbt1q0l5kmkregh5gbpbrnvrkg5vgm87rj (AT) 4ax (DOT) com...
On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:02:14 -0000, "Phil Thompson"
philSPAM (AT) doublonegative (DOT) com> wrote:


Oh my god, sorry. I didn't realise I'd just brought about the apocalypse.
Fluid is a great idea and yes it works sometimes but there are times, when
big breath> shock horror, a fixed width layout works best.

Perhaps you'd like to offer a few examples of sites where this is the
case?

http://www.simplebits.com/
http://www.mezzoblue.com/
http://www.dkeithrobinson.com/asterisk/
http://9rules.com/whitespace/
http://www.happycog.com/
http://www.zeldman.com/
http://www.blogger.com/start
http://www.stopdesign.com/

You're joking, right? More than half of those would definitely work
better as flexible layouts, and only a couple would be even slightly
difficult to make flexible while looking just as good at typical window
widths. In what way do you suppose a fixed number of pixels "works
best"?

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/