like frames, only better

I've never used frames due to the many reasons we all know that made
them evil, but that doesn't mean there weren't some things about them
that I liked.

I'm interested in creating a CSS based page with fixed top and bottom
sections (right, like frames) and a middle that scrolls. Absolutely
(position: fixed) positioned top and bottom handles the header and
footer sections, but I'm having some trouble with the middle.

My initial solution with fixed header and footer and "static" middle
(http://www.crafter.org/beading/fvb/) has extra margin-top and
margin-bottom space so that the entire content can display, but the
page size is obviously the entire viewport, so when the user pages up
and down, large chunks of content are lost behind the fixed parts
unless they scroll line by line.

My second attempt uses a suggestion I found on the web archive of
css-discuss, which is to set the content in a fixed position as well
and overflow: auto to bring up a scrollbar if needed
(http://www.crafter.org/beading/fvb/test.html). I don't much like the
appearance of the short scrollbar (looks too much like real frames! 8)
and (at least in Mozilla 1.2.1 on Linux) scrolling via the keyboard
(space bar, page up, page down, cursor keys) no longer work, you have
to use the mouse. This doesn't seem to be a viable solution to me.

My questions are:
1) is there a way to make the middle page/scroll properly with
standard keyboard commands?
2) can the content section in the middle be made to flow into the
available space without it being precisely defined?

(or said another way is there a way to show the entire content
without specifically setting the margin-top and margin-bottom (or
top and bottom positions) of the middle space so that if the title
and menu length vary from page to page, a precise margin-top need
not be redefined for the space needed so that a single style sheet
can be used for the entire site?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.
--
Carol Wang http://www.elegant.ca/ Elegant Solutions Consulting
http://www.chineseknotting.org/ The Chinese Knotting Home Page
http://www.skate.org/ Information for the Figure Skating Fan

I hate frames and always have, and yet they do some things that I don't know
how to do any other way. Maybe you can help.

I edit a magazine at www.mississippireview.com that i just change by putting
an inline frame in a table with an everpresent top and bottom. it's not
about being lazy (I use Frontpage and I was using "shared borders," but
before that I had nav bars on every page. It's pretty easy with Find &
Replace in Frontpage.

Anyway, I wanted to stabilize the page and drop the text (there are about
500 stories, poems, essays, etc online in MR) into this changing hole in the
middle, as if it were a "page."

So far it doesn't look awful (though I didn't yet check other browsers
besides IE), but I would like to replace the scroll bar with some other page
changing mechanism, like a simple up/down arrow set at the bottom of the
frame. This could be done with Flash, I gather, but as I said I have 500
pages already online, and anything I do has to account for that. Flash is
not the answer for such a simple plan.

Anyway, please take a look and see what you think? I'd appreciate any
advice.

fbx


"Carol Wang" <wangc (AT) skate (DOT) org> wrote

I've never used frames due to the many reasons we all know that made
them evil, but that doesn't mean there weren't some things about them
that I liked.

I'm interested in creating a CSS based page with fixed top and bottom
sections (right, like frames) and a middle that scrolls. Absolutely
(position: fixed) positioned top and bottom handles the header and
footer sections, but I'm having some trouble with the middle.

My initial solution with fixed header and footer and "static" middle
(http://www.crafter.org/beading/fvb/) has extra margin-top and
margin-bottom space so that the entire content can display, but the
page size is obviously the entire viewport, so when the user pages up
and down, large chunks of content are lost behind the fixed parts
unless they scroll line by line.

My second attempt uses a suggestion I found on the web archive of
css-discuss, which is to set the content in a fixed position as well
and overflow: auto to bring up a scrollbar if needed
(http://www.crafter.org/beading/fvb/test.html). I don't much like the
appearance of the short scrollbar (looks too much like real frames! 8)
and (at least in Mozilla 1.2.1 on Linux) scrolling via the keyboard
(space bar, page up, page down, cursor keys) no longer work, you have
to use the mouse. This doesn't seem to be a viable solution to me.

My questions are:
1) is there a way to make the middle page/scroll properly with
standard keyboard commands?
2) can the content section in the middle be made to flow into the
available space without it being precisely defined?

(or said another way is there a way to show the entire content
without specifically setting the margin-top and margin-bottom (or
top and bottom positions) of the middle space so that if the title
and menu length vary from page to page, a precise margin-top need
not be redefined for the space needed so that a single style sheet
can be used for the entire site?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.
--
Carol Wang http://www.elegant.ca/ Elegant Solutions Consulting
http://www.chineseknotting.org/ The Chinese Knotting Home Page
http://www.skate.org/ Information for the Figure Skating Fan