Trying to persuade CSS images to line up horizontally

On 2008-07-01 02:03:55 +0100, John Hosking
<John (AT) DELETE (DOT) Hosking.name.INVALID> said:

Stan The Man wrote:

I have fixed some (hopefully most) of the basic errors and reuploaded
to http://www.gardenmediaguild.co.uk/awards/index.html

Still can't get those thumbnails to line up horizontally though.
Changing #pic to 336px only gave me the same vertical lineup of images
with a new white block to the right, to the full height of the images.

The whiteness comes from #pic { background-color: #ffffff; }.

The width is because the 336 is larger than 110 (but smaller than the
344 it needs to be, as Gus has pointed out).

The persistence of the vertical lineup even in a wider #pic is from the
#pic a.p1, #pic a.p1:visited { display:block; }.

Ditch the display:block, give #pic a larger width, and drop the white
background for #pic and #pic a.p1, #pic a.p1:visited (You might not
need the border on those links, either), and see how it looks. Be sure
to test it with images disabled or missing.

Eureka! Can't thank you enough for picking this out for me. I have
reuploaded to
http://www.zen86793.zen.co.uk/gmga2008/index.html
and the images are now arrayed horizontally at last... even though the
fix seems to have exposed an extraneous white-filled border below and
behind each image. I can make the fill colour disappear but can't see
where the stroke lines are coming from.

I also seem to have managed to make the fonts in this section display
too small but I think I should be able to find out why. One thing
slowing me down is that my GoLive preview window is a long way from
wysiwyg (all text displays massively oversized thus pushing the right
hand column down to the bottom of the page, so I have to preview every
change in my browser/s window/s.

Do continue to work on validation the code, especially where you have
extraneous tags. Gus alluded to a problematic style sheet, which
appears to be referenced but missing.

Yes, that style sheet came with the template and I think I can dispense
with it. Once I'm sure, I will clean up all references to it. And I
will put it through the validator once I get the page more or less
looking like I want it to.

I also tried creating three different #pic classes, giving each one a
relative left position 114px greater than the previous one -- but this
only moved the second and third images to the right without lifting
them up to line up with the first image. This also messed up with my
hover enlargements which displayed on load instead of on hover.
(Haven't tried the display:none thing yet.)

Try to avoid actually positioning anything, esp. absolutely. It's hard
to do right (and even harder to do right in all cases), for one thing,
but it's rarely necessary, IME.

Thanks, I've abandoned that idea.

I have also tried various float options and putting the div inside a
table row at various sizes, percentages and auto, but nothing works.

Unless you have another brainwave, I may be reduced to combining the
three thumbnails into a single image and figuring out if I can use
image maps to reproduce the hover enlargement...

No, no, don't do that. That's too much like work. :-)

Also abandoned!

Stan

On 2008-07-01 13:34:24 +0100, Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> said:

Eureka! Can't thank you enough for picking this out for me. I have
reuploaded to
http://www.zen86793.zen.co.uk/gmga2008/index.html
and the images are now arrayed horizontally at last... even though the
fix seems to have exposed an extraneous white-filled border below and
behind each image. I can make the fill colour disappear but can't see
where the stroke lines are coming from.

Further testing suggests that the extraneous border is
browser-specific. I can see it on MacOs Safari but not on WinXP IE.

Stan

In article <486a3040$0$26080$db0fefd9 (AT) news (DOT) zen.co.uk>,
Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> wrote:

On 2008-07-01 13:34:24 +0100, Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> said:

Eureka! Can't thank you enough for picking this out for me. I have
reuploaded to
http://www.zen86793.zen.co.uk/gmga2008/index.html
and the images are now arrayed horizontally at last... even though the
fix seems to have exposed an extraneous white-filled border below and
behind each image. I can make the fill colour disappear but can't see
where the stroke lines are coming from.

Further testing suggests that the extraneous border is
browser-specific. I can see it on MacOs Safari but not on WinXP IE.

Stan

This layout is a hire wire act. Like some cars I have had held together.
You could

#pic a img {
border: 0;
padding: 0;
margin-bottom: -4px;
}

to get over this "font-size related" particular problem.

but there is other trouble.

--
dorayme

On 2008-07-02 01:16:53 +0100, dorayme <doraymeRidThis (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> said:

In article <486a3040$0$26080$db0fefd9 (AT) news (DOT) zen.co.uk>,
Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> wrote:

On 2008-07-01 13:34:24 +0100, Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> said:

Eureka! Can't thank you enough for picking this out for me. I have
reuploaded to
http://www.zen86793.zen.co.uk/gmga2008/index.html
and the images are now arrayed horizontally at last... even though the
fix seems to have exposed an extraneous white-filled border below and
behind each image. I can make the fill colour disappear but can't see
where the stroke lines are coming from.

Further testing suggests that the extraneous border is
browser-specific. I can see it on MacOs Safari but not on WinXP IE.

Stan

This layout is a hire wire act. Like some cars I have had held together.
You could

#pic a img {
border: 0;
padding: 0;
margin-bottom: -4px;
}

to get over this "font-size related" particular problem.

Thanks for the hint. In Safari/Mac, margin-bottom: -4px didn't seem to
do anything; but by also giving padding-bottom -4px, the white bar at
the bottom of each image has gone... albeit still leaving behind a
black stroke from somewhere, but I'll find it.

As you have alluded to, I'm finding this template very difficult to
work with, not least because I don't know what some of the CSS code
does (and there are also plenty of classes in there which aren't used
anywhere) -- plus no doubt I have added my own problems to it. Methinks
I will probably start again from scratch, maybe using just one
stylesheet, but much wiser thanks to the much-appreciated help I've had
here.

Stan

In article <486ad68e$0$2930$fa0fcedb (AT) news (DOT) zen.co.uk>,
Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> wrote:

As you have alluded to, I'm finding this template very difficult to
work with, not least because I don't know what some of the CSS code
does (and there are also plenty of classes in there which aren't used
anywhere) -- plus no doubt I have added my own problems to it. Methinks
I will probably start again from scratch, maybe using just one
stylesheet, but much wiser thanks to the much-appreciated help I've had
here.

I agree it would be simpler in your case to have just one.

Any template this complicated and hard to troubleshoot and which uses
pixel dimensioned fonts and so on is not a good foundation for your
website page.

You can make this basic look you like (and it is fine by me too!) with
much simpler HTML/CSS.

--
dorayme

On 2008-07-02 03:48:39 +0100, dorayme <doraymeRidThis (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> said:

In article <486ad68e$0$2930$fa0fcedb (AT) news (DOT) zen.co.uk>,
Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> wrote:

As you have alluded to, I'm finding this template very difficult to
work with, not least because I don't know what some of the CSS code
does (and there are also plenty of classes in there which aren't used
anywhere) -- plus no doubt I have added my own problems to it. Methinks
I will probably start again from scratch, maybe using just one
stylesheet, but much wiser thanks to the much-appreciated help I've had
here.


I agree it would be simpler in your case to have just one.

Any template this complicated and hard to troubleshoot and which uses
pixel dimensioned fonts and so on is not a good foundation for your
website page.

You can make this basic look you like (and it is fine by me too!) with
much simpler HTML/CSS.

Yes, I do like minimalist pages and no, the code is not in the least
minimalist... Could you enlighten me as to why anyone would need more
than one stylesheet unless targeting different media?

Stan

In article <486b47b9$0$2929$fa0fcedb (AT) news (DOT) zen.co.uk>,
Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> wrote:

On 2008-07-02 03:48:39 +0100, dorayme <doraymeRidThis (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> said:

In article <486ad68e$0$2930$fa0fcedb (AT) news (DOT) zen.co.uk>,
Stan The Man <man (AT) pr100 (DOT) com> wrote:

As you have alluded to, I'm finding this template very difficult to
work with, not least because I don't know what some of the CSS code
does (and there are also plenty of classes in there which aren't used
anywhere) -- plus no doubt I have added my own problems to it. Methinks
I will probably start again from scratch, maybe using just one
stylesheet, but much wiser thanks to the much-appreciated help I've had
here.


I agree it would be simpler in your case to have just one.

Any template this complicated and hard to troubleshoot and which uses
pixel dimensioned fonts and so on is not a good foundation for your
website page.

You can make this basic look you like (and it is fine by me too!) with
much simpler HTML/CSS.

Yes, I do like minimalist pages and no, the code is not in the least
minimalist... Could you enlighten me as to why anyone would need more
than one stylesheet unless targeting different media?

Oh, there are no absolute principles on this matter. If you want my
practice, I try to keep to one sheet. I succeed often with small sites.
But now and then it can become so long that I get tired of scrolling and
hive off a major bit of it, for example the css for navigation.
Sometimes on a complicated site, this can involve considerable length.

Other times I have used more than one stylesheet have been for sites
with big sections that need significant separate looks. Here I find a
main sheet that holds all the common things to the site as whole and
then I have separate additional sheets for each big section. These
additional sheets sometimes duplicate each other in a big way. But such
redundancy pays for itself handsomely in my not having to actually find
out what quite is common and what is not among the additional, section
specific sheets.

Yes, of course, in theory you would have all that is common in one
sheet. But theory and practice are different in that theory is never
under time pressure. Theory has a very easy time of it. It sits in a
very comfortable armchair indeed and acts as if there is no end to
tomorrows. <g>

In other words, do what you personally find very convenient. It will be
unlikely, if you do this conscientiously and not in panic or
thoughtlessness, to be something that others will find perfectly
understandable.

--
dorayme

Stan The Man wrote:

by also giving padding-bottom -4px

FYI, negative padding is invalid. A conforming browser must ignore it.
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/box.html#padding-properties

At any rate, you can't depend on consistent rendering of invalid code.

--
Berg