Cell sizes grow in the browser. Why? Urgent!

I have a page that consists of a 20 column by 13 row table, set over a background image with horizontal grid lines carefully sized and positioned to fit in the spaces between the cell rows. The cells are sized with transparent image shims, and contain affiliate links that within the cells. It looks fine in Dreamweaver, but in the browser, the cells seem to grow, so that the background grid lines no longer coordinate with the cells.

Can anyone explaing why? There must be some principle at work that I am missing.

My deep thanks to anyone who can offer help.

Richard Talbott

http://www.integra-living.com/marketplace.html

make sure the table/cells are set to pixels instead of %?

Great Guess, but . . . .

The table size is set to pixels. I don't see an option for setting cell dimensions, either to pixels or %. I have tried to keep the cells clear of any size specification. I established the typical cell size with transparent image shims, set to 120x90 pixels. Numbers seem to show up in the width field in some cells anyway, and they don't seem to have anything to do with the actual width. The important dimension, which has to coordinate with the background image, is the height.

Thanks for your reply. Got any other guesses?

Anyone?

Many thanks for all replies

Richard

RTalbott webforumsuser wrote:

The important dimension, which has to coordinate with the background
image, is the height.

I wonder why you're using a background image for this. You could achieve
the same effect with bottom borders (CSS) for the table rows.

Micha

I have a page that consists of a 20 column by 13 row table, set over a
background image with horizontal grid lines carefully sized and positioned

to fit in the spaces between the cell rows.

Ouch. That's not the way to go about it. The grid lines are part of the
table. So use the table to make the grid lines, not a background image. I
can't imagine any way to reliably line up a table with a background image. A
table is completely dynamic depending on the size of a person's font
settings among other things.

Use CSS to style the table like this:

<tr>
<td class="column1"> </td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
etc.

Then add these styles:

td {border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc}
td.column1 {background-image: url(yourgradiant.gif);

-Darrel

"RTalbott" webforumsuser (AT) macromedia (DOT) com wrote:

There must be some principle at work that I am missing.

Code is just code. Then it's up to every browser (or "WYSIWYG" html
editor) to interpret that code and draw up an interface. Thing is that
browser don't do that exactly the same: there are always small
variations that - when added together - might be pretty big differences
from browser to browser.

Add to that the user individual settings, hardware, etc.

That's why e.g. line height varies a teeny weeny bit from browser to
browser or from html editor to browser. In you case, this difference
makes the lines mismatch what you see in DW.

As Darrel and Fesser suggests, you need to have the grid "connected" to
the text, so that it'll expand/move as the text do.

So, that's the principle you're missing: people will NOT see the same
thing as you do in DW and that's why I put the WYSIWYG inside quotation
marks. The variations are numerous and you need to make pages able to be
flexible.

--
Dan Vendel - *GOF*
Contact me directly at http://contact.vendel.info
Formmail tutorial at http://www.vendel.info/tut/formmail.html
Nested table demonstration at http://www.vendel.info/tabletut/
Search Engine Optimization & Rank Control Utility at http://awr.vendel.info
Search Dreamweaver newsgroup at http://www.vendel.info/google.html

Ah yes, I was afraid that might be it.

Time to start a new career: learning CSS technology. I will have to study to understand your solution completely. Any elaboration that would focus my learning process would be much appreciated

I have been reading in my third party manuals that CSS was not reliably accomodated in browsers. Is that information out of date? Do you use CSS as a matter of course?

Thanks so much for the response.

Richard Talbott

Richard:

Is that information out of date? Do you use CSS as a matter of course?

Yes, and yes, respectively.

--
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Team Macromedia Volunteer for Dreamweaver MX
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
==================
news://forums.macromedia.com/macromedia.dreamweaver - THE BEST WAY TO GET
ANSWERS
==================
http://www.dreamweavermx-templates.com - Template Triage!
http://www.projectseven.com/go - DW FAQs, Tutorials & Resources
http://www.DreamweaverFAQ.com - DW FAQs, Tutorials & Resources
http://www.macromedia.com/support/search/ - Macromedia (MM) Technotes
==================

"RTalbott" <webforumsuser (AT) macromedia (DOT) com> wrote

Ah yes, I was afraid that might be it.

Time to start a new career: learning CSS technology. I will have to study
to understand your solution completely. Any elaboration that would focus my

learning process would be much appreciated

I have been reading in my third party manuals that CSS was not reliably
accomodated in browsers. Is that information out of date? Do you use CSS

as a matter of course?

Thanks so much for the response.

Richard Talbott

Any elaboration that would focus my learning process would be much
appreciated

There's not much to elaborate on. It's pretty simple. Did you have any
questions regarding my sample I gave above?

I have been reading in my third party manuals that CSS was not reliably
accomodated in browsers. Is that information out of date? Do you use CSS

as a matter of course?

Nothing in any browser is 100% reliable. Adding borders to tables and
background images to a table cell won't be a problem in any v4+ browsers,
though.

I do use CSS on as much of the site as I can these days. It's so much easier
to maintain/update, plus you can gain some nice accessibility benefits (not
to mention smaller page sizes).

-Darrel

RTalbott webforumsuser wrote:

Time to start a new career: learning CSS technology. I will have to
study to understand your solution completely. Any elaboration that
would focus my learning process would be much appreciated

You can find a short introduction to CSS in the official recommendation.
If you plan to use CSS you should bookmark (or download) it. Whenever
you're in doubt of something - have a look at the spec first.

Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 - CSS2 Specification
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/

2.1 A brief CSS2 tutorial for HTML
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/intro.html#q1

I have been reading in my third party manuals that CSS was not reliably
accomodated in browsers.

Use that manual to fire up your next barbecue. Recent browsers have a
fairly good implementation of CSS2 (except for IE, which is still buggy
and lacks some features, even in version 6).

Cascading Style Sheets: CSS Browser Support
http://www.westciv.com/style_master/...owser_support/

Micha