In order to get rid of the problems of table layout, and to provide some of the functionality of a framed layout without the even worse problems of frames, I have found an interesting layout technique and applied it to the new codebase.
I've tested this layout in Lynx (text), Netscape 4.7, Mozilla, Galeon, and Opera under Linux and IE5 and Mozilla under Windows, but I'd like to see a really good cross-section.
It works like this: the HTML is output serially as header, article, footer, sidebar. So in something like Lynx, or a voice browser, you'll see them in that order, all laid out normally. In a modern standards-compliant browser (Mozilla, Galeon, Opera), the stylesheet puts the sidebar in a fixed position and moves the margins of the rest of the text past it, so you'll see a fixed-position sidebar always visible as you scroll the text. In non-compliant browsers (IE5, NS4), it uses Javascript to move the sidebar to the right place dynamically, which achieves roughly the same effect as the stylesheet, but with more work.
It shouldn't break /any/ browser, because it still validates and it doesn't depend on either the scripts or the stylesheet for content. It's also a lot more tolerant now of things like bad table markup inside an article; since the article is no longer laid out inside a table, you can't screw it up.
If it does break your browser, let me know in gory detail--your OS, your browser and version, the page you display (KQ gave me a screen capture--that's perfect). 0
On ĵaŭ, 2002-06-13 at 14:29, lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
If it does break your browser, let me know in gory detail--your OS, your browser and version, the page you display (KQ gave me a screen capture--that's perfect).
Looks and works fine in Mozilla 1.1alpha/Linux and Konqueror 3.0.1. At last, free of nasty tables, thankyouthankyou!... but there's just one problem.
If the window is not vertically tall enough, the sidebar doesn't fit and there's no way to scroll it to get to the last few items. The exact necessary height will depend on the font and font size, and the number of items in the sidebar can further vary depending on context.
Here's my Mozilla sized to fit an 800x600 screen (don't laugh, there are people still using this resolution every day! My own mother only recently broke the 800x600 habit by buying a 1280x1024 LCD monitor... which she runs at 1024x768. Sigh...): http://leuksman.com/misc/wikishot.png Admittedly, the Mozilla interface takes up a lot of extra room. But the sidebar on this page is about the shortest you're likely to find it, so I'm fudging in the right direction.
I can make it fit by changing the font size: http://leuksman.com/misc/wikishot2.png But it's not legible anymore.
Even at 1024x768, it's pushing it at the default font size: http://leuksman.com/misc/wikishot3.png
Considering that the full wikipedia sidebar (including sysop tools and "this user's edits" this can come to about 40 lines of text) barely fits on my screen at 1280x1024 -- _after_ I scroll down -- I must say I'm a little skeptical about a non-scrollable sidebar.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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