Compatibility with ALL browsers and settings
Matt Beckwith
the problem of determining how to program the page so that elements will be
displayed the same way in all browsers, and at all settings.
For example, let's say you have a frame, and want some text to be positioned
on the frame in the very center (both vertically and horizontally), and you
want the text to take up 75% of the horizontal and 60% of the vertical
dimensions of the frame--no matter what resolution the user's screen is set
at.
I'm familiar with how to center text vertically and horizontally (using a
single-celled table with ALIGN and VALIGN), but the rest is beyond me.
It seems that this issue of how to get things to be positioned the same for
all users is pervasive in web design. Is there anything written on this
topic?
Thanks.
Bertilo Wennergren
> I'm a fairly new HTML/CSS user. There's a problem which keeps cropping up,
> the problem of determining how to program the page so that elements will be
> displayed the same way in all browsers, and at all settings.
The problem is not how to do that, the problem is the desire to do that.
It can't be done, and it is not a good idea to try to do it. The
solution is thus obvious: Don't try to do that.
> For example, let's say you have a frame, and want some text to be positioned
> on the frame in the very center (both vertically and horizontally), and you
> want the text to take up 75% of the horizontal and 60% of the vertical
> dimensions of the frame--no matter what resolution the user's screen is set
> at.
Frames are bad.
> It seems that this issue of how to get things to be positioned the same for
> all users is pervasive in web design. Is there anything written on this
> topic?
A lot...
Page design should never depend on the page displaying the same for all
users. Good design is flexible.
--
Bertilo Wennergren <bert...@gmx.net> <http://www.bertilow.com>
Alan J. Flavell
> I'm a fairly new HTML/CSS user. There's a problem which keeps cropping up,
> the problem of determining how to program the page so that elements will be
> displayed the same way in all browsers, and at all settings.
Your problem is that you consider that to be a problem.
Try this for a start:
http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/good_oil/not_paper/
> For example, let's say you have a frame, and want some text to be positioned
> on the frame
There's no harm in making a design which looks more or less the way
you intended, in the situation for which you intended it. The
interesting part of web design is ensuring that it doesn't break so
badly as to become unusable when the browsing situation is different
from the one that the author had in mind.
You appear to think you want the kind of rigid, fragile design that
will break into a thousand pieces when the browsing situation doesn't
suit it exactly. That wouldn't be feasible even if all browsers were
free of bugs in their implementation of CSS and HTML: the fact is that
bugs are widespread. Think more in terms of tailoring a comfortable
garment which will adapt itself to different sizes and shapes, and
you'll be making better web pages.
> It seems that this issue of how to get things to be positioned the same for
> all users is pervasive in web design.
Unfortunately it's a widespread conceptual problem, which authors find
difficulty in shaking off. Partly it's an inheritance from those who
learned their design in paper publishing (rather than in textiles?).
> Is there anything written on this topic?
Lots.
Mikko Rantalainen
> I'm a fairly new HTML/CSS user. There's a problem which keeps cropping up,
> the problem of determining how to program the page so that elements will be
> displayed the same way in all browsers, and at all settings.
You cannot display the content the same way in all browsers. Repeat.
> For example, let's say you have a frame, and want some text to be positioned
> on the frame in the very center (both vertically and horizontally), and you
> want the text to take up 75% of the horizontal and 60% of the vertical
> dimensions of the frame--no matter what resolution the user's screen is set
> at.
OK. Let's say the viewport of your browser is 600x400 pixels and you
position some text so that it looks nice. Now, the screen of my mobile
device is 100x600 pixels (real tall, bad horizontal resolution). How
nice do you think that the text will look like if it still takes the
dimensions you defined? My guess is, it'll look like plain ugly, badly
distorded or really small.
What if I cannot see anything and I'm using something like braille
display or aural browser - what should those 75% or 60% mean now?
> I'm familiar with how to center text vertically and horizontally (using a
> single-celled table with ALIGN and VALIGN), but the rest is beyond me.
HTML means HyperText Markup Language. Markup part means that you mark up
things as being something (like title, list, header, paragraph,
important etc.) and not something about the presentation (like color,
font family or weight, position on the screen etc.). If you want to give
recommendations about how something might look better if displayed in
some specific way you could use, for example, CSS. Remember that CSS is
only for hinting. By defination you cannot force anything and in
addition to that the browser might (and will) have some bugs and the
user might have told it to ignore some or all of CSS. Or the browser
might not support CSS at all.
> It seems that this issue of how to get things to be positioned the same for
> all users is pervasive in web design.
It surely seems that many people have understood the idea behind the
HTML incorrecly.
Perhaps I should reply with http://www.adobe.com/acrobat every time
somebody asks about positioning stuff.
--
Mikko
JAMESICUS
>I'm a fairly new HTML/CSS user. There's a problem which keeps cropping up,
>the problem of determining how to program the page so that elements will be
>displayed the same way in all browsers, and at all settings.
That may be a fruitless exercise.
Heretofore, most users were content to accept web page layout (presentation)
and function the way it was delivered to them by authors -- browser display
preferences were uniformly not easy to change and the user base was generally
unsophisticated in the ways of browser use. Now users have the capability to
substitute their own style sheets when viewing pages in order to meet their
personal tastes and needs. This is a great boon for Accessibility.
My own Browser of choice is presently Opera 6.04. I have it configured to use
my personal style sheet as follows:
body {
font-family:helvetica;
font-size:120%;
text-align:left;
color:#000000;
background:#FDF5E6 /* #FFFBF0 #FDF5E6 */
}
Inasmuch as my eyesight is not as acute as it used to be, I find the larger
text rendition much easier for me to read and I actually like the serifed
letter forms better because of my personal long standing familiarity. If I find
the page layout easier to read with the text set at a smaller size I adjust it
via the dropdown View menu.
As I navigate the pages of a site, if the pages load too slowly or I don't like
the imagery I toggle image rendition off -- I can ascertain the content and
purpose of each image by reading the author supplied alternate text in the
image place holders. I abandon pages if the author does not provide alternate
text for images.
By using these procedures, I can view Web pages the way I want to.
This has actually been the direction and thrust of W3C WCA graphical browser
usage for quite some time.
James Pickering
http://www.jp29.org/wadr.htm
Matt Beckwith
> > I'm a fairly new HTML/CSS user. There's a problem which keeps cropping
up,
> > the problem of determining how to program the page so that elements will
be
> > displayed the same way in all browsers, and at all settings.
>
> Your problem is that you consider that to be a problem.
And your wife's problem is that she's married to a cruel son-of-a-bitch.
> You appear to think you want the kind of rigid, fragile design that
> will break into a thousand pieces when the browsing situation doesn't
> suit it exactly.
Where did you get that from what I said?
> > Is there anything written on this topic?
> Lots.
What a jerk.
Don't bother to reply, you just made my killfile.
Matt Beckwith
> Frames are bad.
Wow, another jerk. This group's full of you guys.
> > It seems that this issue of how to get things to be positioned the same
for
> > all users is pervasive in web design. Is there anything written on this
> > topic?
>
> A lot...
Incredible. You guys need to go back to grade school and learn some
manners. Another one for the killfile.
Matt Beckwith
> You cannot display the content the same way in all browsers. Repeat.
That word "repeat" above is extremely rude. Man, this group is amazing.
Don't you guys have social lives?
> > It seems that this issue of how to get things to be positioned the same
for
> > all users is pervasive in web design.
>
> It surely seems that many people have understood the idea behind the
> HTML incorrecly.
Man, this is incredible. This whole newsgroup should go on Prozac. #3 for
the killfile.
Matt Beckwith
> That may be a fruitless exercise.
> Heretofore, most users were content to accept web page layout
(presentation)
> and function the way it was delivered to them by authors -- browser
display
> preferences were uniformly not easy to change and the user base was
generally
> unsophisticated in the ways of browser use. Now users have the capability
to
> substitute their own style sheets when viewing pages in order to meet
their
> personal tastes and needs. This is a great boon for Accessibility.
Yes, I'm beginning to understand.
Since I posted my question, I've found that it's possible to use the DIV tag
and the width attribute to define the size of the box using a percentage.
Thus, the text can then be programmed to take up 50% of the width of the
user's screen, however big or small the user's screen is. This solves part
of my problem.
But the size of the text itself cannot be varied based on the resolution or
the size of the screen, as far as I know. And people who want their text
large, and program their browsers to do so, wouldn't want it to be smaller
anyway.
Using Opera you can enlarge or shrink the web screen at will, so people like
you who use the Cadillac of browsers could handle my proportionally small
text easily. But users of Netscape and IE couldn't. On the other hand, I
probably can't even make the text proportionally smaller based on screen
size (without using an image of the text, which I'm not interested in
doing).
The point that others on this newsgroup with poorer upbringings than yours
have made--that HTML was envisioned to appear differently in different
environments--is well taken. However, I'd still like to know how to do it.
There are situations where it really is appropriate.
For example, if you go to my web site http://www.doctorbeckwith.com and
click the link to "My New Book", you'll see that I've created a text box
which is meant to be a schematic of a book. But it sure doesn't look like a
book in some configurations, and if someone's font size were sufficiently
large relative to their screen, it would look downright weird. I'd like the
text size to be variable so that it looked the way I want it to inside the
box--that is, roughly the same way it appears on the actual book cover.
By the way, I use Opera 6.04 too. It's incredible. I'm telling all my
friends. I bought it, but even with the ads it's light-years ahead of IE
and Netscape. I understand it was designed by one of the people who set the
standards of HTML and CSS.
Jeremy Smedes
Beckwith" <doctorb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Youąve just got to roll with it Matt, its a constant battle of one-upmanship
here... If you say something wrong or something just generally not agreed
upon en masse then watch out...
JAMESICUS
The majority of users appear to accept uncluttered pages that emphasize quality
content and feature easy to read text -- the way they are presented in their
browsers -- without changing them
I have adopted the following scheme in producing my own Web pages:
1. Visualizing design pages as a two part process: content first (the most
important) and presentation second.
2. Insuring the content is well composed and that sentence structure, grammar,
punctuation and spelling is correct.
3. Employing a clean, uncluttered, layout for the page and provide easy
navigation -- using stylesheets (CSS).
4. Not specifying any text sizes at all. The default size appears to work best
in most browsers and usually suits the taste of most users (they are going to
change it anyway if they don't like it). In any event, I avoid small, hard to
read text -- it may very well get enlarged sometimes with disastrous results
for page layout.
5. I generally employ familiar, easy to read, text fonts -- sans serif families
are popular and appear to be well accepted.
6. I always check to see how pages display and function with image rendition
turned off.
James Pickering
http://www.jp29.org/wadr.htm
Mikko Rantalainen
> "Mikko Rantalainen" <mi...@st.jyu.fi> wrote
>
>>You cannot display the content the same way in all browsers. Repeat.
>
> That word "repeat" above is extremely rude. Man, this group is amazing.
> Don't you guys have social lives?
Hey, English isn't my native language so I sometimes have hard time
trying to guess if you find some expression insulting or not and I
apologize if that sounded "extremely rude". I see you're calling other
people as a "son-of-a-bitch" and a "jerk" all over but not that many
complain about that.
This newsgroup is about HTML authoring and I've hoped that if someone
has enough skills to post something here, he or she should be capable of
typing something like "display the same in all browsers" into the search
box at groups.google.com. The results should match pretty much with the
answer I gave. I added "repeat" because this has been asked so many
times lately I'm sure that if the OP [1] had followed this group for
even a week he would have noticed a discussion about it. Reading the FAQ
instead wouldn't be bad either.
[1] Original Poster for this thread, I believe that's you.
--
Mikko
Matt Beckwith
> Youąve just got to roll with it Matt, its a constant battle of
one-upmanship
> here... If you say something wrong or something just generally not agreed
> upon en masse then watch out...
Yeah, some newsgroups are full of cruel people. But that's what the
killfile is for, so not really a problem.
Felipe
> What a jerk.
>
> Don't bother to reply, you just made my killfile
> That word "repeat" above is extremely rude. Man, this group is amazing.
> Don't you guys have social lives?
> Man, this is incredible. This whole newsgroup should go on Prozac. #3 for
> the killfile.
> The point that others on this newsgroup with poorer upbringings than yours
Troll.
Eric Jarvis
>
> I'm a fairly new HTML/CSS user. There's a problem which keeps cropping up,
> the problem of determining how to program the page so that elements will be
> displayed the same way in all browsers, and at all settings.
>
by definition can't be done...and would be pointless anyway since few
users will view the site in all browsers and those that do aren't likely
to complain that it looks different in Konqueror than it looks in Lynx
the objective is to make it look good and work well in all browsers...this
is achievable
change the objective
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"
Jan Roland Eriksson
<doctorb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[...]
>By the way, I use Opera 6.04 too. It's incredible. I'm telling all my
>friends. I bought it, but even with the ads it's light-years ahead of IE
>and Netscape.
Glad you like it. It has been my default browser since vers.2.10 many
years back.
>I understand it was designed by one of the people who set the
>standards of HTML and CSS.
No. The original design comes from two guys who once was employed by a
Norwegian telephone company named Telenor. The Opera project started
as an in house programming exercise by these two guys while they where
at Telenor.
Later Telenor decided to cancel the project but gave Jon and Geir
permission to take their code along with them when they decided to
start the independent company named Opera.
The first version of Opera that I know of was vers.2.10 which appeared
"on the market" around mid 1996. Haakon Vium Lie (who is one of the
original designers of CSS) joined the company as head of QA around
1999 IMMIC.
Opera is today a company with its head office in Oslo Norway, employs
some 100+ at that office and also quite a number of other people
located around the world.
On top of that a large number of ordinary Opera users takes part of
discussions in dedicated opera.* news groups on usenet helping the
company with input on e.g. bugs and requests for new features.
Opera is a full commercial product, unlike e.g. Mozilla, but a big
part of Opera development is a result of open community input.
Very much _unlike_ Microsofts excuse for a browser.
P.S.
Don't react like you are the "Princess on the pea", learn the
atmosphere here, post questions on topics you have already researched
to some level for your self, and you will find that discussions here
can take on heights you have never seen in other NG's.
Just jumping in as a plain newbie asking a FAQ gets you nowhere.
Also remember that a substantial part of participants here are not
Americans, many of us do not even have english as our primary language
and you are doing wrong to expect all of us to be fostered within some
American style of behavior.
This is an international NG first of all and you would do yourself a
good service to try to understand about the cultural differences
between participants that you will find in such a NG.
The "official" web copy of this NG's FAQ-list is here...
http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/html/
...and if you really want to learn about markup for the WWW the full
site of...
...will keep you trained and up to date for a good time to come.
--
Rex .. <r...@css.nu> .. <http://css.nu/>
Tim
Mikko Rantalainen <mi...@st.jyu.fi> wrote:
> Perhaps I should reply with http://www.adobe.com/acrobat every time
> somebody asks about positioning stuff.
Ugh no, don't give them an even worse idea.
--
My "from" address is totally fake. (Hint: If I wanted e-mails from
complete strangers, I'd have put a real one, there.) Reply to usenet
postings in the same place as you read the message you're replying to.
Tina Holmboe
> Incredible. You guys need to go back to grade school and learn some
> manners. Another one for the killfile.
You could have learnt so much. However, approaching a new topic with
your eyes closed does you no good. I expect this will bring another
hysterical rant from your side, but luckily I won't read it.
This isn't a troll; the man is an idiot.
--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
ti...@greytower.net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905
Matt Beckwith
> Don't react like you are the "Princess on the pea", learn the
> atmosphere here, post questions on topics you have already researched
> to some level for your self, and you will find that discussions here
> can take on heights you have never seen in other NG's.
> Just jumping in as a plain newbie asking a FAQ gets you nowhere.
> Also remember that a substantial part of participants here are not
> Americans, many of us do not even have english as our primary language
> and you are doing wrong to expect all of us to be fostered within some
> American style of behavior.
> This is an international NG first of all and you would do yourself a
> good service to try to understand about the cultural differences
> between participants that you will find in such a NG.
The kind of cruelty and rudeness I've found here is cruel and rude in any
culture. And it seems quite like American rudeness and cruelty.
If you've actually seen what people have written to me on this NG and you
still think I'm being inappropriate, then there's no point in our discussing
the issue anyway.
Thanks for the information.
kaeli
enlightened us with <hmc19.18004$p56.5...@newsb.telia.net>...
> "Matt Beckwith" <doctorb...@yahoo.com> exclaimed in <ai1sgi$a78$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>:
>
> > Incredible. You guys need to go back to grade school and learn some
> > manners. Another one for the killfile.
>
> You could have learnt so much. However, approaching a new topic with
> your eyes closed does you no good. I expect this will bring another
> hysterical rant from your side, but luckily I won't read it.
>
> This isn't a troll; the man is an idiot.
>
>
--
Yeah, I plonked him already after reading similar stuff at
comp.lang.javascript. After he said he couldn't be bothered to read the
FAQ, I decided I couldn't be bothered to answer any of his questions.
~kaeli~
Visit me at http://home.att.net/~infinite.possibilities
Bill Clark
> By the way, I use Opera 6.04 too. It's incredible. I'm telling all my
> friends. I bought it, but even with the ads it's light-years ahead of IE
> and Netscape. I understand it was designed by one of the people who set the
> standards of HTML and CSS.
Based on the title of this thread you really ought to look at your site
with Lynx...
--
Growing old is compulsory... Growing up is optional...