UBB.Developers Forums UBB.threads 6 V6 Modifications Forum Design Integration Need some HTML coding help...

Okay, let me explain the problem. I'm trying to work on a threads board called the The Senate and I'd like to have two images of columns appear on either side of the board. The problem is, the middle portion of the columns must lenghten and shorten as the contents of the middle portion of the page lenghten and shorten. This is critical because if I set the table cell, where the middle part of the column is configured as a background image, to a fixed height they don't expand and contract, they will either force the page to be too tall (i.e. if the middle content is short) or there will be gaps in the images of the columns because the content is too tall.

I've successfully been able to get it to work in Netscape 7.01 and Mozilla; however, for reasons beyond my understanding, the same code does not yield the same results in Internet Exploder. I've tried different settings all to no avail. The middle part of the column is a background image. Since the height of the top and bottom portions of the column are set to a fixed amount (i.e. 58 pixels) the middle portion "should" lenghten and shorten to accomodate the content. Internet Exploder doesn't seem to want to recognize the fixed height of the top and bottom cells and in its infinite wisdom, it stretches those cells out resulting in the rather large gaps you see.

So, my question is, is there a way to make this work in Internet Exploder? If you're interested in taking a look, just do a view source on the page and you'll see the code.

I experimented with frames, but unfortunately that doesn't work. The bottom frame can't be below the viewable window and hence you end up scrolling the middle frame, where the content is, which is REALLY ugly. The solution is going to have to come from tables which is how it's configured at the moment.

I know that the background attribute of the <td> tag isn't XHTML 1.0 compatible, but I don't know of another way to have something lenghten and shorten like I need it to while retaining the same look.

Take a look at the page using Netscape and you'll see the difference.

Any suggestions?

I'll put together an example of how to make that work. It's more or less how the table wrappers work that we have been working on here.

The problem is that whey you open up the center with the row span of 3 the outer center cells collaps. I would shave the height of the column top/bottom graphics down to decrease the blank space that will be above the center content. I would use css to set the background of the center table cell to display the column sides.

I have attached a column cap that's been reduced in height for an example.


Hope I made sense too... lol

Not sure I'm following you exactly. How would I set the background of the center table cell to display the column sides since the width of the center table cell varies with the size of the window? I'm also not sure what reducing the size of the column cap gets me.

I know this is asking a lot, but would it be possible for you to take the source code from the front page and "tweak" it to what you're talking about? I'm more of a visual person. I need to see what you're talking about to really understand. Heck, even having an example of the code would really help.

Here's the example.

I hard coded your style sheet into the file so I could easily manipulate it. I added "padding: 0;" to your BODY class. This makes it look good with Opera too.

The attached file validated XHTML 1.0 transitional when I uploaded it at the validation site.

It looked good in Opera 7.0, Netscape 7.0, Mozilla 1.2 and Internet Explorer 6.0

If Obewan was a web designer he would be telling Luke to use the css. Stay away from the dark non standards side.

[]If Obewan was a web designer he would be telling Luke to use the css. Stay away from the dark non standards side. [/]
Just about bust a gut over that one.

Thanks to you, it's all working right. You'll laugh, but I actually had the idea to do it exactly as you did probably five different times. Each time I discarded it because I didn't think it would work. I don't know if you noticed, but I had started a class called .column-lt for that very purpose.

Guess I should have just done it to see if it worked.

Oh well.

Thanks again Dave! I think the columns really add a nice touch to the board.

Very design!

Thanks.

I think it's really starting to come together. Now, if only I could scrape up the money to re-enable my access to Infopop's Member's Area, I could upgrade to 6.2.