RE: CSS positioning

Jim, that's fantastic but leaves me with a couple of other questions which I
believe again support Kynn's point.

Firstly, as I can read the text now, it seems that the same problem for the
top positioning is now causing problems for the left positioning and I'm
getting truncation of text. I had a guess at doing the same thing as you
have done for the top position and added "left: 0px !important;" but no joy?
How can I now sort this out?

Secondly, *[class] in my stylesheet under IE5.5 doesn't seem to work as a
match for all classes on a page. Is this a known feature of IE CSS support?
Is there an alternative? I was hoping to add some generic styling which
would apply to all (well most anyway) other web pages so I wouldn't have to
keep asking these sorts of questions. I'm not that bother about this site in
particular but want to create a stylesheet which can be used whenever I need
to access a site which exhibits the same behaviour.

 
Thirdly, did you just guess at the class name? Do you use a tool to identify
which element produces a particular effect (like in Visual Studio when you
click on the page and the HTML source is displayed) or are you using your
obviously considerable experience? I tried searching for the text in one of
the menus but because I could only see the first few letters under my
settings when I performed the search on the source I got to many results to
make this a feasible appraoch? 

Once I understand what's going on I was intending to publish my stylesheet
so that others might be able to benefit from the work? I'm getting the
distinct impression that current CSS suport (in IE at least but it appears
Opera is much better) does not provide the functionality to do this
generically? It's no good if every time one has a problem web page you have
to search through the source, identify all problem classes and then add them
to your own stylesheet!? Besides, different sites may use the same class
name for different purposes? It would be nice to think that the latest
version of CSS at least does provide the functionality to acheive this even
if we have to wait a while for browsers to support the latest version? 

I would just add that I am fully aware that this would most definitely NOT
be a universal solution for ALL. If I'm being completely honest my
motivation is selfishness - I want to produce something that will help me do
my job. As opposed to Kynn's more honorable FUSSY approach. However, if I
can be of any use in this quest my services where possible are sincerely
offered.

Cheers
Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: Kynn Bartlett [mailto:kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com]
Sent: 14 March 2002 17:43
To: Jim Ley; WAI (E-mail)
Subject: Re: CSS positioning


At 5:06 PM +0000 3/14/02, Jim Ley wrote:
>If you really want to make the page accessible...
>Adding this to your user stylesheet seems to do a reasonable job...
>.itemBorder { top:0px !important;position:relative !important;height:2em
>!important }
>it changes the position to relative, removes the top position and forces
>the height to 2em, itemBorder is perhaps a common classname though so it
>may effect other pages.

What Jim says is right -- but it just illustrates why there is a problem
with CSS and user style sheets to begin with. Without knowing HTML and
CSS in detail, and knowing how to set up a user style sheet, the end
user can't take advantage of the features of the cascade meant to protect
the user's interests.

This is something I hope to address if I ever get FUSSY (Free User
Style Sheet for You) off the groud, but geez, I need more time in the
day! :)

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                 http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain            http://idyllmtn.com
Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire          http://kynn.com/resume
Next Book: Teach Yourself CSS in 24       http://cssin24hours.com


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Received on Friday, 15 March 2002 04:46:31 UTC