Re: footnotes

Stephanos Piperoglou wrote:

> if you declare the containing block as relative and the positioned
> one as absolute *then* it works. For an example see
> http://www.webreference.com/html/
>
> You can implement sidenotes using CSS-P right now, you just have to
> be very very careful and do it in a very specific way.

Thanks, it's good to see positioning in real-world examples. Thanks to
tests by people in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, I use
the CSS float positioning scheme, for a sidebar on
http://www.macvirus.com/news/, and columns in my site's top level
pages.

Here are two pictures of what may go awry, with production notes :-).
In A, column 2 has flowed under column 1. In B, column 1 and the footer
overlap.

+-----------------------------+
| A.      float model         |
+-----------------------------+
| column1colum | column2colum |
| n1column1col | n2column2col |
| umn1column1c | umn2column2c |
| olumn1column | olumn2column |
| column1colum | column2colum |
| ncolumn1     | ncolumn2colu |
| mn2column2column2column2col |
| umn2column2column2column2co |
| lumn2column2                |
+-----------------------------+
|           footer            |
+-----------------------------+

+-----------------------------+
| B. absolute positioning     |
+-----------------------------+
| column1colum | column2colum |
| n1column1col | n2column2col |
| umn1column1c | umn2column2c |
| olumn1column | olumn2column |
| column1colum | column2colum |
| ncolumn1colu | ncolumn2colu |
| mn1column1co |              |
+-lumn1column1-|--------------+
| column1columoter            |
| n1colu                      |
+-----------------------------+

A notes: Column 1 is "float:left;width:50%". (Column 2 is not floating --
         a required workaround for one or two bugs in NN4.)
A cons:  Column 2 will flow under unless it is shorter than Column 1.
         Needs a selector to work around 'clear' failing on block elements.
         Breaks "Find" and "Copy" commands in NN4 in Column 1.

B notes: Column 1 is "position:absolute;top:0;left:0" inside Column 2
         which is "position:relative".
B cons:  Column 1 will overlap the "footer" (meaning subsequent
         non-positioned text or images) unless it is shorter than Column 2.
         Breaks "Find" command in NN4 in Column 1.

So, I'm led to think that the only way to position text at the moment
without potentially overflowed or overlapped boxes and blocks is by
copyfitting.

Susan Lesch

Received on Wednesday, 10 June 1998 19:31:15 UTC