Re: CSS positioning

Sandeep Hundal wrote:
> 
> Chris,
> thanks for the reply. along with another reply from Russell, I tried
> absolute postioning....setting the left border of the text at 100px and the
> links at 5px. 

Okay (though that makes certain assumptions about minimum width of the
window)

> The problem is that since I have loads of text and links
> seperated by space, as you can see from the diagram, absolute postioning
> becomes a bit tiresome as I'd have to specify the absolute postion for all
> the para and links, with problems arising if people like bigger or smaller
> text....

no no, you put some container like a DIV round the links and another
round the text and you position (or float) those divs, not each
individual link ... then the divs grow (downwards) if you add more text
or if the text is set in a larger font.
 
> but this floating position idea sounds good. The only problem is that I read
> somewhere (trying to dig it up) that it wasn't fully supported or was buggy
> in one of the 4G browsers...is that true ?

That is a perennial problem. First you have to figure out what parts of
the spec do what you want, then you have to figure out whether and to
what extent those parts of the spec are implemented in various browsers
on various platforms. Obviously browsers released before (or within a
couple months) of a specification will not implement that specification. 

And until there is sufficient usage of that specification there will be
holes in implementations because the implementors have finite time to do
the entire program. You can affect the amount of that time  allocated to
CSS implementation by letting the browser manufacturer know that you
want better CSS support. Customer satisfaction is a prime mover in most
companies that plan to stay in business.

The good thing about CSS is that, if you structure your document well
and then use CSS which is well structured, older browsrs can still read
the text and later browsers get better presentation. In fact, you get
better backwards compatibility than using tables, frames, java, etc.
Many of the pages I write, while they use all the good stuff like CSS,
are actually very simple HTML - divisions using DIV(with classes),
headings, paragraphs, lists; spans with classes. Its HTML 4.0, but old
1.0 browsers that only support HTML 2.0 can read it and display it. So
can Lynx, screen readers, etc.


-- 
Chris Lilley, W3C                             http://www.w3.org/
Graphics and Stylesheets Guy      The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)492 387 987         06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Wednesday, 19 August 1998 11:16:25 UTC