Re: How is it possible to devise such a feeble system?

on 10/24/01 11:59 AM, Peter Foti (PeterF) at PeterF@SystolicNetworks.com
wrote:

> 
> This is something I don't understand.  If CSS doesn't "know" what the
> size of the screen is, then how can it center horizontally?  I've never
> understood just why there is such a lack of support for vertical
> alignment, yet there's no problem with horizontal alignment.  They
> should be treated the same in my opinion.
> 
> I don't know how Jesse would want to use it, but I can imagine wanting
> to use it to put something in the center of a page.
> 
> Peter
> 

Peter, i understand your frustration, so let me try and clarify what is
taking place here. What we have is a clash between the ones mental model of
the page and the actual model of the document.

With small document (one that doesn't fill up the browser window) set a
border of a few pixels on the body. This should show what you're dealing
with. The *body* is as wide as the window, but only as tall as it needs to
be. This is often times shorter then the height of the browser window
itself. The minimum height of the document is not the browser height. It's
because of this that centering a box (div) inside of the containing box
(body) would not center it in the "box" that is the browser opening.
Therefore, in reality, CSS doesn't know about the height *or* the width of
the browser, it just happens that the width of the document IS the width of
the browser.

Now, i'll withhold any comments on whether I think this is the right
approach, I will just say that I've seen *a lot* of folks not expecting it
to work this way (or wanting it to work differently).

-- 
name://chris  aka://10sball http://placenamehere.com

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2001 12:30:19 UTC