Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: css problems with left col/menu

Negative margin values are nonstandard, and can fail.

The capital letters in the color definition may be causing Firefox to throw out the style.

UI / UX Design html-css web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: IE 7 rendering only on client's two computers!

Questions:

How did you size and position the elements?

Are the screen resolutions different on the suspect computers, compared to the computers the page works on?

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: A reason to use tables instead of divs

If you're working in an IT company that keeps up to date, than you will have a programmer working alongside with a designer, so the programmer won't have to worry about this and just follow the guidelines of the designer.

The IT companies here want to hire only one employee for both.

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: A reason to use tables instead of divs

Can someone write a set of rules that always works for divs?

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Div padding issue

Not always.

I just created a test, and they still render differently when a table is one of the elements. The only way to make them render alike is to nest tags, and not put margin and padding on the table elements.

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: font autoresize to fit screen

Make sure that there's a default font size for the <body> element. THAT must be specified in px or pt, or else the browser doesn't know the size of neither em nor percent! :)

By not specifying it in the body tag in the css file.
Everywhere else you can use "em" or "%" for font size, just not in the body tag.

One of you says I have to do this, the other says I shouldn't. But it doesn't work if I don't. But if I do, I don't get what I wanted.

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Cool feature on this website.

This is the thing I hate most about websites! Those things are extremely annoying. I want a way to make the browser ignore them. They drive dyslexic people crazy.

That is a good way to make a lot of people click their back buttons.

UI / UX Design multimedia web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Content Boxes

0px is an invalid style.

Styles with zero values should have just a 0, without units of measure. Firefox throws away styles with units of measure on zero values.

Styles with nonzero values should have units of measure, unless they are counts.

UI / UX Design multimedia web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: "Are pop-up windows dead, are there alternative methods?

Why not just open a new page? The BACK button returns you to the menu page.

UI / UX Design ui-ux web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Convert PDF to Excel or CSV?

You can set Excel to make a selected number of columns from a text file in that form. I just taught students how to do that the other day.

Microsoft Windows microsoft-office pdf
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: What do I need

I got a Linksys BEFSR41 for $50 at about 1 pm (but then had some work done on the car, so I didn't get home until about 5). The network is up and running by 10 pm.

The hardest part was getting the printer to work. It took a while to realize that I had to remove all of the printer definitions on the computer without the printer (I had been moving the USB cable), and then add the network printer.

One strange thing is that the file sharing folders appear in different places on the two computers. On one, the shared folder appears in the "My Network Places" folder. On the other, it appears in a subfolder of a subfolder of that folder.

Another strange thing is that the Internet light on the Siemens DSL modem never lights now. But there is an Internet light on the router that does light.

Is there a way to share a USB drive among the computers?

This is the first post made through the network.

Networking
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Content Boxes

- Don't put size styles (width, height) in the same tag or style that contains nonzero surrounding styles (margin, border, padding). This causes IE to render the page differently than how other browsers render it. IE nests these styles in the wrong order.

UI / UX Design multimedia web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Ads cause clicks to double themselves

This is interesting: The FF update I just installed fixed this trouble on all of the sites except DaniWeb.

Meta DaniWeb
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: A reason to use tables instead of divs

I'm not exactly the best student but I've exerted more effort (than usual) in studying how divs behave and I am more comfortable (efficient) working with divs than with tables.

I keep thinking I have it mastered, but then I go to use it, and it sneaks out and does something else. Or it works on one browser and not another. The worst thing is when a browser update makes the site change the way it displays.

Whereas, divs are so much more flexible. Can you imagine what wordpress would be like if it used tables to display its content?

No, because I don't use it.

Will there be that much diversity to the designs and structures available to us? Can we switch the positions of the body, menu, and other parts of the page with just one CSS file if designs were based on tables?

I'm not talking about designing an entire page with tables, but positioning two or three stubborn elements that refuse to go into the right places with divs. If there is a real table (a worksheet of numbers) on the page, the divs go crazy.

I am talking about positioning a photo to the right of each paragraph of text, and having all of the photos, and all of the right margins of the texts lined up perfectly.

And I don't WANT the positions of things to change. I want the page to scroll if the window is too small.

…
UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: css positioning questions

You're most welcome. =)

(I'm still hoping someone will clear up the issue with clear: right though)

Doesn't this allow other items (such as text) to flow on the left side?

UI / UX Design html-css web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: font autoresize to fit screen

If that happened you have definitely made a mistake somewhere. Check if it reads your CSS file at all. I bet you it doesn't! :)
Add something like a wild background color. If it can see that it reads the file, so you'll have to look for syntax errors etc.

The rest of the CSS is working. I added it to an existing file.

Make sure that there's a default font size for the <body> element. THAT must be specified in px or pt, or else the browser doesn't know the size of neither em nor percent! :)

That's it.

But I wanted it to use the user's own browser default setting as the value modified. How do I do that?

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: What do I need

A switch is simply a switch. Its a piece of dumb electronics whereas a Router is smart lets you do stuff like

setup port forwarding (essential for gaming, setting up servers etc..),

Do I need this for my purposes?

firewalling,

Do I need this for my purposes? The computers already have them.

and most importantly NAT

Do I need this for my purposes?

and DHCP.

Do I need this for my purposes?

Go for the router. Expect to pay ay £30 to £50 for a wireless one.

Dollars? I'm in the US.

What about my need to remove a computer from the network. How is this done in a way that makes the network software stop running?

Networking
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Content Boxes

Tips:

- Don't use pixels for anything other than border size.

- Use % measures for sizes and positions relative to the width of the browser.

- Use em measures for sizes relative to the browser font size.

UI / UX Design multimedia web-design
Erek4 commented: Good tip +1
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: screen resolution problem..

If you are trying to exactly fill a browser window, note that it can't be done in a way that works in all browsers, screen resolutions, and window sizes.

UI / UX Design ui-ux web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
A reason to use tables instead of divs

There is now a reason to use tables and css for layout, instead of divs and css.

Employers now prefer the table method. Our technical school instructors are now teaching this, instead of div and css.

Why?

Job performance!

It takes an average of four times as long to create a page using divs and css, compared to using tables and css. This is because the page author must fool around with the div settings until it works. The table always works the first time.

The employer prefers getting more pages per day, as opposed to getting pages that please the W3C.

Simple div structures work, but if the structure contains a list or a table, div messes it up. Then you have to play with height, width, margin, border, padding, and other properties, just to get the structure to hold together in all browsers.

As an example, I wanted to create a simple structure consisting of text on the left and a small table on the right, all surrounded by a border. I tried the following in sequence:

Making a surrounding div for the border:
- I could not get the table to go to the right and stay inside the border.
- It wanted to put the table under the text instead.

Make a surrounding div for the border, with two divs inside:
- The div for the border became small vertically, with both the text …

UI / UX Design web-design
iamthwee commented: Nice take/points. +18
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: font autoresize to fit screen

I tried that today in an h1 tag's style. Firefox would not accept % for a font size (I wanted a double sized font, so I put 200%). It also refused to set a font size in em. The only values that worked were px, pt, and the relative size styles (e.g. large).

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Can Someone Assist Me?

The <!-- --> tags should be removed. They cause troubles with new browsers.

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: CSS Emergency - HELP!!

0px is an invalid style. It causes Firefox to throw away the entire style.

When a value is 0, do not attach a unit of measurement. Just put 0.

UI / UX Design html-css web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Div padding issue

This is the IE browser incompatibility bug. It happens even with the correct doctype.

Firefox and other browsers render the surrounding and size elements nested as follows (outside to inside), following the W3C box definition:

margin, border, padding, width/height

IE wrongly renders them in this order (outside to inside):

width/height, margin, border, padding

So you will have differences whenever you put a width or height in the same tag or style with a nonzero surrounding style (margin, border, padding). Don't use them in the same tag or style.

Nest two tags. Put the sizes in one, and the surrounding styles in the other.

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Text overlay on image using css???

Please do NOT do this. Many of us have trouble reading text when it is on top of an image. It is an accessibility problem.

UI / UX Design html-css web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: css position problems

The height attribute, applied to html and body, is rendered in different ways on different browsers, if it is rendered at all. It is usually NOT the size of the window, but the height of the entire document after rendering.

There is no reliable way to make the document render to the size of the browser window, because there are so many variants of screen resolution, browser type, operating system, and window size.

UI / UX Design html-css web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: What do I need

I have XP pro.

OK, I now have at least three solutions (plus one that won't work). Which one?

The router costs twice as much as the switch.

What is the difference between using a switch, a hub, and a router?

Do any of these require that I install additional software on the computers?

How can I isolate one of the computers from the network when I need to (when I need to run the software that is latency-critical)?

Networking
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Office 2007Colour Scheme

Maybe you could install Outlook in a different folder.

Microsoft Windows
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: how to add Excel,Word,Powerpoint to start menu

Find the original program's exe file, right click, and select Create Shortcut. It will be created in the same folder. Then drag the shortcut where you want it. Repeat for more shortcuts.

This works best in Windows Explorer with the Folders pane open.

Microsoft Windows
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Convert PDF to Excel or CSV?

Adobe Reader has a "Save as text" function.

Then you can use the import function to get the data.

Microsoft Windows microsoft-office pdf
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: how to add Excel,Word,Powerpoint to start menu

They made a change in Windows that removed the protection from dragging the icons out of the start menu. They used to be protected from change, but they are no longer protected.

It is always safer to copy the shortcuts.

Microsoft Windows
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Help with DIV/FLOAT in Firefox

I thought it was "ipsum before doler, except after lorem."

The real problem is nesting of features.

The standard calls for the following nesting order, outside to inside:
- margin
- border
- padding
- width

IE orders them in the wrong order:
- width
- margin
- border
- padding

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Word to Webpage

Word itself has a "save as web page" function, but it writes the worst code I ever saw.

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: font autoresize to fit screen

I see what you mean.

I actually use relative font sizes when I can. The only times I use absolute sizes is when I need a font to match the size of an image. Usually it is a BIG font. (what do you do when you need a font size bigger than xx-large?)

I said to use points to make the text a certain size on the monitor, regardless of settings and resolution.

I don't know of anything other than percent that changes with the size of the window. And then, it works horizontally, but not vertically.

I learned something today. There is confusion among authors of CSS materials, because "em" has two different definitions:

- The typesetter's em is the WIDTH of the capital M. It varies with the style of the font. No relative measure was needed for typesetting. The em was used to figure how much text fits on a line.

- The real CSS em is the HEIGHT of the capital M. It is equal to the font size in points.

Unfortunately, the author of the book I learned CSS from looked up em in a dictionary, and used that definition in the book.

The typesetter's em is useless for sizing other items to fonts. It is smaller with a narrower font. Thus, I was misled into believing that the CSS em was useless.

The real CSS em looks very useful. I am going to start using …

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: CSS Caching

MidiMagic, if it is a browser setting which cannot be overridden from the server side, surely that would mean websites could never be updated by their developers?

No, just that the user needs to hit the refresh button to update the cache.

This is usually set to minimize download traffic on dial-up.

UI / UX Design html-css web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
What do I need

I want to do the following:

- Connect to DSL from two computers.
- Transfer files between the two computers.
- Use one printer from either computer.
- Occasionally isolate one computer from this setup when running certain software (due to latency requirements)

The computers each have one Ethernet port and one free USB ports.

The DSL modem has one Ethernet port.

The printer has one USB port. It is currently using one of the USB ports that is not free on one computer.

Both computers run Windows XP.

What type of network and equipment do I need?

Networking
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Office 2007Colour Scheme

This is one of the things that really bugs me about most commercial software. When I try to do a simple task, the software does other things "for me" that I didn't want. Examples:

- Office changing the color scheme of all of the products, not just one.

- A music production program I use always assumes that I want to loop the music track I am working on, so it defaults the loop switch to ON.

- Every art program I have defaults to putting the file in the Pictures folder in My Documents. I want each picture in the project folder I am using. This costs me some time as I must move the active folder each time I create a new file.

- Every art program I use also dithers the image to make it look like a photo. I want line drawings, not dithered images. I have to go through a complicate process to keep the image a line drawing in the format I need it to be in.

- A document processing program I used to have resets the printer when it starts. This causes a delay in using the printer, and also kills any print jobs already in it.

- Whenever Microsoft updates a program, most of the settings I made are gone, and Microsoft's default settings are back.

- QuickTime changes my defaults to using QuickTime whenever it installs an upgrade. It also installs itself in …

Microsoft Windows
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: gif problem on Internet Explorer

The problem is that a new install of IE has to be taught what to do with a .gif file.

Microsoft Windows
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: how to add Excel,Word,Powerpoint to start menu

The real problem is usually that someone has dragged the icons to the desktop, then later deleted them. Now they are gone.

Be sure to COPY icons when you put them somewhere, rather than moving them.

Microsoft Windows
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Folder Icon Transparency

Why does it matter?

Meta DaniWeb
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Responding to old threads

I'm sick of these rules that dictate when you can post on what thread. WHO originally decided that this should be a rule - some government bureaucrat? Or was it a webmaster trying to conserve disk space?

The usual case of a post to an old thread occurs in this way:

1. The person has a problem, and Googles it.

2. Google takes the person to a dead thread.

3. The person does not know how to navigate the site yet. He does not want to lose the location he found, so he bookmarks it.

4. He does what he can find in a short time. He registers to post on the site.

5. He then uses the bookmark to return to the thread he found, and posts his question on the topic.

It's how I found DaniWeb.

Another problem is that different BBSs have different sets of rules on what to do. Another site I frequent dislikes new topics on the same subject already discussed on old topics, and demands that you search for old topics.

Meta DaniWeb
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: website loading or page loading screen. Help pls!

It is impossible to do some of these.

i want a loading screen before my site fully loaded. it can be
1. loading screen before the home page fully loaded.

- In order for the page to load, the browser must be displaying it, so the browser can render things. The browser must create it in the video display memory.

2. loading screen before the flash fully loaded.

- The flash player has that.

3. loading screen before each page loaded.

- Same as #1 above.

4. loading screen before the WEBSITE fully loaded.

- The website is never fully loaded at the same time, unless it has only one page. Each page must be loaded separately. Loading each page throws out the preceding page.

UI / UX Design multimedia web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Content Boxes

First, NEVER use absolute positioning. It guarantees that your site will mess up in different browsers.

Remember that the browser screen is not a fixed size. You must design flexibly, to work on different browsers, screen resolutions, and window sizes.

UI / UX Design multimedia web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Best Ecommerce script

Anything inside a script is NOT searched by search engines. The original page before it is modified by scripts is the only thing the search engines look at.

UI / UX Design multimedia web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Is there a standard for handling missing images' space?

Height and width parameters are deprecated.

When you don't yet have the image, use a blank image the same size. Put some text on it, like "Bob lost the picture."

Many browsers refuse to render space for objects they can't find.

UI / UX Design ui-ux web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: create a continuous marquee in flash...

That would make me hit the back button at lightning speed.

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Is there an easier way? =P

0px is an invalid style. Place units of measure on nonzero values that need them. Do not place units of measure on zero values. It causes some browsers to throw the entire style away.

UI / UX Design web-design
iamthwee commented: yes +18
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: CSS Caching

This is a setting in the browser, not your code. Each user has to turn off the caching of pages and/or enable checking for changed files.

UI / UX Design html-css web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: Messy code

First of all, hiding scripts and styles in comment tags is deprecated. It doesn't work anymore. Remove the <!-- and --> . They now keep your browser from using the scripts and styles.

Scripts should be in external files, not inline in the code.

UI / UX Design web-design
Member Avatar for MidiMagic
MidiMagic 579 Nearly a Senior Poster
Re: css and browser issues ....

Use percent for horizontal location.

Use points to define fonts and things relative to fonts.

Don't attempt vertical centering. It is almost impossible to achieve on all browsers, resolutions, and window sizes.

UI / UX Design html-css web-design