Question

Div tutorials

Asked by: DrWarezz

Hey all,

That's right, I'm one of those loosers that use tables for layout. :'(  lol

I've decided that now that I've got some time to improve my HTML skills, I shall tackle div tags.. Can anyone recommend any decent DIV tutorials?

Thanks very much in advance,
[r.D]

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Asked On
2004-12-23 at 03:07:28ID21252216
Tags

div

,

tutorials

Topic

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
16

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Answers

 

by: sajuksPosted on 2004-12-23 at 03:12:22ID: 12891355

 

by: DrWarezzPosted on 2004-12-23 at 03:14:32ID: 12891363

Wow, thanks for them Sajuks..

I shall look through them, and get back to you soon -- if you find any other links that you recommend, please post ^_^

thanks,
[r.D]

 

by: sajuksPosted on 2004-12-23 at 03:19:45ID: 12891379

 

by: sajuksPosted on 2004-12-23 at 03:21:02ID: 12891385

http://dorward.me.uk/www/css/#tutorials
Search in google for "css layout" and you'll find more.
The above links should be more than sufficient to get u started.

 

by: ldbkuttyPosted on 2004-12-23 at 04:11:51ID: 12891605

 

by: COBOLdinosaurPosted on 2004-12-26 at 14:49:29ID: 12904300

Just so you don't start out on the wrong foot.  The div is just another tag; and it is overused by those new to CSS. There is a whole range of tags, and each has a set of behaviours that make it ideal for its designed purpose and not to good for the wrong purpose. Tables have a place in CSS layout, and can be styled to turn them into real workhorses for tabular data.  So don't get hung up on just the div tag, or think that div relpaces the other containers like p, fieldset, or textarea.  

Now the number one thing you need to do to survive the transition.  LET GO of the 20th century.  Don't try to mimic table based layouts.  It is a different universe; one in which content reigns supreme and you are there to serve the needs of the user, even if you don't like giving up a lot of the control.  The old way is two dimensional; the new take on a trip through 4 dimensions.  Sit back and enjoy the ride.  It really works when you don't try to fight it and make the pages look like they used too; and just give the browser a chance to optimize for the needs of the user.

Just to add to the pile of links you already have, here the link to the serious of articles I have started in preparation for the new EE interface that will make it possible for PEs to make articles available on the site:

http://cd-articles.fateback.com/index.html

Cd&

 

by: DrWarezzPosted on 2004-12-27 at 12:02:43ID: 12908523

Thanks alot for that Cd&  =)

I'm curious; if you take a look at the superb Macromedia website (www.macromedia.com), and take a snoop at the source, they've used *no* table tags.. AT ALL!!
They've achieved a certain effect, which consists of having a few columns.. How are columns achieved, without the use of tables? I know* that it's not an easily achieved effect using DIV tags.. however, I can't see how they've achieved it.. The source code don't give too much away, as just about everything is declared in external stylesheets. And I really don't want to spend forever searching thorugh them.. and trying to make sense of their code..
Could you please enlighten me to how they've achieved the columns without tables?

Thanks! ^_^
[r.D]

 

by: COBOLdinosaurPosted on 2004-12-27 at 12:46:40ID: 12908805

They use a common method for locked format pages.  There are wrappers (div) with fixed widths to to hold a static structure and the contents are in block elements that are using floats to position.

It is not my favourite way to layout, because I prefer the fluid approach that avoids horizontal scrollbars.

Here is a link to a list of different approaches to three column layouts using CSS:

http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ThreeColumnLayouts

The one I really like on that list is:

http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/skidoo/

It is a great example of clean maintainable code.

Cd&

 

by: seb_gibbsPosted on 2004-12-30 at 08:12:23ID: 12926741

DrWarezz,

Learning DIV and other stuff is good, but personally, stick with TABLEs and use DIVs where required.  TABLEs is more widely accepted format, so thus your pages will work across more browsers.

Seb

 

by: DrWarezzPosted on 2004-12-30 at 09:06:16ID: 12927166

Thanks very much both.
I've just figured out that I can achieve the effect I'm after using span tags, like so:

:-- test.html
<html>
   <head>
      <title>test</title>
     
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="test.css" />
   </head>
   
   <body>
   
      <center>
         
            <span class="test2"></span>  <span style="width:10;"></span>  <span class="test3"></span>
         
      </center>
     
   </body>
</html>


:--test.css
span.test2 {
   width:500;
   height:200;
   margin:0;
   border:0;
   color:green;
   background-color:red;
   padding:0;
}

span.test3 {
   width:190;
   height:200;
   margin:0;
   border:0;
   color:green;
   background-color:blue;
   padding:0;
}


It works fine, and center aligns with no problems.. is there a reason that I've never seen this method used before? Are there any issues with using the span tag like this?

Thanks :)
[r.D]

 

by: DrWarezzPosted on 2004-12-30 at 09:47:02ID: 12927462

Agh. I've just figured that it isn't working in one of my sites, because I've declared a Transitional DOCTYPE!! :-(

Help?

[r.D]

 

by: COBOLdinosaurPosted on 2004-12-30 at 10:25:16ID: 12927694

Consistent doctypes are important no matter what you are susing.  The modern browsers have far fewr differences when they are forced into standards mode with a strict doctype.  The doctype is going to become more improtant in the future as the browser continue to shift support to the CSS2/3, DOM and XHTML standards.

seb-gibbs,

>>>TABLEs is more widely accepted format, so thus your pages will work across more browsers.

I would certainly like to see the documentation that supports that.  It would definitely make Yahoo's investment of 18 months and a pile of money to convert from table based to CSS based layout questionable.

Basically you are about 100% wrong, unless my calendat is wrong and we are back to 1999 when we had no choice but to hack layout using tables.

The fact is that there are more sites with table based layout than CSS based layout, because CSS is the newer approach and many developers are still lining in the last century.  More than half of the HTML support attributes used for table layout have been depreciated and will be dropped.  Some have already been removed from the XHTML specifications.

When I see a comment like that it just tells me you have not actually gone inside CSS and learned to use it; that is the only way you can  still think tables are useful for anything but their intended purpose of presenting tabular data.  Please, I urge you take the time to actually learn CSS, it will greatly improve your future prospects.

Cd&


Cd&

 

by: DrWarezzPosted on 2004-12-30 at 11:15:34ID: 12928089

Thanks Cd&,

would you mind quickly writing the equivalent of the following, but so that it's compatible with a Transitional DOCTYPE:

:-- test.html
<html>
   <head>
      <title>test</title>
     
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="test.css" />
   </head>
   
   <body>
   
      <center>
         
            <span class="test2"></span>  <span style="width:10;"></span>  <span class="test3"></span>
         
      </center>
     
   </body>
</html>


:--test.css
span.test2 {
   width:500;
   height:200;
   margin:0;
   border:0;
   color:green;
   background-color:red;
   padding:0;
}

span.test3 {
   width:190;
   height:200;
   margin:0;
   border:0;
   color:green;
   background-color:blue;
   padding:0;
}


please? I just can't figure how to get columns using CSS. I understand that CSS/3 will make columns alot easier, however, that won't be finished and widely compatible for many years as you know.. So, how to do that in CSS/2 ? ^_^

Thanks alot,
[r.D]

 

by: COBOLdinosaurPosted on 2004-12-30 at 12:00:32ID: 12928443

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
   <head>
      <title>test</title>
<style type="text/css">    
.test2 {
   width:500px;
   height:200px;
   margin:0;
   color:green;
   background-color:red;
   float:left;
}

.test3 {
   width:190px;
   height:200px;
   margin:0;
   color:green;
   background-color:blue;
   float:right;
}
</style>
   </head>
   
   <body>
   
         <div style="width:700px;margin:0px auto 0px auto;">
            <p class="test2"></p>  <div style="width:10px;float:left"></div>  <address class="test3"></address>
         </div>
     
   </body>
</html>

Here is what I did.  I add a strict doctype I got rid of the span off of the class so they can be applied to any type of element.  I remove the border:0 and padding:0 because those are defaults and unnecessary. I added a unit of measure (px) where necessary.

Now to the positioning.  The centering of element is done with auto margins.  So the contenet goe in a wrapper div which has the left and rigt margins set to auto.  That centers it. The center tag is obsolete; don't use it.  Then I change the spans which are inline elements to thre different block elements so they could be given the form neceassary to make them floatable.

That last bit is the key float is the key to controling the positioning of elements.  The changes the behaviour of the block elements so they stay inline, and move as far to the right of left of their parent as they can without overlapping and sibling in the same layer level.

This kind of blocking of the page using div, p, h and fieldset tags sets up the general layout ready for the detail using inline elements that will be the children of these primary block elements.

Cd&

 

by: DrWarezzPosted on 2004-12-31 at 01:31:47ID: 12931801

^_^

That's exactly what I'm after! :D  You don't know how useful that is to me, Cd& -- thanks alot!!

Sajuks answered my initialy Q, so clearly he is entitled to some of the points :)

Thanks alot both,
[r.D]

 

by: COBOLdinosaurPosted on 2004-12-31 at 13:55:15ID: 12934099

Glad we could help.  Thanks for the A. :^)

Cd&

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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