HTML help required.

Originally posted by Wertigon
Cid: Yep, it’s a P-A-I-N. Why won’t IE do like the rest of the world does? grmbl

Because Bill Gates is evil.

Originally posted by Wertigon
[b]Cid: Yep, it’s a P-A-I-N. Why won’t IE do like the rest of the world does? grmbl
If I recall corretly, IE has been around longer then both Mozillia and Opera…

the ALT still appears if the mouse hovers though, so it works the same anyways

Epic: Yeah, but Netscape was around before IE was and they never supported the Alt attribute tooltip.

And if I’m not mistaken, I think the latest HTML spec (4.01 that is) specificly says that Alt text should only be displayed if the image does not load. As, y’know, an alternative to the image.

Great. The only thing this discussion has gotten me is absolutely confused.Perhaps what I’m asking is somewhat too complex for my skill in web design…

Spaz: I’ll throw together a full solution and explain it to you when I have the time. Until then, hold your horses 'k?

Its not really that StarStorm, we’re just arguing about which of the two solutions is best (the table or the image map).

Personally I think you’ll get a far better result with the table, provided all your squares are about the same size. The advantage with the table is that you can add a lot more events to it if you like, you can have an alt to an image, an acronym around it, you can put a mouse over event on each block and add status bar text like I outlined in my earlier post. Sure you can do most if not all of these things with an image map, but the code is going to look far more complicated for nothing. Just stick with a table and you’ll get a good result.

And if you really want I can show you how to have a large size version of the selected block appear on the same page, but its a bit of work and I don’t want to write the code for it unless I know you’re interested.

Or he could do it the way I showed him, which would give far more flexibility, less code bloat and generally be supported by everything including Lynx browsers. =P

Oh your pure CSS solution will work perfectly on every platform, but the second you use an older browser it falls apart. You can’t count on everyone having a perfectly up to date browser so you should be careful of using layer tags since they don’t degrade very well.

You’re also forgetting that if this is a page for rpgclassics you have to take into account the left menu bar and the height of the banner at the top, any change in those and the style properties of those spans is just asking for trouble. NEVER EVER use an absolute positioning tag unless its on a site you design completely yourself because if you’re getting a variable sized navigation bar phped in you’re taking a bag chance with getting overlaps.

Again I strongly recommend that you use the solution with the individual blocks in table cells, its the safest solution and actually one of the easiest. If you want to show a “zoomed in” version of a cell all on the same page that’s perfectly feasable but don’t got for something too fancy until you actually understand what it is you’re coding.

instantly promotes Dark Sand to staff and whisks him off to the staff board

I love you DS.

Bakes DS a caik

Dark Sand: Actually, Absolute positioning is not what you think it is. It does not mean from the top left corner of the page, like everyone seems to think. It means the top left corner of the element it is a child to. Check out http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/popups/demo.html and hover over the menu to the left - It’s using Absolute positioning to display the message. Exactly 200 pixels down and 0 pixels to the left of the div with the id “links”. Now, tell me again why I shouldn’t use Absolute positioning?

Older browsers? Yeah, will probably fail in those. Like, NN4 and IE4. Then again, you can always hide CSS that’s likely to break the browser with a few tricks, making the messages still available while not really hiding them.

My suggestion should however work in all browsers released 2000 and later. Including IE 5, 5.5 and 6 (which are the only browsers that today’s webdesigners follow, just ask the people at www.webmasterworld.com), but IE is buggy as hell when it comes to positioning and I haven’t had ample time to test it yet, it might require a workaround and if it does I’ll fix it. Like I said, I need some more time fiddling around, since I’ve never done this thing before.

And anyone who still designs for NN4.x seriously needs to be shot and buried… You actually do the guy a favor. NN4 got like, 0.02% of the market right now and it’s going fast downwards, noone really bothers about it anymore.

Like hell it is, absolute positioning positions objects from left 0, top 0 on the document body, remember we’re talking about phped in navigation menus, not frames, the body of the page, the navigation bar and the banner all on on 1 page, not 3. If rpgc used frames it wouldn’t be a problem, but they don’t so it is.

Don’t take my word for it, please try it out yourself
www.w3school.com position:absolute

If you bother actually looking at the source code you’ll notice that the place where the output is displayed is an iframe, ie a different page, that’s why setting it to top 0, left 0 moves the text to the TOP LEFT (0,0) of THAT PAGE.

Let me explain a few things to you about web page design, you don’t build sites for people with the latest version of their web browser, you build web sites for EVERYONE, if their browser is that old they probably have a good reason for it, maybe their pc simply can’t handle a newer browser or maybe they’re on a pc where they can’t install software. The point is these people have as much right to view your site as anyone else. Building a site that can’t be accessed by these individuals not only makes you a bad web designer, since you were perfectly capable of building something they could view, but simply chose not to doing; something needlessly complex knowing full well what the result would mean. But a fool for alienating potential viewers, and if this were a company website, potential clients. Not to mention the fact that you’re proposing a needlessly complex solution that is probably beyond StarStorm’s ability to implement anyway (no offence).

As for your miracle solution of hiding the CSS for older browsers, sure you can do that, its easy, just use an external file or add <!-- --> inside your style tags. Old browsers will ignore those, sure, but have you ever bothered looking at a site with CSS and DHTML using an old browser, IT DOESN’T DEGRADE WELL, IF AT ALL.

I suggests StarStorm uses the table since its by far the simplest solution to his problem, I feel I’ve outlined my case as to why your solution is riddled with problems. If he chooses your solution so much the better for you, and if he asks I’ll be glad to help him fix the countless problems that are bound to be caused by it. However I’m done with this discussion, if you want to keep arguing with yourself be my guest.

not only appoints DS to staff, but gives him a big shiny medal shaped like a plot hole

wants to marry DS

You both have points, DS, Wert…

But I’m not too overly worried anymore. I was just worried that the maps I found wouldn’t be very helpful. I’m not doing any of the HTML, so hopefully it’ll give me time to better understand the solutions you all are offering.

The reason most webpages done with CSS and/or DHTML doesn’t degrade gratefully is because they aren’t designed to degrade gracefully. Yes, webdesign is about catering to everyone. Not just your normal user, but blind, sight-impaired, people who can’t use a mouse because of spastic seisures, search engine spider bots… The list goes forever on. I personally design with the content in focus, that is, I whip up the content, then use CSS to make it look pretty. It has numerous advantages over design-first-then-shoehorn-content-into-it designs, but I’m too lazy to go in on the advantages right now.

If you actually bother to look at the SPECs of CSS, it clearly states that absolute positioning isn’t neccessarily from the top left corner of the page. However, it seems to me that browsers actually have a problem understanding this. It could just be that it’s rendered in quirks mode, but fine. Absolute positioning has too many problems, even today, and (ugly-but-reliable) tablehacks still work.

I still wanna know though Meyerweb’s example works though…

… :hmm:

DOH! Of course! That’s why! Now if you excuse me I got some coding to do… :runaway: