CSS - Suggestions For Better Layout (w/o Absolute Positioning)

Hey guys,

This is my first time messing with absolute positioning, and I am in a pickle.

I have created a website and it contains a services page. On the list of the services, when you scroll over each word, a block of text describing that particular service pops up.

Now, I have placed the box using <span>'s and hidden blocks. My problem is that when I change screen resolutions, the placement of the box changes. I am looking for a resolution-independent workaround for this, so that others running 1024, 1280, etc wont have a problem viewing the site correctly. I have searched the web dry it feels like. Maybe I'm just bad at looking, but its the last thing I need to do before putting up the site.

Check out the page and source code he
URL

Additionally, this is the code I used to make this (it's Eric Meyers PURE CSS codes):

Code:

<style type="text/css">
<!--
div#links a:hover {text-decoration: none; 
   background: #698165;}

div#links a span {display: none;}

div#links a:hover span {display: block;
   position: absolute; top: 535px; left: 233px; width: 377px; height: 230px;
   padding: 5px; margin: 10px; z-index: 100;
   color: white;
   font: 10px Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: justify;}
   
div#links a:link { text-decoration: none;
   color: white;}
   
div#links a:visited { text-decoration: none;
   color: white;}
-->
</style>

then the code is activated by:

Code:

<a href="#">Mowing
<span>Service Landscapes will tend and maintain your lawn with the most substantial of detail and care.  Our services will provide you with a beautiful, healthy landscape that will turn heads.  If you are looking for quality and dependable service that you can turn to time and time again, look no further than Service Landscapes.
</span>
</a>

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I just stated handcoding and I am having a great time. Everything seemed to be going well on my first site until I previewed it on IE. After solving the nasty png issue, I realized that the two elements that I have absolute postioned a) screw the layout up in IE6 b) don't appear all together in IE7 and IE8, but doesn't screw up the flow.

The elements are an arm that is supposed to hang off the left side, and hair that sits above the contentwrap (you will understand once you look)

It renders perfectly in Firefox, safari and google chrome. Go figure.

I read I can't put hyperlinks because of spam, so if you don't mind helping out, please visit:

w w w . goscoblog. com/test/index.html

Thanks In advance

I think the best way to explain this is by example, if you go to this page:

http://lifeyouwant.workinprogress.co.uk/how-we-work

You will notice the drop down menu works fine in Firefox, Safari, Opera etc. However when it comes to IE7 the drop down menu is positioned too far to the right.

Has anyone got any ideas how I can get this to display correctly in IE7 (like it does in Firefox).

I would prefer to try not to use a hack for IE7.

ANy ideas would be great! Thanks.

Now i have used some of this on one of my designs and at 1280x1024 resolution it looks perfect however if you decrease the resolution then it move the image into a place i dont want it to be. Now is there a way around this or am i just going to have to put the "this site is best viewed at 1280x1024" sign on it?

Hello everyone, I would like to ask for any and all help on solving this problem I am having.

Well recently I used to make all of my web sites in tables until I came upon an article saying you should use CSS and absolute positioning. Therefore, my problem is this, If you go to this partially completed site, http://sykotic-designz.org/newsite/index.html.

You will now notice that there are two 'shadow' images. One on the left and one on the right. The one on the left works fine. Test it by making your browser window smaller and bigger. You will notice the right shadow moves. I have tried various alternatives like using a table just for the one image but you still need to use absolute position and did not work, I have messed with displaying absolute position by % and by pixels. But it doesn't want to seem to work either. I am mainly having problems probably because I am new to the DIV tags in which I use entirely through out this page, I am not sure if CSS will help at all. You can view the source of the page if you wish. I appreciate and and all help you may provide, thanks!

Good morning,

I've been working on my site, and it's in its final stages, but I'm experiencing a problem I can't figure out.

I have a floating bar with all of my navigation links in it which is absolutely defined with the following code:

Code:

#headerBar { /* sets position of floating bar */
	position: absolute;
	clear: both;
	top: 57px;
	left: 0px;
	padding: 0px;
	margin: 0px;
	width: 100%;
	filter: alpha(opacity=50);
	-moz-opacity: .50;
	opacity: .50;
		}

The problem I'm experiencing is that in Firefox, Safari, and Opera, the bar appears magically in the perfect position, however, in Internet Explorer, the bar is 5-10 pixels higher than it should be.

The url is: http://www.alokw.com

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

For a search tool, I have a "results toolbar", horizontally across the top of the results page. Within this toolbar (position: relative) I have a span containing the current page, absolutely positioned at top: 8px; left: 5px;

What I get when rendering however, is the following:
Right: http://tim.komta.com/images/css/Firefox.gif
Wrong: http://tim.komta.com/images/css/IE.gif

More accurately, I should say that I get what I expect in Firefox, and not what I expect in IE, which is not overly surprising.

Anyway, what am I doing wrong?

If I change the text-align of the box from right (current) back to left, it's still overlaid on top of the images, but on the left, like it's supposed to be. It kinda seems like IE is making the images the bounding box for absolute positioning.

Any thoughts?

MPEDrummer

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is possible or not, but I can't get it to work accurately, and I wondered if anyone could give me some help.

I would like to position a layer at an absolute position (T:128 L:253) which is no problem, but then I would like that layer to have a relative width from that fixed point, expanding/contracting to whatever size the browser is.

I've tried several different things, but can't seem to get this particular setup. If I set the width of the layer to 100%, the layer positions itself correctly on the page, but pushes beyond the right hand side of the browser causing a horizontal scroll.

Has anyone done this before? Am I missing something critical? or is this impossible to do with layers/css

Thank you!

K...I have an absolutely positioned toolbar in a search tool page.

There are instances where the toolbar (on the left) is longer than the actual (non-absolute) results. When this happens, IE refuses to scroll for the absolutely positioned content!

Anyone know what I can do about this? It's a little...crappy.

MPEDrummer

Hello

Can anybody explain me the difference between the absolute and the relative positioning methods?

If i use nested <span> elements in a table row which one is suitable?

And also what the "Z-index" property tells us?

I am so confused with these terms nowadays.And waiting your help.

Thank You Very Much...

I have my website at omel.co.cc I have a menu that I positioned absolute, but when I view in a different resolution the menu changes position, I have put a parent div positioned relative but every time I scroll the menu moves which I do not want to, when positioned fix, the position of the menu goes off, on different resolutions and when I resize the window, I have googled these, hope someone could help, or I just did not googled enough?

IE absolutely sucks (pun intended). Or mayhaps its the developer. In any case:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>My site</title>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
     <style type="text/css">
       #top_main_content { width: 955px; }
       #top_main_content ul {
         float: left;
         list-style-type: none;
         border-spacing: 0;
         margin: 0;
         padding: 0;
         text-align: right;
         border-top: 1px solid #f1f1f1;
         height: 243px;
         width: 266px; } /* end #top_main_content ul */
       #top_main_content ul li {
         vertical-align: middle;
         margin: 0;
         padding: 0;
         border: 0;
         color: #686868;
         width: 266px;
         border-bottom: 1px solid #f1f1f1; } /* end #top_main_content ul li */
       #top_main_content ul li a { 
         line-height: 26px;
         display: block;
         margin-right: 5em;
         color: #686868;
         width: 266px; } /* end #top_main_content ul li a */
       .indent { padding-right: 1.5em; }
       #top_main_content ul li a:hover {
         background: #cfcf00; 
         color: #000000; } /* end #top_main_content ul li a:hover */
       #top_main_content #rotating { 
         float: right;
         width: 687px;
         height: 242px;
         border-bottom: 1px solid #f1f1f1;
         border-top: 1px solid #f1f1f1;
         text-align: right; } /* end #top_main_content img */
       #default_div { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: visible; } /* end #default_div */
       #div_a { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_a */
       #div_b { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_b */
       #div_c { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_c */
       #div_d { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_d */
       #div_e { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_e */
       #div_f { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_f */
       #div_g { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_g */
       #div_h { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_h */
       #div_i { 
         position: absolute;
         visibility: hidden; } /* end #div_i */
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="logo_search">
      <div id="logo_container">
        &nbsp;
      </div>
    </div>
    <div id="base">
      <div id="main_block">
        <div id="main_content">
          <div id="top_main_content">
            <ul>
              <li><a href="#">Link 1</a></li>
              <li><a href="#">Link 2</a></li>
              <li><a href="#">Link 3</a></li>
              <li><a href="#">Link 4</a></li>
              <li><a href="#">Link 5</a></li>
              <li><a href="#">Link 6</a></li>
              <li><a href="#">Link 7</a></li>
              <li><a href="#">Link 8</a></li>
              <li><a href="#">Link 9</a></li>
            </ul>
            <div id="rotating">
              <div id="default_div"><img src="images/test_image_main.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_a"><img src="images/test_image_a.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_b"><img src="images/test_image_b.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_c"><img src="images/test_image_c.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_d"><img src="images/test_image_d.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_e"><img src="images/test_image_e.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_f"><img src="images/test_image_f.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_g"><img src="images/test_image_g.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_h"><img src="images/test_image_h.gif" alt="" /></div>
              <div id="div_i"><img src="images/test_image_i.gif" alt="" /></div>
            </div>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

In any case what will happen with this code is when a user rolls over a link (not shown in code), the visibility of the corresponding div will change. All of this renders and works correctly in FireFox, Opera, and Safari. In IE 7 and 6, it works correctly, but does not render correctly.

In IE 7, the images (all 687 x 243) seem to be indented 687 pixels.

In IE 6, there is a lot of trailing border in the links and that is pushing the images below the menu and will then probably have the same problem IE 7 is having.

Thoughts?

Edited to add that I solved the IE 7 problem by removing text-align: right; from the #top_main_content #rotating div. I still have the IE6 problem however.

Ignore this post, I guess - I got it working. I think - not sure - it was the order of things in the stylesheet. Honestly, I'm not sure.

I begin every post with an apology - I'm old and CSS is still fairly alien to me... I mean, this is an awfully basic question. I think I understand absolute positioning - well, obviously I guess I don't; but I've used it on my current project, and on some previous ones, to position elements on a page..... Right now, I am trying to position a search box under a java slider or, at least, somewhere else on the page. The search form is within a DIV, already - maybe that's the problem. I always thought that you could create a DIV that simply used the absolute directive, assign the values for top and left, and wrap it around an area of a page - even another DIV. Then again, I'm an idiot. I cannot get this damned search box to end up anywhere other than where the code for the form DIV is placed (in other words, placing a DIV around it in an attempt to absolutely position the thing does nothing). I thought that would work. I though I'd done that before. Maybe I need a very, very long nap and a new job when I wake up.

Anyway, as opposed to pasting all of the code, here's a link to the thing's temporary parking place:

http://www.michiganstatemattress.com



Could someone tell me how I could move that darned form up into the area I've described in the pic - I though about putting it in the header....I'm not sure.

Thanks for any input.