An elastic problem...

They have: 27 posts

Joined: Sep 2005

On my website, www.geocities.com/kitcarmstrong, I just noticed a rather strange problem. In IE, if you set the text size to smaller or smallest, the dotted divider line appears too far to the right, becoming "jammed" up against the picture. It is fine for other text size settings, though. Does anyone know what's going on here?

Also, the left side of the main content doesn't quite seem to be aligned (i.e. in a straight line). I'm pretty sure I worked out all the numbers such that that left margin of the main content is equal to the total width of the navigation menu, but maybe IE is putting some extra padding/margin?

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

Have you tried changing the 9em for a percentage width?

I can't read the text at smallest but in IE the visited pages section is wrapping wround the bottom of the image where FF it is all beside (with yahoo ad minimized)
After the Biography link put the inside the tag
the only thing I see not aligned is the frequently visited pages links, not sure why it's doing that, code looks right.

nice job btw

He has: 490 posts

Joined: May 2005

I cant check it in IE, I blew my browser up. And haven't re-loaded windows yet. But that's not the problem I had in mind.

I would change that text from "Justify" to align "Left", there are to many big gaps between some words, makes it difficult to read. I like justify also! but some text sizes, and available spaces just don't jive well with it. Smiling

I would also not use em, for my margins. Px is more standard, and also more uniform in sizes then em. Em has no reference, and is the worst markup you can use for anything. Px, pt, or % is much better.

They have: 27 posts

Joined: Sep 2005

I use em because I want the whole layout to remain the same at whatever text size. It all works perfectly in Safari and Opera, but not in IE.

Does anyone know why the menu divider is too far to the right in IE?

Or why the left edge of the main content isn't straight in IE?

It is all fine in Safari, though!

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

steve40 wrote: and is the worst markup you can use for anything. Px, pt, or % is much better.

Well not really, if you think about it em is very good (I use it on all my designs as much as possible) for exactly the reason technostick mentions. I nabbed the idea from CSS Zen Garden (like so much other good stuff), from the Elastic Lawn design.

As for your problem, well have been looking at your code and noticed a few problems:

  • In the footer css there is an error: "padding: 3em 0em 2em 0ems;" substitute the 0ems for just 0 for something meaningful.
  • The inline style: style="width: 40%; margin: 1em 0.5em 0.5em 0em; float: left;" on the image tag shouldn't be there at all, as you're using XHTML strict.
  • Another problem with that inline style is that you're sizing the image: Bad idea! You should always size the image (in a graphics editor) before linking it, not rely on the browser to do it accurately (plus you're just wantonly wasting people's bandwidth!).

As soon as I removed the inline style on that image (including the float left) it started positioning itself nicely, which leads me to believe that doing that might be the key. And if you do need to add styling to that image, add an id to it and do it in the stylesheet!

Well I'm out of lunchbreak here, so could you make those changes - if you think they'll help - and let us know when they're done?

Hope this helps. Smiling

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