Posted by Benjamin Niemann on 06/08/06 17:40

Ed Mulroy wrote:

>> Recommendation is let the user decide where or not to open link in new
>> window.
>
> This is not a question of how one might choose to read a newspaper. The
> purpose of the site is to present a vaction property to prospective
> tenants. A separate window is used for off-site links is so that the
> property site
> will remain on his screen. Prospective tenants are not particularly
> computer literate. Once they leave a site a certain percentage of them
> will not be able to find it again.

Those users don't know how to disable JavaScript either... JavaScript is the
only (valid) way to open links in a new window. But I agree with Jonathan
that this should be left to the user. Most users at least understand the
back button.

>> Think about this, why are your links in a table at all? They are just a
>> list right?
>
> No, they are a table

I cannot spot any tabular data in your document...

> , a two dimensional array of items presented in an
> orderly, predetermined fashion for view in computer screens with
> resolution of 800x600 or more and deliberately without support for
> text-only, cell phone, PDA or blind-viewer browsers.

What you are talking about is a grid-layout. The default layout algorithm
for TABLE elements happens to be a grid, but tables are still the wrong
choice for your purposes.

You won't loose the 'orderly, predetermined fashion' when you make good use
of CSS. But you will gain support for 'text-only, cell phone, PDA or
blind-viewer browsers'. Takes some time, but once you have mastered the new
(and at the same time old) way to develop websites, it will be much easier
to create documents that work in any number of (even unknown) user-agents
than it was to create documents that work in IE4 and NS4 some years ago.

> Each attempt to do an equivalent presentation with CSS has failed in some
> browsers, usually placing one of the two tables at the bottom instead of
> presenting them side by side.

There are various well tested recipes for multicolumn layouts using CSS.
Your document is pretty simple, this should not be a problem.

>> Google for some CSS layout tutorials.
>
> Perhaps that would find some of these links?
> http://home.nc.rr.com/emulroy/html2.htm#stylesheets
> http://home.nc.rr.com/emulroy/magother.htm#blogsoft
> (note that the above links are also part of my site)

Seems as if you already got all the informations you need. It does indeed
take some time to digest all this, but looking at your source suggests that
still have a lot to learn.

>> However all attempts to remove the 'align' and handle it with CSS
>> results in the right hand table being moved down the page to past the
>> bottom of the left hand menu column.

One method is to make the sidebar 'float: left' with a certain width
preferably in em and give the content area a margin-left which is equal or
larger than the width of the sidebar.

And the sidebar is not a table either but can be marked up as a list. And
the use of CLASS attributes can be heavily reduced by a more clever use of
CSS selectors.

--
Benjamin Niemann
Email: pink at odahoda dot de
WWW: http://pink.odahoda.de/

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