Posted by cwdjrxyz on 01/01/07 17:09

warth33@hotmail.com wrote:
> Hello there
>
> I really dont know if this is the right place to ask this question.
> Anyway, I would like to hear the opinion of other users about a minor
> issue.
>
> Im developing a webpage. Its intended for high traffic. A popular
> concept. The page has been planned to be viewable in the same way in
> the most popular browsers, but only the most recent ones (IE >= 5.0,
> Firefox >=1.0, Opera (preferibly v 9.0), and maybe even on the mac
> plattform with latest safari and camino).
>
> So, given the requirements above: are there any disadvantages in making
> all the page completly bases on the css absolut positioning? Yes, the
> importnt part is if these browsers supports the technique. I think all
> of the browsers mentioned above do it.
>
> But Im still wondering if it is really a good thing. Is it a bad habit?
> Waht do you think? Doing everything with absolute positioning is the
> ideal, given the page's nature, and maybe even the only way to do it.

You likely will get several strong opinions on this issue.

As an example, my bank's website uses absolute positioning apparently
set for a screen size less than used by most modern browsers. This
results in an unused white area to the right of the screen on 1000+ px
screens, but allows viewing by most computers set for a screen width of
about 800 px without scrolling. It might be somewhat annoying for users
with some of the smaller portable devices with narrow screens. But then
many sites do not view well on such small devices for other reasons
anyway.

If you use javascript, it would be possible to correct sites such as my
bank that use absolute positioning. You would find the screen width
using script and then use script to write CSS to adjust for the screen
width detected so that all width screens would have the screen nearly
filled to the right. If script happens to be turned off, then you would
just revert to how the site looks without this correction. Such
corrections are more demanding of the programmer, and require a very
good knowledge of both CSS and javascript.

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