Posted by Luis Farzati on 04/18/07 00:43

On Apr 17, 8:43 pm, Gérard Talbot <newsblahgr...@gtalbot.org> wrote:
> Luis Farzati wrote :
>
> > Hi,
>
> > I have a tiny bug in the following code.
>
> Can you upload your code on an web-accessible webpage?
> Have you validated your markup and CSS code? Are you using valid code?

Yes, I've uploaded the file to http://200.32.3.194/test/index.html .
I've validated markup and CSS. In fact I've added the W3C validator
links at the bottom of the page so I can quickly check this with every
change.

> > FF1.5 renders it right, but
> > IE7 doesn't.
>
> What's "right" then? Please describe what is the "right" layout, your
> page layout goal. Viewers can not in advance determine what is the right
> intended layout in your mind.

Ok, I'll try to describe my goal. The layout I want is a left,
vertical panel containing user information. There will be more things
at the right of the page but that doesn't matter now. Some rows in
this left panel may contain two fields (one right to the other) and
some rows contains just one field.

> > To see the issue, please check out with both browsers
>
> A lot of us are using Firefox 2.0.0.3. So, is it worth it to test with a
> browser version no longer recommendable and no longer widely in use on
> the web? Why not test with the latest stable available Firefox version?
>

Yes, I didn't mention it but I'm also testing the document with FF
2.0.0.3. The same 'right' behavior. IE7 (and probably IE6, although I
can't test it) is the one with the issue.

> Why "pt" ? And why so small? Is your webpage intended for printing only?
> Did you know that for most people over 40 years old, 8pt on a monitor
> screen is very small... for screen and for printing as well.
> As coded, your code is for screen and print.

You are right, the 'pt' unit is a bad practice I'm carrying and
usually I realize the mistake later in the testing phase. But thank
you for your early advice. :)

> You've got right here 5 nesting levels of DOM nodes, a lot of markup and
> class definitions for what seems to be a rather small amount of
> text/info to render. There is such a thing as over-coding,
> over-declaring, over-defining and over-excessively constraining and that
> is what I think you're doing here.

That was just a demo, I''ll have more information in the left panel.
You see as a bad practice to structure this kind of information in the
way I do? What I always do is to think what kind of information I am
displaying, and thus writing a structure that conceptually fits with
it. If it conceptually fits, I never pay attention to over-coding.

In this case, I represent the left "user information panel" with a
div. This panel must contain a list of user data such as Name, Phone,
Birthdate, etc. That's why I represent it with a ul . Now, I don't
want to display a plain, top-down list. I want this list to have
sublists, each one representing a logical group of data (besides I
plan to add show/hide behavior for each group). That's why I have list
items li containing sublists ul.

Finally, inside a list item containing user data, I need to display
what is the name of the data, and the value of the data. That's why I
use span for each and a div for grouping field name/value pairs.

Any thoughts, critics and suggestions about this way of structure the
information will be greatly appreciated!

I have a couple of additional questions but first let's talk about
this.

Thanks,

Luis

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