Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 01/09/06 14:48

On Mon, 9 Jan 2006, David Graham wrote:

> >> Does IE 5.5 have a standard mode as well as a quirk mode?
> >> I think IE5.0 and IE4.0 is always quirk regardless of doctype - is
> >> that correct?
>
> Could I press you or someone else for specific answers to the 2 questions
> above.

I'd recommend bookmarking a couple of URLs that I've found to be
reliable sources of information on such topics:

http://gutfeldt.ch/matthias/articles/doctypeswitch.html
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/

These also include links to authoritative pages at the various
vendors' sites, including MS.

Based on what I read there, my interpretation is that for Win IE, the
doctype "switch" was new with IE6. But Mac IE is a completely
different implementation, and followed its own development path (for
as long as it was being developed, which no longer seems to be the
case).

> Alan J. Flavell wrote:
>
> > But as for this particular tutorial:
> >
> > body {
> > min-width:750px;
> > }
> >
> > is plain rude. I'd prefer a browser which ignored that! The design
> > would otherwise have worked fine in my usual browser window,

Sorry, I'd better re-word that. The design, as it stands, wouldn't
simply work by taking out that one setting, because there are other
fixed px specifications in there which would militate against fluid
behaviour...

> > but the pesky author insisted on throwing a pointless and useless
> > left/right scrollbar, something which users are well known to
> > dislike - me included.
>
> So, I can drop the above rule? - the author states something about
> it being wise to have because there can be trouble in some browsers
> when the wrap div width is greater than the browser screen.

Seems plausible - so "don't do that". I can see some justification
(no pun intended) for wanting to specify a minimum width for the
sidebar (although if I were doing that, I'd use em units). But I
can't see any justification for not allowing the main content to fit
itself into the (remaining width of the) browser window which the user
has made available. Attempts to fight the user are at odds with the
general web principle that the user has the last word. Some of the
more discerning readers may be able to overrule the author - the rest
may just get crabby and leave.

For my taste, there's far too much setting of fixed widths in px units
going on in the tutorial page that you were citing. Just seeing those
is enough to discourage me from taking it as any kind of role model,
to be honest.

And it might be that in a particularly narrow browser window, or with
a particularly large font zoom (e.g sight-impaired readers), a
preferable behaviour would be to have the sidebar float below (or
above, depending on priorities) the main content. Judicious use of
floating can achieve that, without impairing the results for those
whose browser window width is adequate for the intended 2-col layout.

If you're going to ask "do I have a concrete stylesheet to use instead
of the one at the cited URL?", I'm going to have to say no, sorry; but
I'm pretty sure one could be done along the principles I've suggested.

Take a look at e.g
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/layout2.html
for a somewhat more complex example. I've found this author to be a
useful source of ideas for fluid design.

hope you find it useful.

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