John Unsworth wrote:
So my questions to the group are; Was the decision to write the
markup in the order I did correct or pedantic? Because if I didn't
then I wouldn't have the layout issues I'm having I'd guess.
Positioning out of visual order on a detailed level, can easily create
more problems than it solves. Unless found to be absolutely necessary,
and tested to function flawlessly (see below), I advice not to rearrange
actual vs. visual order for accessibility or other reasons.
Was it a mistake to try and create an elastic layout in em's and
expect the entire interface to expand? In this case might it be
better to use pixel for width's but em's for font and % for height
and allow the boxes to expand with the text? Or should I just stick
to pixel's all round.
Elastic layouts with lots of images tend to not do to well in the real
world, but otherwise there's nothing principally wrong with them - they
just have to be done right.
Percentage for height will create problems. Proper equal height boxes
can only be created in a reliable way when using HTML or CSS 'table',
ant the latter ain't supported by IE7 and lower.
Is there a 'golden rule' about repositioning sections of markup out
of the order they're written, and why was there variation with the
margins across apparently very well behaved browsers?
The only reliable 'golden rule' is that _it has to work_ - preferably
also under stress.
Stress-testing should ideally cover what end-users _might_ do to your
layout because their browsers allow, not only what most of them are most
likely to do to it. This means you as designer has to know at least as
much about each of the browsers you choose to support, as the most
knowledgeable end-users, while still catering reasonably well for the
majority of "dummies".
For instance: your "dimensioned boxes" are overflown by their content
when exposed to the 'minimum font size' option (I always set)...
<http://www.gunlaug.no/contents/wd_1_03_04.html>
Other misalignments in the layout look pretty unimportant then, since
vital parts become inaccessible and unusable.
[...] Generally the whole IE thing I ignore until required.
You should run through the supported IE-versions regularly while
designing, so you don't run into problems that can't be solved later on
without changing things for/in all browsers.
regards
Georg
--
http://www.gunlaug.no
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