CSS: How to Solve this "Site-Is-Too-Big" Challenge? - css

I suspect my question may be too general, but I hope someone with expertly knowledge of CSS could help me work out a solution.
My site looks acceptable (to me) in high-resolution monitors (1920X1080) – but on smaller-resolution screens the left site doesn't fit - and even though the horizontal scrolling appears eventually of you make the window smaller, but it appears "too late" and doesn't include anything left of the main content panel.
That's the particularly I'm particularly concerned about. There are other resolution-related problems, too.
Here's the site:
http://www.cybart.com/bscg/
I would appreciate it if you could take a look – and would be grateful for suggestions / recommendations / advice from CSS masters!

Here's how I understand your problem:
If someone goes to your website on a smaller screen, maybe 1024x768 or something, there's no scroll bar's appearing.
You need to set up a minimum width / height for a div container for the page content. Then if the browser is narrower than that you'll get the scroll bar.
I suggest instead that you make one div tag that won't be wider than say, 950 and put a nice background behind it instead. No one wants to scroll left or right in the browser.
Use width and height css tags on a div containing the page content.

I have a lower resolution screen... and I see the issue.
You might consider shrinking the size of the main content section and then shifting over the nav.
Or -- better -- auto center your main section using margin:0 auto; and then position the left nav accordingly.

The scrolling bars issue has to do with page overflow. You might be using overflow:hidden and when the page doesn't fit the browser doesn't show the scrollbars.

Related

Website layout "breaks apart" when zooming in or out in browsers + a few other basic css questions

I'm pretty much as new to CSS as it gets and what I'm trying to do right now is just design a very simple/basic splash or landing page for a small business.
Here is the url for the site: My site
Now if you go on any browser, lets say google chrome and you zoom out or in (ctrl -/+) you will notice that the website layout starts to "break apart" in that all my divs just start shifting around. I obviously dont want this, and just want the site to remain the same when people zoom in or out, pretty much like all good sites haha.
I know it must have something to do with positioning, but I can't figure it our for the life or me. Last night I spent hours browsing similar questions but I can figure it out.
I'm not posting the code as to take up more space, I'm assuming since I gave you the URL you'll be able to retrieve the code from there.
I also have a few more, smaller questions:
1) if you open my site on chrome, or ie you'll notice that after the "terms and conditions" on the bottom of the page, the site ends, like it should. however, if you go on firefox, you'll notice that after the "terms and conditions" the background so to speak continues for a while. why is this and how can i fix it?
2) you'll notice that on different browsers positioning of elements is slightly different.
most noticeably if you look or chrome/firefox and then internet explorer 9 you'll notice that the "terms and conditions" are slightly higher than in chrome or ff and thus slightly touching the main content area. is there a way to fix this?
3) what is an efficient, effective way to center divs? For example, I want to center the "sign up" button perfectly centered relative in the main content area. ive pretty much just been eyeing it out and using relative positioning to center it. what is a more accurate way to center it?
Thanks, and sorry if these questions seem a little redundant. if you need any clarification on anything I'll be monitoring this question like a hawk.
Cheers
When you zoom in or out, you will encounter issues because of rounding and text rendering. It is a good idea to make sure the layout can survive a bit of stretching without breaking down.
Relative positioning is affected by issues mentioned in #1, and therefore unreliable.
Look into using something to remove the properties that the various browsers will apply. You could use a reset to give you something more workable or try to normalize the values to make them more even between browers.
For (horizontal) centering you have some options:
If you have a container with "text-align:center" it will center all child elements that are inline-blocks or inline.
If you want to center a block element, you can use "margin: 0 auto" to center it horizontally and remove vertical margins.
If you want to center an absolutely positioned element, you can use "left: 50%, margin-left: -(width of element/2)".
In addition to attempting to get rid of relative positioning, I would recommend that you do not explicitly set the height of the body element. Generally you want the elements to manage their own size, that way they will be more robust.
If you use "position: relative" now because that is what you know how to use, I would suggest you try using "float: left" (or right), or changing the display type (display: inline-block). That may help you get started in the right direction.
not sure for your points 1 & 2, but as for 3 what i've come to use is the following have the div i want to center and then use width : some-percentage; margin-left : 100-(some_percentage)*0.5 ;, where some percentage is the width I want to use.
a couple suggestions before go into fixing the zoom in and zoom out issue.
Don't use <div> to wrap around text.
Use <h1> tags for header
Store your CSS in a separate css file.
You defined the header section that's great, but do that for container and footer as well.
Comments! That would make the job much easier for people who try to help you.

CSS positioning is weird when reducing the viewport

I run a site using a liquid tri-column layout with a header. The layout runs nicely for more than a decade with all browsers I ever dared to try. It is based on absolute positioning in CSS. This page provides an example of the actual site.
Watching the page from my tablet I found that the right column overlaps the center matter. Further investigation using Firebug showed that once the center content reaches 360px width, the right margin of the div shrinks. Why is that? Since Firefox and Android render the same, I guess that this is something, which is actually supposed to be.
However, I tried to make virtue out of necessity and experimented setting min-width for body and content and made the body scroll overflow. The body actually scrolls, but the right column is positioned on the right edge of the viewport instead of the body element (Firefox). Is this intentional CSS standard?
Any ideas how to solve the presentation on small displays?
Thanks for your efforts,
– lars.
I pondered a while whether I should revoke the question or provide this self-answer. I decided for the self-answer since I wished some of the answers in related had been presented when I wrote the question.
First the 360px limit apparently is my own stupidity. There is a comment form, which refuses to shrink. It scrolled out of my view.
The issue of the wiered positioning had been solved by adding position:relative; to the body. The reason is explained in this question.
The overflow setting I used during experimenting is not necessary, since the default behaviour scrolls already. But using any overflow directive wrecks IE8.
So thanks a lot, the pool of answers finally had it all.

CSS: Background image does not fill when scrolling - redux

I am seeking help with trying to fix my background image fill issue. I wanted to have a sticky footer, which I finally figured out, but now if I view my site in a smaller window and then scroll down, my background image disappears. I understand that this is due to my height settings being 100% which makes my image be based off of the initial viewport size, but I can't quite seem to implement any kind of fix.
Here is the site I am working on (still very much under development): http://student.plattsburgh.edu/stipl001/index.html.
The problem is best viewed when looking at this page in a small window: http://student.plattsburgh.edu/stipl001/resume.html.
I have read many, many posts on various sites trying to figure it out (including this one: CSS: background image does not fill when scrolling), but I am not having any luck. I tried setting all the different properties for background in css that I could think of, including some of the newer ones. Then I experimented with the overflow property, but it just hides all of my text or creates a weird scroll-bar that makes my text scroll up over the header. I also tried moving my page background from body to html and my container background from container to body, but it didn't change anything, so I must be doing something wrong (perhaps the fact that I have the two background images to deal with?).
I'm just a coding newbie and have been teaching myself as I go along, so I would really appreciate specific suggestions on what method of fixing this would be best for my site, and how I can go about implementing it. After spending about 10 hours straight on this one problem, I am at my wits' end.
Thank you so much!
just change min-height:100% to min-height:1092px (the height of the image) and you'll be fine...
EDIT:
previous answer was a bit too quick, after having a second look on the code i noticed the error is caused by the floated columns: if you float an element, the container element will not inherit the height of the floated element - that's why the height was set to 100% of the initial window, and was not expanded if the content column got longer.
This can be fixed by adding an extra element in #container, after #rightcolumn, with clear:both on it - this will force the parent element to take over the height of its contents.
See http://jsfiddle.net/uS7Ba/1/ for a simplified example, including improved fixed footer.
Hope it helps...

CSS layout with max heights not working that well

So, for a website I've been trying to get a specific layout to work across the IE browsers (FF + Chrome are a plus if they work, but usually they do).
Below you can see the layout I'm trying to achieve;
alt text http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2199846/layout.png
As you can see, this is just a slight variation of a multi-column layout that you can see around the internet. Just with some added extra's.
- no div should ever exceed the page height, if they do, they should just overflow (but normally that will only happen for the middle part)
- the "toggle" link should toggle the div below visible/invisible (got the jquery code and all, no issues there), but that toggle should offcourse expand/decrease the width of the middle div.
I'm at the end of my possibility's here, and tried changing to a full table layout, but that had the problem of always expanding when content got too much...
If any of you CSS heroes out there know how to make this layout, I'll be very grateful!!
EDIT:
What I forgot to add is that certain parts of this design should be fixed width/height. The top part should be 60px height, right and left side should be 200px width. And the small bar (+ toggle bar) should be 30px high.
Of course I'll try to work from the example posted below, but I thought I'd add this edit just in case someone finds it challenging to make (I know I find it challenging, yet I'm not so good yet in CSS for now)
http://jsfiddle.net/YGgTx/1/
this is a mock up of what you are trying to do I believe. As it indicated by the other posters you may want to use hide() to handle the menu effect. If there is anything wrong with this mockup let me know, I do not have IE6 installed but it works on 8.

Fixed footer obscure firefox search match

I have a site with a fixed footer at the bottom of every page. The content area above the footer has a appropriate margin to ensure that content does not hide behind the footer when scrolling down.
However, when a simple text search if performed in the browser (firefox) the search term is usually hidden behind the footer as the page normally (without the footer that is) scrolls to just bring the search term into view.
How can I work around this issue?
I have one idea in mind: Make the content area of a fixed height (browser viewport height - footer height) and give it a scroll instead of the browser. Not the best solution but that is an option. What would be the drawbacks to this option?
I've noticed this before with one of my own projects but, is this minor inconvenience really important enough for you to alter the layout of your page? I would not suggest the fix you are considering simply because it is unnecessarily adding complexity to your code and the user experience will likely suffer (much more so than the problem you're describing).
I would just let it be.

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