I want to be able to create links looking like buttons with dynamic text and graphic bakground, these buttons also have to change their apperance on mouse over/mouse down and when subpage which button corresponding to is currently opened ame as mouse down)
I want to avoid using
- java script/jquery
- server-side generated images
- flash
Ny first choice was CSS, technology called sliding-doors. Everyting was great until i tested my site on non-windows machine. And it seems that there is poblem with rendering same font of different platforms. I suspect that problem is connected with way of rendering of fonts of different systems or maybe somethuiing elese, anyway on MAC (and possibly on machines running linux) it looks like this
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3598/45257410.png
on windows it looks slightly different and in some way worse
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/3590/41024479.png
If it is possible to get the same effect?
What other choices do i have?
I considered using CSS sprites, and manipulating button-link size and background position only but this including creating a wide image with all buttons in certain language with all three states.Is that way would be efficent? Is there any serious directions to not use this way of creating buttons?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions
MTH
Fonts are machine dependent. Outside of the basic ones, you cannot depend on a machine having the font you want. You need to have 3-4 roughly equivalent fonts, that you list for any given font in your css. List them most prefered to least (left to right) for your font-family. Machines will also display even some common fonts slightly differently.
Also remember that while you will often pull your site up side by side in both IE and Firefox, on Mac and Linux, your users almost never will. It doesn't need to look the same in all browsers, it just needs to look good in all browsers.
You're basically asking for rich functionality without any of the rich functionality platforms (javascript, flash, etc.)
I realize this doesn't answer your question, I'm trying to step it back a bit. Image rollover without any of the above platforms is hard, but possible. But it will probably require that you give up on the site being exactly the same in all browsers and just go for "good"
Related
I am interested in creating a custom browser with a hacked render engine that reinterprets or automatically assigns certain css vaules no matter what the web site.
A simple example would be...
no matter what website you visit the anything with the img tag is rotated 90 degrees.
I am struggling to find any sort of starting point for this small project...any ideas or suggestions on the css/dom issue?
I plan to build out the GUI in visual basic if that makes any difference.
Since you're using Visual Basic, why not use the WebBrowser control and modify the DOM elements within that control? You can manipulate elements from within your code behind.
Sounds like you want to develop a browser plugin / extension.
Chrome extensions are a good place to start.
If you'd like to actually like to monkey with the render engine behind a browser, check out WebKit (what Safari uses) or Gecko (what Firefox uses).
I have previously created buttons and other graphics (footer bars) from within photoshop and then saved them out for web. Should I now be using css to create my buttons for me? I noticed these are quite code heavy.
You don't have to but the reason using css is considered the better way is because you will not need to make an extra http request to get the image. It really is personal preference.
If the design, you previously made, satisfies your goals there is no necessity to change it. But if you want to use advantages of CSS and if you are not scared of some problems with browsers which do not support CSS completely or support it with some bugs, you can create new CSS elements.
Here are some advantages and disadvantages of both ways.
Images
+ cross-browser solution. Easier to make GUI look the same way in all browsers.
- extra requests to the server
- extra traffic downloaded by users
- the page will weight more and load longer time
- much more time needed to make some little changes in the GUI appearance
CSS
+ no extra requests to the server
+ no extra traffic downloaded by users
+ the page will weight less and load faster
+ less time needed to make changes in the GUI appearance
- NOT a cross-browser solution. Harder to make GUI look the same way in all browsers.
As you can see, CSS has more advantages, but it is way harder to make a cross-browser design using it.
P.S. I'm sorry for my poor language.
Generally using code for things like buttons is currently the way to go. Buttons created in photoshop tend to look gimmicky (currently) and, if you look at the majority of websites you'll notice buttons are very clean, usually subtle gradients and slight box-shadows or such. With the benefit of not having an extra http request this gives it even more of an edge to use code to create such things.
There are many tools and pre-made buttons available to help create the buttons.
Twitter Bootstrap buttons are very clean and widely used. (You don't have to use the whole bootstrap system to use them, just look at their code and re-create :))
Or to customise your own button you can use websites such as CSS button generator
I know that there are several very similarly-related questions on this website, however after reviewing the play, I believe this question is unique in its own right. If someone can find and provide evidence of an exact dupe of my question, I will withdraw it myself (so please just don't downvote this!).
I am a Java developer, not a web developer. But, as is the case in so many families where there is one person who becomes the designated family "computer guy", my Java development skills have been mistaken for web development skills, and I somehow got roped into building a website for my parents to help them sell their house.
So, like any web development newbie, I wrote the HTML/CSS myself (by hand, sans editor like DW or Expression, etc.) and tested it against FireFox 3.x. All looked great, and we deployed/launched.
Now we're getting negative feedback from everyone and their dog stating that the site isn't rendering properly in other browsers, browser versions, or on FireFox installations running on different operating systems. Similarly, the site is apparently a total mess when being viewed through a smart phone or tablet device.
Now I could dive in and write a whole bunch of messy, nasty, painstakingly-tedious edits to my CSS rules, that basically say: do X when browser is Y, etc. But I am hoping that out there is a tool that can put all my fears to rest.
What I'm looking for is a tool that could take my valid CSS files, and use them to generate CSS rules that will be compatible with a high percentage of all common browsers/versions.
Alternatively, if I have to re-write my CSS from scratch, it would be nice to have a tool that allows me to write/design once, deploy many, so that I only have to focus on the design of a single CSS file, but the code that gets generated is multi-browser compatible.
It sounds like DreamWeaver kind of does this, but you have to choose from one of 16 pre-existing templates.
My wife is a graphic designer, and made the website pretty sweet (not cookie cutter). It was a nightmare trying to figure out what CSS rules to use to implement her design. So any tool that forces you to choose between templates is not an option.
Is there any hope for me, or do I banish myself from my family in shame right now?
css is a mess, no way to automatically doing it right. saying that I would say there are tools that would walk with you the proper way.
1. use the meta tag:
http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" (encpsulate as a meta tag - SO won't display if I wrote it as a valid tag)
to force IE to render with it's most modern engine, that would solve some problems.
2.begin your css with normalize.css - that would eliminate some of the cross browser problems - because it resets your css (better and more modern the reset.css)
I'll second the GWT if you come from the java dev world. although It's a framework to learn with it's own quirks. another possible web framework is Grails - a nice java/groovy port of the mighty Ror.
Less or Scss won't automatically solve your basic problem - which is browser compatibily - but are a better and simpler way to write css
remember that most css3 properties aren't support equally in all browsers (and in IE almost not supported) - use them only with graceful downgrade option with supported js or css -when Modernizr js library can give you pretty good property support detection for various browsers
don't go dreamweaver - it produces terrible code
use csslint to check for valid css and common css pitfalls
If you must use cutting edge web rendering with html5+css3 elements you should look into chrome frame -that would enable older browser better support of your site - although I believe this may be an overkill for a simple sell-my-house kind of site.
use a css framework to prototype- it would give you better css, good basics and resets and good boilerplate - maybe bootstrap or something similiar (didn't try most of them but the internet is crowded with those.
good luck
Check out modernizr. http://www.modernizr.com/docs/
You want to get into the position of checking for features and not browsers.
Here's an excellent site to check your site with alternative browsers:
http://www.browserstack.com/
Less (http://lesscss.org/) will help you with a lot of CSS3 functions.
However, good CSS code simply works on all browsers. There are some CSS concepts that must always be avoided as much as possible (absolute positioning, excessive floats, using the wrong elements for a task, etc) and your code will work better.
In the many years I have programmed I only needed browser-specific code in the first two years. Then I grew up and learned which CSS code not to use and when it was possible to use them. It has been my experience that properly written CSS code works on all browsers, and if it doesn't it will at least get the basic concepts right (eg. a few pixels may be wrong or some effects, but the site still works well).
Several things come to mind that may help your case:
Forget about IE6, that one will give you trouble no matter how much effort you put into the site.
Make sure you have a good doctype (html5 or xhtml would be good).
Try out html5 reset, it tries to make sure all browsers behave the same.
The aforementioned reset also includes modernizr to bring older browsers up to speed
Finally: accept (some even say "embrace") that different browsers render things slightly different. Getting every pixel exactly the same in each browser will be near impossible.
I hate to put this into the world, but it sounds like you need Adobe Muse.
There is no equal to a good developer who will write clean cross browser code, but if you just want to get the site done check out the beta: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/muse/
What I'm looking for is a tool that could take my valid CSS files, and
use them to generate CSS rules that will be compatible with a high
percentage of all common browsers/versions.
Unfortunately there's no such a tool and you have to debug and test your website for cross-browser compatibility manually. The best way i've found for cross-browser testing it to install and test different versions of browsers in several virtual machines.
You will also find the following helpful:
Modernizr
Google Web Toolkit
The ASP.NET dropdownlist control has an arrow that you can click to drop the list down, that color of the arrow is tied to the users windows color scheme. This is not convenient for me and I'll need a workaround. However, I'm wondering if anyone knows (or has a guess) the strategy behind making that dropdown arrow tie to the system color?
Behind the scenes, the Winforms controls use the Win32 controls that have been in existence since Windows 3.0 (or was 3.0 still 16 bit? I don't recall). There is a lot of legacy under the covers, and back in the days it seemed to make sense to do it that way.
I actually think it still make sense today to enforce some level of consistency between the user interfaces of all the applications of a platform.
Really, the style of your dropdownList depends on your navigator. Some navigators offer more support for this than others. The same ocurrs with checkboxes, for example.
Browsers are responsible for turning form input tags into user-interface controls. Internet Explorer and other browsers do this by using the operating system's user-interface controls. "A web page wants a <select>? We've got that control already!"
The problem you're probably experiencing, however, is that Internet Explorer has notoriously poor support for styling those controls - and especially the <select> control. Other modern browsers like FireFox and Chrome provide better support.
At this time, the only options for IE are (a) to abandon the <select> element in favor of some sort of javascript-based component or (b) to wait for IE8 and hope it has better style support. Since it is very, very difficult to find a javascript <select> implementation which provides robust keyboard support, many people choose to just live with ugly <select> boxes in IE for now - sacrificing style for usability and accessibility.
It has nothing to do with ASP.NET; you could view the same site on a Mac and it would look different. This is how windows displays that type of element. If you don't like it, then you will have to create your own. It's been done already.
Browsers, to a varying degree, pick up the users colour settings from the os, like any other application, so in the absense of any author specified settings, they are usually the default.
Be aware that once you start tweaking the styling for selects and other form elements, you need to be sure of giving a quite complete set of style rules, otherwise it can all go to hell in a handcart very quickly, just how quickly depends on the browser.
I am working on an ASP.Net web application that must print dynamically created labels on standard Avery-style label sheets (one particular size, so only one overall layout). The labels have a variable number of lines (3-6) and may contain either lines of text or a graphic barcode image.
Our first cut, that I inherited, used monospaced fonts to reduce the formatting issues, but that did not allow enough text to the fit on the labels and the customer was dissatisfied. Basically it was formatted text.
My next version used TABLEs, DIVs, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript calculations to format the labels using proportional fonts. It still required a bit of tweaking (the user had to set their print margins correctly and turn off the print headers and footers), but it seemed to work.
However, it seems that there are some variations on how different printers render the text (WYS ain't WYG), so even though we tested on different browsers using at least two different printers (an inkjet and a laser printer), some user's labels don't line up. Slight margin variations can be adjusted by adjusting the margins on the page setup dialog, but the harder problem is that the inter-label spacing can be off by a tiny fraction of an inch, so that if the first label is pretty well centered, by the end of the page the label text and images have crawled off the top or bottom of the labels.
We are about to the point of switching to generating Word, Excel, or PDF output which is going to take quite a bit of development time and possible add extra steps in the printing process.
So, does anyone have any suggestions on how to do an HTML/CSS layout that will precisely render on different types of printers? I don't really care if the line/word breaks are a bit different, but I need to be able to predictably position the upper left corners of each label area.
Right now the labels flow down the page in a table and we have been tweaking the box model of the cells and internal DIVs to make them a uniform height. I suspect that using absolute positioning of each element may be the best answer, but that is going to be tricky as well due to the ASP.Net generation of the label elements. If I knew for sure that would work, I would rather try it than throw away everything we have to go to a different generation method.
Slight Update:
Right now I'm doing some tests with absolute positioning - setting only the top and left coordinate of a containing block element. So far there are minor variations on the offset onto the page (margins, paper alignment, etc.), but all browsers and printers tested put the elements in exactly the right spots relative to each other. I appreciate the PDF tips, but does anyone know of additional "gotchas" on using absolute positioning this way?
Update:
For the record, I rewrote the label printing portion using iTextSharp and it works perfectly - definitely the way to do this in the future...
Forget HTML and make a PDF. HTML printing is extremely variable - not just across browsers but across different versions of the same browser. PDF is a lot easier.
Even if you get it exactly right with one browser / font setup / printer / phase of the moon, it will be the most fragile thing you've ever had to maintain. No matter how long you think it will take to make a PDF (and it's not really that hard as there are some free libraries out there), HTML will ultimately take a lot more of your time. PDF readers are widely deployed and print more consistently than even Word files.
The web is not a format that is guaranteed to get consistent print results. Given the standard support for label printing with MS Word, and the relative ease of automation and generation, I would strongly recommend going that route.
I'm not aware of ANY method to get percise printing across all types of browsers, operating systems, and printers when using web content.
"precisely" and "printing" aren't two words that really work together that well. I did an OCR/OMR application a year or so ago, and even when building a PDF I saw significant differences between different print drivers and such. Because of that, my gut is to tell you that you might not have 100% success.
If CSS and layout issues don't work that well for you, you might need to resort to building the labels as images using GDI+ -- at least that way you can use GetFontMetrics() and such.
Good luck!
I had a similiar issue and the answer is you can't do it. Instead, I generated a PDF file in realtime using iTextSharp and passed that to the response.
Using SQL Server Reporting Services, I generate a PDF to send to the printer, but it can be seen as HTML on the screen using the control you can include in your web pages. There are RDLC files that are available on the internet to print to various Avery formats.
I rewrote the SharpPDFLabel code that was mentioned back in 2011 this week as I needed it to be a lot more flexible (and to work with the current iTextSharp library).
You can get it here:
https://github.com/finalcut/SharpPDFLabel
I added the ability to specify the contents of each individual label if you want (or to continue creating a sheet of identical labels too). By extending the LabelDefinition class you can specify the layout of your labels pretty easily.
I also struggled with the HTML/CSS approach due to the inconsistent printing behaviour across browsers.
I created a C# library to produce Avery Labels from ASP.NET which I hope you might find useful:
https://github.com/wheelibin/SharpPDFLabel#readme
You can add images and text to the labels, and it's easy to define more labels types.
(I use it for barcode labels, the barcode is generated as an image and then added to the label using this library.)
Cheers
Add a few options to your app that let users adjust spacing for their particular configuration. You could include this right on the label if you want, and style it away via media selectors, but you'll probably want to persist them somewhere, too.
Flash is also good method to push a printable like a label albeit a little more complex to implement and maintain. In most cases it displays much quicker than a PDF and you can embed it into the design of the page and simply add a "Print" button within the flash.
I did this several years ago when we were using HTML and PDF to generate confirmation receipts. HTML is "ok" but is at the mercy of the end users web browser so we quickly dumped that method. PDF's are good as long as they have a PDF reader, which to our surprise a lot of our customers did not. So that was dumped as well after we switched to a FLASH version using a simple flash movie that included a few dynamic text areas and a "print" button. I communicated the data between the page and flash using a few flash vars. You can also use web service.
When I need something more than just simple text I use the free community edition of the PDF Generator component from DynamicPDF.com. It works great and is very quick.
I just went through the same thing. Ended up switching and making a short little JSF app (running on Glassfish) that uses JasperReports to print directly to the lable printer. Push button, instant label at the printer, don't even have to view it on-screen if you don't want to since Jasper can directly output to printer (as well as PDF in browser).