Stylesheets - Switching sides breaks twocolumn layout

Author

Switching sides breaks twocolumn layout

Wes Groleau

2007-07-06, 3:50 am

Background (sequence of events):

Had a header/main/footer layout I was pleased with,
with a nav sidebar on the left of main.

Tried to stretch the nav bar to full length with method
at http://alistapart.com/articles/multicolumnlayouts

Layout was complete trash, so I stripped all the elements
out of the sidebar and content divs and put plain text,
no tags. Still trash.

Tried a bunch of other things--no success, sometimes worse.
Many of them made the text WIDER than any defined box, but
the boxes cut off the overflow as specified.

Made a new file identical to the one in the ALA article.
It worked on all Mac browsers (don't have any windows here).

Made the following changes, one at a time, without breaking it:
- Removed title.
- Added meta to specify UTF-8 charset
- Moved CSS to separate file and added meta to reference it
- Changed colors to the ones I wanted
- Changed CSS lexical layout to my usual spacing

THEN:
Changed all "right" to "left" and vice versa. This change
alone killed the equal length effect.

Did I not do that last change correctly, or is there
something else I'm missing?

--
Wes Groleau
-----------

"Thinking I'm dumb gives people something to
feel smug about. Why should I disillusion them?"
-- Charles Wallace
(in _A_Wrinkle_In_Time_)

dorayme

2007-07-06, 3:50 am

In article <jbiji.13692$q12.3491@trnddc08>,
Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org> wrote:

> Did I not do that last change correctly, or is there
> something else I'm missing?

Is there a url so we can see what you did?

--
dorayme

Wes Groleau

2007-07-07, 6:20 pm

Wes Groleau wrote:
> [snip]
> Tried to stretch the nav bar to full length with method
> at http://alistapart.com/articles/multicolumnlayouts>
> Changed all "right" to "left" and vice versa. This change
> alone killed the equal length effect.
>
> Did I not do that last change correctly, or is there
> something else I'm missing?

After days of trying all sorts of variations on the ALA
original, some of which made complete chaos on the screen,
the final solution was to leave the CSS alone, swap the
contents of the two divs, and tweak ONLY the width numbers.

Sigh. Now I face the daunting task of putting this into
another container without breaking it again.

--
Wes Groleau

Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, and cut with an axe.