[thelist] How do they do that then? (IHT.com)

[Peter-Paul Koch]

>I've been poking around www.iht.com to see how they do their awesomely
>impressive DHTML.

Actually it's more than just DHTML, it uses the W3C DOM very well. DHTML
only changes the style of some elements, while with the W3C DOM you can
change the elements themselves.

>I've figured out most of it, but I'm having trouble understanding how the
>article columns system works.

http://www.smokinggun.com/demos/sg_layout.php gives some information.

Basically the DIV with the article is given a width of 1/3 of the page, and
is then copied twice. The original DIV is clipped at a certain height, the
second DIV is raised to that height and clipped at double height, then the
third, etc.

So if the first DIV is 400 px high (determined by the screen height of the
user), the second DIV is shown only from 400px downwards and stops at 800px.
The third DIV then takes over and shows the article from 800px downwards
till 1200px.

Since this is only about the actual height of the DIV, font size changes
pose no problems. The heights of the DIVs remain the same, though the actual
text becomes larger.

I don't pretend to understand the entire module, there are many details that
I don't quite get yet, but these are the basics.

ppk

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