[thelist] CSS layout questions

John DeStefano john.destefano at gmail.com
Thu Dec 22 15:17:07 CST 2005


Hi all,

I'm trying to duplicate a Publisher-created mess of a site with a CSS
layout (long story):
http://www.thechocolateshack.com/wip/index.html
http://www.thechocolateshack.com/wip/experiment.css

Yes: I know it's relatively hideous, but I can't touch the content
until I finalize an adequate layout that compares somewhat to the
original... long story!

While I struggle with this layout, I've added dotted/dashed/thin
borders to help distinguish the div areas.  I've run into what seem to
be a few rudimentary questions, for which I've found solutions to
related topics, but not quite to these specific issues:

- I know that "text-align: center;" can be used to take an unordered
list and turn its list items into a horizontally-oriented navigation
bar.  But it seems that ,when I turn these list items into "buttons"
using borders and padding, while the textual link within each button
remains centered within the button, the buttons as a group (when an
absolute width is not specified, and when the concatenated width of
the buttons is less than that of the page layout) do not center;
instead, they anchor to the left of the page.  How would one
horizontally center the group of buttons, without creating a "ribbon"
across the page horizontally (all the solutions I've found utilize the
full-page-width technique)?

- Since the class "navbar" in the content envelops the content within
the IDs "pageheader" and "pagefooter", shouldn't the "navbar" area
expand in size to properly contain its child entities?  I ask because
in checking the borders, the ID areas appear as expected, while the
navbar class area itself is just a collapsed box.  Does the height of
this area need to be specified within the class style definition?

- Finally, what CSS elements would I use if I want to separate content
in adjacent sections, without having the content from one section flow
into the next?  I tried creating divs for each separate "chunk" of
content, and displaying these in block, but I must have screwed
something up.

Thanks for humoring an amateur with such silly questions.  Happy Holidays!

John



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