[thelist] Re: scrollable content problems, especially in Netscape

[Diane Soini]

On Saturday, October 4, 2003, at 06:28 AM, 
thelist-request at lists.evolt.org wrote:

> scrollable content problems, especially in Netscape
<tons o' comments about usability...>

I can't tell you why the scrollable thing doesn't work. I do not see 
the problem you describe in the browsers at my disposal. But here's 
what I would do to fix the problem:

1. Play with your "broken" example.
Vary the amount of text and see what if any differences there are. Play 
with the styles that are being set on the container and content divs 
and see what effect there is. Fiddle with the size of the adjacent 
table or other properties of it. Maybe go to the w3.org css web site 
and look up some of the less common stuff such as clip and overflow and 
scroll properties and see what happens when you play with those.

2. Go to dynamic drive and get their working example and start playing 
with it. What happens if you put your text in the div? Same problems? 
What happens if you put your table next to their div? Same problems? 
Add stuff. Take away stuff. Just fiddle.

The real issue here is that no matter what anybody thinks of your 
project it will serve a need for you. Ok so maybe it doesn't meet any 
rarified standards of usability and maybe it is totally frivolous and 
all that but who cares? The fact of the matter is that in my career 
experience there has never been a single thing that I have tried to do 
that hasn't served some purpose later on. I once took apart and put 
back together a similar script to yours and what I learned stayed with 
me to help me solve totally different problems.

Maybe the exact UI you are creating is not something you will ever use 
again. But guaranteed that in the future, something with divs or 
scrolling or setTimeout() or css clip or overflow properties or who 
knows what else will cross your path again, and whatever you learn from 
fixing your current problem will stay with you to help you fix the next.

Good luck!