Alignment Issues

[technica]

Hi there,
I am having trouble with this page:
www.technicalgeek.com/games2.htm
On Safari, everything looks OK. For IE, its a different story...
The yellow boxes column is all the way to the right, and you can't even see the red table!
anybody know what's up?

[mikmik]

<HR color=#000000>

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=2>

Hi, technica.
Well, I have DreamWeaver, and this is one of those times it was usefull to me in WYSIWYG view!

I didn't even know anything was missing in IE!

It looks like the table with all the content that's missing in IE has to be inside the "Library Item" table.
I am showing you line #216 above. Your table that ends on line #214 is 800px wide, and the height is determined by the left hand column you have.

So you have the main content rendering to the right - which is just discarded in IE for some reason, but the dropdown "jump menu" with the game reviews options is still showing because it is yet coded by itself and there is no conflict.

I am having a hard time describing exactly what I see here, so if this doesn't make enough sense to you, I can take some screen shots to try and clarify what is going on.

Let me know. :o)

[mikmik]

Okay, Becky, I just had a closer look and I found the problem.
Don't look at the above post! lol

You have an awful lot of nested tables here, and the "Disappearing table" is still included in the <TR>(table row) that contains the four blue 'Warcraft' boxes.
You need to close that <TR> (with a </TR>).
Then put another <TR></TR> around the disappearing table.
Here is the offending area:

<TD bgColor=#0066cc>
<DIV class=style1 align=center>Warcraft III
</DIV></TD>
<TD width=12 bgColor=#0066cc height=12><FONT
size=1></FONT></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TH vAlign=bottom scope=row width=13 bgColor=#0066cc
height=18>[img]Unent_files/rl_03.gif[/img]</TH>
<TD width=85 bgColor=#0066cc height=12><FONT
size=1></FONT></TD>
<TD vAlign=bottom width=12 bgColor=#0066cc
height=18>[img]Unent_files/rl_04.gif[/img]</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></BLOCKQUOTE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>


</P>


</P>


</P>


</P>


</P>


</P>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="96%" align=center
border=0>
<TBODY>

So, what I mean is to put the closing</TR> and start another <TR> just before where I have highlighted it in red. This is where the last blue box with the word 'Warcraft" ends and that row should be closed.
As it is, the row is still technically open - thus your next table wants to be to the right side of the Warcraft boxes, and IE just puts it off-screen way to the right!

[technica]

Thanks for the help Mike!
The columns now work in IE. But now we have two new problems...
1) The drop down form appears at the bottom of the entire document, even though in design view of DreamWeaver it is still within the main table
2) Under design view in DreamWeaver, I can only see the set of blue tables and the drop down form. It acts as if the yellow set and red set of tables doesn't exist! :(
Thanks for your help, and I hope you will be able to solve these problems as well! :)

[mikmik]

lol
If it's not one thing, it's another, eh?

No worries. I will get your newest version and have a look. It will be fixed!
:o)

[mikmik]

We are DONE! (I think lol)

In DW, I have MX, I set my preferences in the edit menu (top left of Dreamweaver) to Fix Improperly Nested and Closed Tags under the code rewriting selection. This helps immensely when the page is large and complex like yours, otherwise it could take days to find these errors (which I make all the time!).

Therefore, when I just checked the 'latest' version of the page, Dreamweaver did this:

Line 735 Col 24 Removed unneccesary </TH>
Line 830 Col 62 Replaced </P> with

</P> to preserve spacing.
Line 831 Col 33 Removed unneccesary </TD>
Line 831 Col 38 Removed unneccesary </TR>
Line 831 Col 46 Removed unneccesary </TABLE>

Then it all showed properly.

NEXT:
Make a NEW row and cell on line 733 like this:

<TR><TD colspan=2 align=center>

{the form drop down goes here}

</TD></TR>

Put the whole form in and VOILA!

[technica]

What version of DreamWeaver are you using? I am using 2004 MX for MAC, and under Preferences-(Category) Code Rewriting- there is an option "Fix invalidly nested and unclosed tags." I assumed this is what you were talking about? I checked this box, however, there was no difference in that DW could not display the tables in design view.
Any thoughts?

[mikmik]

Hi, technica.

I am using Dreamweaver MX on WindowsXP Pro.

That is wierd, because you got what I was saying exactly right - Preferences-(Category) Code Rewriting- there is an option "Fix invalidly nested and unclosed tags."

But anyways, I put all the results above, so if you just manually reapair the tags, and place the drop down menu in the table, it should look perfect.

I did use the split view for this, because I generally just use code view.
When I installed DW, I also chose the "Homestyle Coder" view, instead of the "Design" view. Maybe this has something to do with the differences?

If you want, I will cut'n'paste the fixed code for you into a post here. You might have to double check some paths to cgi or scripts, but I still have it all.

I actually just went ahead and uploaded!
http://factor1.net/temp/Unent.htm

[eightfifteen]

Another web designer on a Mac? Good to see it!

[technica]

Hey Mike,
If you could just tell me the specific changes to make, that would be great! When I saw a previous post that said what line numbers you had changed, I looked back to my code.
I stop at line 627... you were talking about stuff in the 700s!
Thanks again...

[technica]

Mike,
I downloaded the source from the page you made and fixed all the images. Everything looks great!
One question... I am going to have about six copies of this page, all with a unique form. Can I just do a 'save as' and then go in and change all the list values? I wouldn't think so, becuase then i would have identical form names.

[mikmik]

Sorry, Becky, I didn't mean to ignore you. I got real busy with tech work today, and anyways I am glad things are looking alright.
I figure that our line numbers are different because I have my Dreamweaver set to line wrap at 70 characters and this makes more lines of code (shorter lines though).

I think that you can just take your original form code and place that in your pages. They are all for the same destination? So that if you search from any of the six pages, and choose - for example - to see "Freelancer", you only have the one "Freelancer" page that the forms point to, yes?

I see that you have 'root urls' in your form, so it doesn't matter where you have it, it will send users to the right page, so yes, you should be able to 'save as',and just leave it at that.

I will try to check back here again, you can always PM me to get my attention.

Good luck, see you soon. :O)

[technica]

Thanks for all the help, Mike. If I have any problems in the future, you might be hearing from me again ;)