Coherent Dog Test Pages

Bottomless Pits Followup

I hope the Bottomless pits are a thing of the past. But I think they're fun to look at. Now that they're fixed - I think!

Hindsight Comment, during
Restoration of Hilarious Error Pages
Yeah, Riiiiight!

Sunday, 4 December, 2005, 13:39

But I did eventually succeed anyway, thanks greatly to help from the WebDevelopers and my TerrierNose Persistence in Digging.

TEST Remarks Entry forms
for the Brave, the Curious
the Nosey and Helpers

You are welcome to try this out, but I am asking for help with the results that get displayed. Right now, everyhing gets shown in one long paragraph, without any useful formatting to the display at all.

I am seeking help to learn how to format the results. It's a bit awkward, because I am using a proprietary script for which the source code is unavailable.

However, if you wish to try out the TESTremarks, you may. Just don't expect the results to be readable!

Also Kumbi's Guestbook

Kumbi's Guestbook lasted as a Test Guestbook for about an hour; the result was that we got the difficulties fixed. Kumbi asked to keep the Guestbook; he has such fun with experiments, so of course, I agreed.

You may skip to Kumbi's Guestbook now, if you prefer.

If you'd prefer to skip all this wild rambling about my layout difficulties, you can find my Larger Leaves Test below.

Ever since I first began to work seriously on changing from a full-page layout to making columns, I have had problems with what I've called my "Bottomless Pits."

My problems have been that in a three-column layout, the third column has been far more stubborn than a human ever thought a dog was.

Or even a cat.

The Bottomless Pit Effect

Also Known As Falling Down The Well

You can see the most obvious difficulties I had by going to Disorient and following the links to its subpages.

These effects were that typically. the content of column three, at the time, mostly pictures of leaves, would drop down at the end of column one and take up a lot of extra space down there, pushing the footer content down, down, down.

Thence the name "falling down the well, ding dong bell."

An allied problem

But then also, I had problems with column one, for instance that instead of maintaining its width, it would simply collapse leftward on the page, nearly disappearing, so that the main page content, which is in column two, would appear very far to the left, instead of being somewhere near the (vertical) center of the page.

For the life of me, I couldn't begin to figure out what the problems were.

I kept working at making my code as clean as I could. I kept validating all my Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files, and my HTML (Markup) files (these pages), and they would validate, and still, column one would squish to the left, and column three (usually, more leaves) would drop down below column one, or, more rarely, appear below column two, but seldom did it go to where I wanted it to, to the right side of the page, to be aligned horizontally with columns one and two, but to the right.

A lead

Finally I began to get the idea that there must be something missing in my code - something that would actually tell these columns (or, rather, browsers) where to go, what to do with the columns. And I realized I hadn't defined heights. So I tried defining heights, and that helped. Some.

But then also, I realized my logical structure using "divs," or "divisions," was also very weak, and that I wasn't really understanding that properly.

It turned out that when I cleaned up the "div" structures, things began to make more sense to me, and the columns, or browsers, behaved better. I still had occasional bottomless-pit problems. But then, the validators started telling me I had a problem in a page, and when I fixed that, column three would go back where it belonged.

Tada!

When I got that far, I realized I might be able to do things I hadn't managed to before, such as - well, see the following.

In my searches for help, I learned I needed content in column one to keep it from squishing entirely. A background image is great for that. Some people use "spacer.gif" files - invisible images - but it seemed to me I would like to have a visible image in column one, so I played with leaves. They also worked fine to keep column one from squishing down to nothing.

I had a lot of trouble getting a background image in the column to show at all, so I wondered if it was even possible to put one in a column. But after I got my "div" problems sorted out, I discovered that yes, indeed, I could put a background image into column one, and one into column three, too, if I wanted two.

I still have problems

My biggest problem is my ignorance and disorientation. Surely this will continue for a time, but with some help from others and from various online sources, I am learning, little by little, how to control this or that element on a page.

Links to my test pages

Here are links to my current test pages.

In Test 405d, I have managed to change my lovely leaves to be less screaming-bright, yet also, somewhat larger than the niggly-small leaves that tend to irritate the eye, which still form part of my current style - but watch for a change to that; I hope to substitute these larger, but less-bright leaves, when I learn how to handle them. That could happen any time now, so perhaps the niggly small leaves will have disappeared by the time you read this. Or I might put them up though I haven't yet found out how to make them extend the full height of the columns.

At least the larger leaves, visible on Test 405d, and on other pages if I put them there, are less bright than before, and to me, less irritating, and more as I had hoped for from the start of my efforts at leaves.

However, I am still having a problem with heights. I'm trying to make the leaves descend the full length of columns one and three, but I'm failing.

If any Helper here can help me figure out why I'm failing, I would most welcome your help!

The page has its own style sheet, and also, its own style embedded in the tags for columns one and three. The style sheet is available for Helpers, the Curious, the Brave, and the Nosey, to look at. Its name is codogmain405.css.

As I continue my experiments, I am likely to add more links here, to other efforts.

MstrBob Provides Leaves

In a brief essay on the WebDeveloper Forums, MstrBob again came through with a Solution for me.

Eddie helps too

Now along comes Eddie, from the UK, with more helpful suggestions, and between his and MstrBob's, I have come up with a test page where also, I heed a bit of suggestion from Gumbystation concerning Coherent Dog's general appearance. Nothing like trying to do several things at once.

My mixture of MstrBob's, Eddie's and my stuff is at CarolBobEddie

The same page, but with the logical structures showing in ghastly green and prissy purple is at CarolBobEddieColors

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