Box Model/Masters/100% Width Footer/Justin Hall

Freeway
1

I wouldn’t bring this up again except that Justin Hall appears to have found a way to do 100% full width footers on his sites and still use the box model. His work is beautiful, I can’t imagine that he is not using masters. I’ve looked at the code on his sites and Firebugged them to death, but it’s not obvious to me how it’s being done.

I’ve spent about 8 hours trying so many things, to keep my box model and still use masters. I’ve also said to heck with the box model and tried to do a regular layout but just have the 100% width footer div, but I just can’t do it. I’ve added CSS code to the extended area, I’ve added code into mark-ups, I’ve even thought of resorting to an iFrame to be able to keep the masters in tact.

This is a sample of my page:

http://bellevuerotary.net/new/fader.html

Everything on the top is fine. I don’t need to even use the box model for the site. I just want a 100% width grey footer on the bottom and I don’t know how to achieve it without the box model. The only reason it’s showing on this sample page is because it IS in the box model, and my master page.

I’ve used box models before, but always with CMS, so it didn’t matter so much on the masters because of the global CMS settings.

Help, PLEASE!

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2

I’m sorry, I meant to include this link to Justin Hall’s website where he had a portfolio of very nice sites with 100% width footers.

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3

Justin EASTHALL. Sorry. You can see I’m losing my mind. Nothing like bumping my topic. I’m done now. Please help!

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4

Well Robin,

I long thought about if I should post this cause it is full of dangerous half-knowledge but as far as I know:

There is no way around to have both, 100% footer and the opportunity to work on master-page(s). The backlinking to master-pages is as far as I know only to “one level deep” inline-spoken.

As we know:

To have a browser-width element, we need this “one-level depth” to achieve the basics (100% div and a center-div within this item), so content is always the second (third, fourth-level) and hereby not proper back-linked anymore.

I know, this may sound annoying, but it is Freeway’s current nature to behave like this, cause it is offering a “canvas” or blank page to start visual designing. This PageDIV as a result needs to be declared (right, left, center).

I once said in a post to Justin:

“Hey - cool stuff you’re doing and as far as I can see, nice Box-Model” and he answered something like

“Hey thanks man - what the heck is “BoxModel”, never heard?”

This and the above makes me wonder about a few things of your post.

I know the pain about the Master/Child situation, especially if a project has a few dozen pages and a slight change enforces us to do this on all single one, but I learned to live with it.

In your case, I’d build the footer content on a special master (just the content) in a div-holder, prepare a clean single div in the box-model, and then copy the altered footer box, delete content, click in and paste.

This is taking me 15 seconds of work each page so four per minute - worth not thinking about it further and hope that there is one day I may grin about this post and think:

“In former times, not all had been better”

Cheers

Thomas

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5

Thanks, Thomas, that’s not a bad idea at all, work on the footer div in a master and then just paste the whole thing. It would be a pain, but once the site was set, it would not change that often. It’s only now while decisions are being made and links are changing and being added that it is truly horrifying. I can just give them unlinked text and images in the footer and tell them the footer area will be the last portion updated when the site is ready to go live.

I would still like Justin Easthall to share all his designing secrets with us, every last one of them!

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6

why not giving him a quick note ( http://www.easthalldesign.com/ ), if he couldn’t have a look into this? I think he’s very busy and he missed this cause he is usually active on the board. I’m sure he’ll spent some lines.

Cheers

Thomas

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7

Hi - sorry didn’t see this thread, thanks Thomas for pointing this out.

Thanks for the compliment Robin!

Unfortunately as far as I’m aware there is no way to use the box model and master pages - because by nature, the box model is wrapped by one box, as soon as you touch anything inside this the Master page breaks - way back I talked to Freeway support and they said the same…

The box model by nature is what ‘pushes’ the footer to the bottom… Thats the only way I know to keep the footer 100% and at the bottom…

Happy to send a freeway doc if need

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8

So, Justin, you are using the box model and to heck with the masters? I would love to see one of your basic FW documents where you have the 100% footer. Right now, I’m going with Thomas’ idea of just pasting the whole thing in again when there is a change. Is that what you do?

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9

Yep to heck with masters - I never ever ever use them (oh apart from styling links) - YEs any changes I just cut and past throughout the entire website - its a pain but the footer once finalised rarely changes in my case

uploaded a template here from an older site but has the footer etc

go here https://public.me.com/j303
Robin - freeway folder

Thanks

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10

Thank you, Justin. I am going studying it right now!

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