[Pro] How many folks use CSS Layouts (box model)?

Freeway
21

Also in case anyone did not know about these neat Freeway tips when
working with box model sites…

You can use spacebar-drag to move items from inline object to inline
object to absolutely position items within inline divs (you can use
the site panel item view also to drag items).

And also pixel nudge items to “hang them” outside an inline object ,
giving a negative px positioning.

These make designing and managing inline box model sites easier and
more creatively. i.e. you can place some items in the normal drag and
drop manner (using space-bar) and work in a full box model site. And
keep the best of both worlds.

On 10 Mar 2009, at 00:23, chuckamuck wrote:

It seems that it is impossible to alter or add something down the
line if needed. The layout seems pretty set in stone.

Not true. You can use cut and paste to move html boxes around. You
just have to keep track of how your boxes are put together.

Try starting with a very basic layout grid first; one overall page
box with header, body, and footer boxes inside that. Then put all
relative content (other html boxes, graphics, tables) for each
section into the appropriate box. Change the content, not the grid.
Keep your “grid” boxes set to a fixed size until you have all the
pieces in place, then you can go back and set heights to shrink for
the grid objects.

David Owen :: Freeway Friendly Web hosting and Domains ::

http://www.ineedwebhosting.co.uk :: I Need Web Hosting Mac friendly web hosting and domain registration

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22

Or “spacebar-option-drag” to duplicate them from inline object to
inline object to absolutely position items within inline divs

On 10 Mar 2009, at 12:28, David Owen wrote:

You can use spacebar-drag to move items from inline object to inline
object to absolutely position items within inline divs

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23

Well, I can’t seem to do any of those things. I guess, when I have time, I’ll have to just dive in head first. I still find the whole process very frustrating.

I move boxes (if I’m lucky enough to get that to work) then a huge gap opens up somewhere that I can’t get rid of.

Undo doesn’t always work. I can’t seem to get things to go back to the way they were before I made a certain change.

I followed Dan’s screencast, which was excellent, but if I try to modify it, I mess it up.

Plus, I find it odd that there are around 15 boxes placed before I’ve actually added content. There is so much nesting of inline elements, that I’m not sure if I’ve added enough.

Again, mostly my ignorance, I suppose…

Bob

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24

I’m still finding my feet with the box model but I found it helps to think of inline boxes as characters of text. Once you have selected an insertion point use the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate round within a container and use Duplicate to add similar boxes next to or below each other rather than Copy and Paste.

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25

How do I insert the cursor in the bottom most box if it is filed with inline boxes and I can’t place the cursor in it?

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On 10 Mar 2009, at 13:06, Robert Bovasso wrote:

How do I insert the cursor in the bottom most box if it is filed
with inline boxes and I can’t place the cursor in it?

Select it in Freeway’s left-hand column in ‘Site’ view, not ‘Page’
view (click the top bar of the pane to change) and hit Return. That
will put the cursor in the selected item.

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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27

Thanks, Paul. That’s exactly what I was looking for. NEver knew you could do that.

Bob

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28

I don’t use the Box Model because it doesn’t work on a Master Page.
You can have the Box Model, or you can have Master Page items, but you
can’t have both, sadly.

Regards

Graham Smith
Bury St Edmunds, UK

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29

That’s not completely true. Like David Owen said, you can have a combination
of both. If you have your menu and header across the top, just plop those
where you want them and put your box model right beneath them. Just don’t
include them in your box model.
If you have your menu on the side, either put your box model to the right
(or left) of the menu bar and once again, don’t include it in your box
model. It will be absolutely positioned.

The problem arises with the footer. I spent a lot of time trying to figure
out how to get it on the master and still move down as more text was added,
and I just don’t believe it can be done. What I do now is just have the
footer container in the bottom of the box model and copy my model to every
page as I create it. I figure the only thing I’m really changing in the
footer, usually, is the copyright year or some small piece of info, and for
that I can just do a find & replace.

I have sites where my box model is, say, 900 pixels wide, because that is
what I’m using as my white background (or whatever color). I then have two
columns to the right, one floated right and one floated left, but the left
one has a margin or padding on the left of maybe 250 px, because that white
space on the left has my absolutely positioned menu on top of it, and that
menu is on the master, along with my header and/or other absolutely
positioned items.

Boy, that turned out to be long and boring. Sorry.

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 12:10 AM, Graham Smith email@hiddenwrote:

I don’t use the Box Model because it doesn’t work on a Master Page. You can
have the Box Model, or you can have Master Page items, but you can’t have
both, sadly.

Regards

Graham Smith

Bury St Edmunds, UK

–
Robin Stark

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On 11 Mar 2009, at 21:28, Robin Stark wrote:

Boy, that turned out to be long and boring. Sorry.

Long, yes, but useful, not boring.

Colin

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On 11 Mar 2009, at 21:28, Robin Stark wrote:

The problem arises with the footer. I spent a lot of time trying to
figure
out how to get it on the master and still move down as more text was
added,
and I just don’t believe it can be done. What I do now is just have
the
footer container in the bottom of the box model and copy my model to
every
page as I create it. I figure the only thing I’m really changing in
the
footer, usually, is the copyright year or some small piece of info,
and for
that I can just do a find & replace.

Ah yes, find and replace… why didn’t I think of that? With find and
replace in Freeway you can change every footer on a website, box-model
or not. Thanks for that, Robin.

BTW I am currently working on an alternative way of creating a footer.
It’s not 100% reliable (won’t work in IE6) but it’s reasonable,
anyway. I’ll put it online when it’s ready.

Regards

Graham Smith
Bury St Edmunds, UK

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32

Sometimes I find it very difficult to see the changes I made with settings of ‘float’ etc when DIV’s are nested. To make it visual I sometimes add (temporarely) a background color to certain DIV’s to see what happens in the browser. Pain in the head always is IE, but that’s old news…;-(

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33

I built a box model page on my site and although it was more time consuming than usual, everything seems to work fine. It gives some obvious advantages, like being able to have a footer that goes across the full width of the browser window, but it also has some quirks that I can’t seem to iron out. For instance, if I place an image near the top of the page, just below a CSS menu, everything works fine until you look at the page in IE. In IE the menu drops down underneath the image. You can send the image to back and the menu to front but it still doesn’t display right in IE.

Anyone else have that problem?

Warner

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on 12/03/2009 16:34, Warner at email@hidden wrote:

I built a box model page on my site and although it was more time consuming
than usual, everything seems to work fine. It gives some obvious advantages,
like being able to have a footer that goes across the full width of the
browser window, but it also has some quirks that I can’t seem to iron out.
For instance, if I place an image near the top of the page, just below a CSS
menu, everything works fine until you look at the page in IE. In IE the menu
drops down underneath the image. You can send the image to back and the menu
to front but it still doesn’t display right in IE.

Anyone else have that problem?

Hi Warner, Joe @ Softpress answered that for me a few weeks ago:

on 01/03/2009 15:18, Joe Billings at email@hidden wrote:

Hi Peter,

Try the old wmode transparent embed parameter trick. If you don’t know
how, select the Flash item in Freeway and in the Extended dialog add
wmode into the Name field and transparent into the Value field. this
might do the opposite of what you want it to, though.

Best wishes Peter

–

================================
Peter Tucker, Oxford UK email@hidden

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Hi Peter,

Thanks for the response but I just tried it and it still doesn’t work in IE. It’s great in every other browser. The image I have at the top of the page is a png. I don’t get it.

Warner

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on 12/03/2009 17:55, Warner at email@hidden wrote:

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the response but I just tried it and it still doesn’t work in IE.
It’s great in every other browser. The image I have at the top of the page is
a png. I don’t get it.

I’d put up another message with a carefully written subject and a link to
the page.

I’m pretty sure that someone with much more knowledge and experience will
have a solution.

Best wishes Peter

–

================================
Peter Tucker, Oxford UK email@hidden

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37

I saw a link Steven Frank posted on Twitter today and what he created reminded me of this thread. :smiley:

http://www.zazzle.com/css_is_awesome_tshirt-235065660803971488

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Love it ha ha

Nathan Garner
Partner, AWDC
email@hidden
www.awdc-creative.com

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Mar 2009, at 03:37, “Joe Muscara” email@hidden wrote:

I saw a link Steven Frank posted on Twitter today and what he
created reminded me of this thread. :smiley:

http://www.zazzle.com/css_is_awesome_tshirt-235065660803971488

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39

It would be nice if you could preview PHP pages in Freeway. Then it would be easier to control the layout when using PHP inlude for CSS Menues.

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I agree. Even if you could simply see the page rendered with the PHP
parts skipped it would be a huge win.

For now, you might want to set up Apache, MySQL and PHP on a dev
server (or your Mac) and use Upload to get it there where you can
preview in a browser.

Walter

On May 7, 2009, at 1:40 PM, ulfr wrote:

It would be nice if you could preview PHP pages in Freeway. Then it
would be easier to control the layout when using PHP inlude for CSS
Menues.

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