[Jabberwocky]

Okay I tried my webpage in explorer and it looks fine... I take it into NetScape... and it looks like... ummm... well Crap! It looks like the table had been stretch to "fit to page". I have the page set up in tables cause the interface is done in section (which was done in fireworks sliced and placed into the cells of the table.) My instuctor's advice was to "delete it all and start over"... umm okay one page to go and I'm going to delete it AGAIN (would be second time) and start over when it is do Friday!

Anyone know who I can fix this problem with NetScape?

[Serpentmage]

I hate netscape, when using Dreamweaver. Is your table width and height set at a percent or a numerical value (pixels)? Try using a set pixel size if you already haven't. Other than that I would suggest coding it youself and hoping that it fixes the problem. Good luck

[Gort]

Hi Jabber - is there any way you can post the site so I could see it?

Netscape is the most unforgiving browser and has long since been the root of many a developer's misery - me for one. I used to love Netscape; I was with Netscape from the beginning (anyone remember the big blue N?) and used to have great respect for them; I no longer do. In all fairness I will say that the new 6.2 is an improvement - I'm still not thrilled though.

My first impression is that you do not have table widths defined in the td tags, or if you have tables with relative values for widths nested in tables with absolute values (or vice versa), that could cause problems.

Don't start over - yet, because you can only master html by troublehsooting it - not avoiding it.

-tc

[ February 25, 2002: Message edited by: Tom Carter ]

[vurx]

this is how i deal with tables in html:
i make a 1x1 clear gif pixel, and i use this pixel as an image in tables to hold cells open at specific sizes by adjusting the height and width of it. i always assign tables numeric widths, not percentages. check for spaces inbetween the <table><tr> and the <tr><td> tags. they cause tables not to lie correctly. hmm thats about it. planning the whole table before you start is also a good idea.

-- vurx

[Kaete]

No offense to the Netscape users out there, but it is such a bitch!

Yeah, I know it's supposed to be more secure and it's not that browser's fault that so many things don't work on it. But it's still as annoying as heck.

My first page that I ever designed looked great in Explorer --- and then I opened it up in Netscape and found a complete and horrid mess. I had to redo to whole website from scratch to get it to work.

And I still haven't figured out how to get pictures or tables fit all the way to the left side. In the old Netscape, even when the page is set with 0 margins there is still a border where nothing will touch. Does anyone know how to fix that?

I wish all these companies would stop trying to one-up each other and keep things compatible.

[strata]

I think netscape as a browser is wonderful... however using netscape for displaying webpages sucks monkey nuts (now there's an oxymoron)... even though w3c do their best to make a standard for developers, ie and ns make every effort possible to shortcircuit each other, thus making it impossible for the end user/developer.

I'm not sure what the situation is now, but when netscape 6 was released, most companies would charge extra fees if the client wanted their page to be ns6 compatible, that's how bad it was...

Anyhow, regarding tables, ns also has an incredibly annoying habit of rounding off numerials... say you set the table width to be 44 pixels to accomodate your nice graphics... this will pretty much surely be 45 pixels in netscape.

I have found that nowrap can sometimes work miracles though...

[Gort]

vurx - absolute width values are great, if the design you're working on calls for them, but a lot of sites are designed with absolute and relative values (relative meaning the table cell area will expand and contract in relationship to the browser width - Digital Art Discussion being one). Relative is actually good, because it maximizes the use of whatever space the users defines through the browser. How many well designed sites out there have you encountered that looked great at 800 x 600? But when you maximize the browser you suddenly have this cool design no longer cool anymore - it's either slammed into a corner or floating out in the void.

Designing a site with relative values proposes unique challenges to the designer, because designers - especially those with strong print backgrounds - tend to think within set constructs for layout; you can't do that with relative widths (well you can if you want, but...). The web isn't a piece of paper; it's a new set of rules. Now that isn't to say that print experience is null, because it isn't; like traditional painting to digital painting, you still have to understand colors, balance, composition, etc.

So the big challenge, for me as a designer (and lots others), is to create a design that works at 640 x 480 but works at 1027 x 768 too.

Nutscrape's problem is that although it handles table sets with combined relative and absolute values well enough, they have to be defined with either width="100%" or width="100" (the latter being pixels). Things then get real weird in Nutscrape when you start nesting these tables within cells and so on.

[Gort]

Came across this today - a very good tutorial on nesting tables (since I seemed to go on about it before):
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/type/tutorial.asp?id=31863

[ February 26, 2002: Message edited by: Tom Carter ]

[smalbrain]

there is actually and option in Dreamweaver that lets you fix the Netscape tables resize problem - I think its in the clean up HTML dialog or close to it. it just adds some extra code again.

Kaete - try TOPMARGIN="0" LEFTMARGIN="0" MARGINWIDTH="0" MARGINHEIGHT="0" - one pair is for netscape, one pair is for IE - put them both in.

[Gort]

That's a reasonable option Smallbrain, but I've had it fail for me on some occassions; the best way to solve the problem is to dig deep into that html and learn to edit it yourself - don't rely too heavily on Dreamweaver's functionalities!

[Jabberwocky]

Thanks all... the percent/pixel thing is what my boyfriend told me to try, but this morning when I turned on my computer it crash along with the zip I had my webpage backed up on... so I have to restart my site from scratch again...

[Kaete]

smalbrain - THANK YOU! I knew it had to be something horribly simple that I was just overlooking, but I couldn't find the answer on any tutorial sites anywhere. They probably thought anyone who didn't know that shouldn't be making websites.

I'll try that right away. And as a thanks for help, here's a cupcake for you:

[V Shane]

Yeah I had that problem too with my websites (redesigned 6 times in 5 months), what I finaly did to control the whole thing was to layout everything in layers, nesting layers and the resize fix command. No tables, no frames (except in the gallery).

Shane

[smalbrain]

thanks for the cupcake!! muuhhahaha! - If you want an image to go right to the corner you have to put it in a table.

heres a puzzle for you!

[s4murai]

Did you put the values between ""? For example td width="750".

@ strata: NS4.x only rounds pixel-values when using frames, not tables. I use pixel-values for my tables and it gets displayed correctly (s4murai.port5.com).