i·me·michael

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CSS table-ish list

September 18th, 2003 · 4 Comments

So I was trying to work out a CSS version of some information that was previously formatted in a table. This CSS formatted list is what I came up with so far. [Ed note—Although coded using fixed widths, it can be modified to be variable width. And don’t think we don’t know how to do it!]

The CSS works in all my Win browsers (IE, Moz, Op, Fb, NN4.x excluded), which means it probably fails miserably on Mac. I had originally coded the CSS slightly differently, but it failed in IE5.5, so a couple of tweaks and boom one more browser nobody uses anymore.

It doesn’t look like much less code to me than the table version, but I do think it’s more semantic, has more going for it from an accessibility standpoint, and I hope y’all can make some use of it.

Update! So I re-checked the page in Opera on my home PC and everything looked fine. It’s virtually identical to my work PC as far as OS and browser versions, so I can’t understand why I saw a difference at work.

In any case, I didn’t update the page, so by way of compensation I added the variable width version. [ed—Like that was hard!] I wouldn’t necessarily say that it stays crispy in milk, but it’s good down to a width of about 400px.

Update 2! It turns out that my work PC had Opera v7.11 installed, while my home PC had v7.03. Opera 7.11 showed a little glitch in the presentation, but an upgrade to 7.20 fixed it. Yay for Opera, and yay for my browser addled brain.

Tags: General

4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Michael // Sep 18, 2003 at 2:20 pm

    No, it doesn’t fail on Mac. :-)
    In fact, it looks really good in Safari and in Camino. IE5.2.3 for Mac screws it up, but Microsoft have officially killed that browser anyway.

    Apparently, 85% of MacEdition’s OS X using readers use Safari:

    http://www.macedition.com/cb/cb_20030825.php

    I don’t know how many Mac users still use IE5.2.

  • 2 michael // Sep 18, 2003 at 2:42 pm

    That’s good to know Michael, thanks!

    And Mac/IE was what I was thinking of when I said it probably fails. Maybe someone will have a go at a workaround, unless no one really cares about Mac/IE anymore. =)

  • 3 michael // Sep 18, 2003 at 3:56 pm

    Ack! Damn, looks like I forgot to re-check Opera after fixing IE5.5. I know I could fix it with the Box Model Hack, but I’d like to avoid that. I’ll update it later tonight one way or the other.

  • 4 michael // Sep 18, 2003 at 4:30 pm

    It does format into a nice hierarchy of info in Opera’s small screen view though. =)

    I’m talking to myself again aren’t I? I gotta stop doing that! *whack*

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