He said this happened earlier too… in this thread, there’s a post where he mentions the whole post vanished, and you said you didn’t see anything in the moderation queue…
Okay, I’ll try again.
I am attaching the same image in pdf format.
Previewing the post, it again shows me that it is “Attachments Pending Approval,” and it is 5.1 KB in length.
deesy
I originally posted these screen shot images on March 20, 2010 at 00:56 AM. The attachment is in MS Word 2000-2003 format, and it is still there. I can download it, or I can open it for viewing. The icon for the attachment is immediately underneath the posted message.
deesy
okay, the PDF thing worked. Now I wants codez. All of it.
I’m a little confused 
We already sorted out why this code was not working way back at the beginning.
It was the massive word-spacing being used.
Quote:
#TBSH-Controls-Left {
font: italic bold 100% Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #0000FF;
text-align: left;
float: left;
word-spacing: 20em;
margin: 0em;
padding-bottom: 0px;
width: 65%;
}
That code will render almost the same in IE6, 7, 8 (and others) and will look more or less as the attachment posted.
As molona mentioned above the culprit is the massive word-spacing that was used causing the great big gaps to appear as would be expected from that code.
As I mentioned at the beginning design view is unreliable and shouldn’t be used for all but the simplest of layouts.
He stated a few times in a PM that those changes did nothing for IE8. I said if he posts code and screenshots, then we can find out what’s going on.
It’s only design view that shows it wrong Even my DW CS3 shows it as normal spaced text in design view and is just another example of it’s poor rendering abilities. Browsers show it as it should be.
Paul, you say in a couple of posts in this thread that you use DW in its code view only. Here, you say that DW can only handle basic CSS, and yet you suggest it’s better than any other text/code editor.
Why?
I personally use (the highly configurable) Scintilla, but if you can explain why DW is better, I’d be interested to read your comments.
It can only handle the basic css in the sense of its wysiwyg capabilities.(which I don’t use at all)
I code by hand and have no need of its CSS interface although it’s code prompt is quite handy at times.
I personally use (the highly configurable) Scintilla, but if you can explain why DW is better, I’d be interested to read your comments.
[/quote]
I tried to download it to see what it was like but mcaffee blocked it as a dangerous download and urged me not to download so I aborted. I just can’t run the risk of downloading but if it works for you then that’s fine.
There was scant information on the Scintilla site about its html and css capabilities so I can’t really tell if it had all the features I needed.
I mentioned the features I needed before but these are just the main ones:
Code formatting (partial or whole document)
CSS formatting options (partial or whole document)
Color highlighting (+ options)
Code folding
Error checking and error highlighting for missing tags,quotes or unmatched elements.
Easy browser preview
Ftp built in
Full reference of html, css and javascript at your fingertips
Site management
Extensive Search, replace, find by file or folder
Default documents (with doctype selection as required)
Remember that on the forums I have to debug thousands of sites and the ability just to copy the source code into the editor and immediately see the missing tags and unmatched elements/quotes is a real timesaver.
I’ve yet to find anything that has all these built in - but if I did I would swap straight away The main problem with DW is it is expensive and very slow on large files.
Now I understand. I don’t know why Scintilla shows up as a buggy download (I never had a problem), but it’s clear that no text editor will work for you. Scintilla included.
Here are a couple of off-topic points. I think I’m supposed to put them in those red boxes, but I don’t know how to do that.
Off-topic number 1. If you consider DW is too expensive, take a holiday to Bangkok. Here, you can buy all this stuff for 3 or 4 US dollars. If you ask the Thai vendors if it’s genuine, they’ll always smile and say “yes”. And Thai people never lie.
Off-topic number 2. Sitepoint’s search facility seems a little confusing, so I can’t see if you’ve ever done a CSS quiz about mouseover or hover effects.
If you haven’t, why not do one? Perhaps not a quiz as such – just a collection of cool or interesting goodies that could be used in “real-world” designs. I’m sure people such as myself could learn a lot from you and that Russian guy you collaborate with.
The sitepoint search has been updated but it doesn’t cover specific forum search. You would need to use the “Search this forum” drop down but it’s very slow. Google is quicker
I have put a list of the quizzes in the FAQ here anyway to make it easier to check through. There have been a [URL=“http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=600332&page=4”]few rollover effects over the years in the quizzes but we are always looking for more ideas.
I’m a little confused
We already sorted out why this code was not working way back at the beginning.
It was the massive word-spacing being used.
The XHTML has not changed, but I did change the CSS. Here is the currently-used CSS, and the rendered images look different, but not better:
#TBSH-Controls-Left {
font: italic bold 100% Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #0000FF;
text-align: left;
float: left;
word-spacing: 4em;
margin: 0em;
padding-bottom: 0px;
width: 65%;
display: inline;
}
#TBSH-Controls li {
display: inline;
text-align: right;
margin: 0em;
}
The line of links is still scrambled when displayed by a browser. I accept that the CSS is probably erroneous, and I am committed to figuring it out and fixing it. However, that does not explain why the image looks correct in the Design View window of Dreamweaver 8. Adobe Technical Support was of absolutely no help at all. If they had told me that it was a known problem with Dreamweaver 8, which was no longer supported, and that I could probably solve the problem by purchasing an upgrade or a newer version of Dreamweaver, I might have considered it. But they didn’t! They basically just said, in essence: “Too bad, so sad! You’re just out of luck.” All that did was irritate me. :mad:
deesy
Forgive me if I’m missing the point but that code renders the same in every browser I have. Ie6, ie7, ie8, Firefox 3, 3.6,opera 9, opera 10, safari 3+ and Chrome (not to mention the browsers on my mac system as well) .
It’s more or less identical and displays exactly as I would expect that code to display.
The line of links is still scrambled when displayed by a browser.
It’s not scrambled - it’s just spaced out - unless you have something else going on that I am missing.
However, that does not explain why the image looks correct in the Design View window of Dreamweaver 8.
At the risk of going hoarse I just have to repeat myself again and say that Design View in Dreamweaver is not a real browser and does not reliably render CSS. Don’t use it.
Whatever Adobe may say it just doesn’t work in versions up to CS3 - I don’t have CS4 so can’t comment on that but I haven’t heard that it’s much better at rendering CSS in design view although as mentioned before they seem to have a feature called live view (or something similar).
DW has never rendered CSS properly in design view in any version that I have had and I’ve been using it for at least over ten years.
Forgive me if I’m missing the point but that code renders the same in every browser I have. Ie6, ie7, ie8, Firefox 3, 3.6,opera 9, opera 10, safari 3+ and Chrome (not to mention the browsers on my mac system as well) .
It’s more or less identical and displays exactly as I would expect that code to display.
Well, Paul, I have not, yet, installed all of those browsers. I have IE 8, and I have Firefox 3.6.
I have commented out the CSS line regarding word spacing. The links render differently, as expected. However, they do NOT render the same in both IE 8 and FireFox 3.6.
In IE 8, the first 11 characters of the word “Capabilities” are cut off at the left margin, and do not display at all.
In FireFox 3.6, none of the word “Capabilities” displays, and about half of the letter “A” in “About Us” is also cut off. A single space appears between the words “About” and “Us,” and between the words “Case” and “Histories.” Everything else is run together with no separation between the links. Also, in IE 8 the links are not boldface, while in FireFox, they are. So there are still some differences in the way these browsers render styled XHTML, correct? The code does NOT render the same way in all browsers. Or am I missing something else?
I have already acknowledged that, in all liklihood, I have errors in my CSS. But I did change the offending line of CSS as suggested by you, and by at least one other member of this forum. While it changed the appearance of the problem, it did not solve it. I was following the instructions I found in the SitePoint book by Rachel Andrew, and much of what I styled renders properly in both IE 8 and FireFox 3.6, including the very difficult to style access control buttons.
I’m not disagreeing with you regarding DW, but wonder how such a steep price can be charged for a product that clearly does not work properly. It seems that the Web Development community simply accepts the fact that big, expensive, feature-rich development software often does not work properly, and “such is life” – or, perhaps, c’est la guerre would be more appropriate. 
DW has never rendered CSS properly in design view in any version that I have had and I’ve been using it for at least over ten years.
When I pay a great deal of money for a product, ANY product, I expect it to work as advertised. It amazes me that so many people in the world today appear to have such low expectations. If this product was freeware or shareware, my expectations wouldn’t be very high. But it isn’t! In fact, it is significantly more expensive than most software packages.
If you have known for the past ten years that the Dreamweaver software is incapable of properly rendering styled XHTML, why do you purchase it, and why do you use it? Why does anybody, for that matter?
deesy
Because they are easily led into thinking things can be done at the click of a button.
Dreamweaver’s best features are, apparently, code-based tools etc, not WYSIWYG features.
Web standards move on fairly swiftly - the exceptions are generally WYSIWYG editors and Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, because IE is still the dominant browser, WYSIWYG editors have to go for the best standards IE can adhere to. As you are using an old WYSIWYG editor, it’s bound to be outdated.
I would suggest that it’d be faster for you to start from scratch using code-view only. But that’s because I detest WYSIWYG editors, as do many web developers.
You are using a long-outdated product. If you bought a TV in the 70s, you shouldn’t complain that it can’t pick up digital TV in the 2010s. That’s how fast the web industry moves - use outdated software and it will produce outdated code.
In an ideal world, that outdated code would still appear the same in modern browsers. However, the code produced is full of workarounds because browsers didn’t adhere to standards. Now they do, those workarounds cause problems.
Because they are easily led into thinking things can be done at the click of a button.
That is the problem in a nutshell, too many people think building a website is some easy task where you can just drag and drop stuff onto the screen and call yourself a professional. Dreamweaver aims to fill a gap in the market where people want to produce generic mock-ups (where the codes accuracy isn’t much of an issue) or people with no knowledge or inclination to learn to code so they can pump out some gutter trash code in an attempt to get their website on the net with little to no effort. To place it in an example… just look at how most people use computers, back in the day people who used computers understood what they were using, they spent the time to learn, and they knew enough about security to ensure that they weren’t too much of a risk. But the rise of computer usage and affordable computing and the increasing friendliness of computers to beginners made it that now any yahoo with half a brain can get up and running in a few hours and be bouncing round the web without a care in the world (or any knowledge to boot) - this is why security is now a big issue in computing, it’s also the same cause and effect that’s given rise to products like Dreamweaver… tools which professionals can use (via the code window) to do the job with the required background knowledge… and a friendly design tab which can puke out a website with no effort, knowledge or braincells required. WYSIWYG is great if you’re a total newbie with no inherent need to produce a website professionally and just want something quick and easy, but using it for a business (professional needs based) website just shows the person building the site is just making unrealistic expectations of a tool which really wasn’t intended for such a profound and risk free controlled sandbox to play in.
I can only comment on the code you have shown us above and as I already said it renders (more or less) the same in all browsers.
Not to the labour the point I have copied your code into a stand alone file here assuming that you have constructed it much the same. Then I have uploaded it and taken browsers shots of it in all main browsers for you to see for yourself.
http://www.browsercam.com/public.aspx?proj_id=513481
That is not to say that all CSS will render the same cross browser because they don’t all support all properties to the same degree (not forgetting bugs of course).
My comment is that the code you have shown us would display with big gaps as expected and look pretty much the same in all browsers.
If you wish to provide me full code I could certainly tell you in a few seconds where you were going wrong and what the problem was. Browsers do have differences but usually just minor things (discounting ie6 of course) and assuming the properties you are using are supported in the browsers that you are targeting then the differences in most cases should be minimal.
There are bugs and there are differences but there are also right ways to do something which is more than just knowing what a property does. If the bricks are in the wrong place the house will fall over but that’s not the fault of the bricks.
I’m not disagreeing with you regarding DW, but wonder how such a steep price can be charged for a product that clearly does not work properly. It seems that the Web Development community simply accepts the fact that big, expensive, feature-rich development software often does not work properly, and “such is life” – or, perhaps, c’est la guerre would be more appropriate.
No I think you have a fair point and it should work better in design view.
If you have known for the past ten years that the Dreamweaver software is incapable of properly rendering styled XHTML, why do you purchase it, and why do you use it? Why does anybody, for that matter?
deesy
When I first started using DW it had no support for CSS because CSS wasn’t really invented yet. DW was basically a table layout tool which is where it excelled but once CSS took over from tables then its ‘goose was cooked’ so to speak. It’s wysiwyg never recovered.
As I mentioned in the post above I use DW for all the other things that it does nicely for me codewise. Granted it’s a very expensive code editor and I would gladly move to another tool if it had the same functions. If I was starting from scratch then I probably wouldn’t purchase it but as I already had it I have just upgraded along the way.
I think you are quite justified in expecting it to display better in design view but that still won’t help you build the page the right way. CSS depends on how elements are put together and how they interact with each other. There are many ways of constructing a page but in most cases there is only one right way and that depends on the dynamics of the page.
Not to the labour the point I have copied your code into a stand alone file here assuming that you have constructed it much the same. Then I have uploaded it and taken browsers shots of it in all main browsers for you to see for yourself.
Hmm. I looked at your screen shots and, although they are similar to what I see in IE8 and FireFox 3.6, they are not the same. That suggests to me that I have “overlapping” CSS rules that I must find and fix. I have acquired an excellent new book titled CSS Mastery by Andy Budd with Cameron Moll & Simon Collison. I’m just getting started reading it, but I expect to find my solution somewhere in this book. If I am mistaken, you can be sure that I will be back to this forum seeking help. In any event, I will let you know what I found, and how I fixed it (or didn’t).
I very much appreciate the offers for help, but I want to try to learn this myself, first. I’ll probably follow the advice offered by another member and just start all over with my CSS.
Here’s a thought: Do you suppose that Dreamweaver was written in Visual Basic? 
BTW, a CS4 Design Premium package that I was bidding on in e-Bay just sold for $997 US. Crazy!!
Thanks to everybody for all of the advice and assistance.
deesy
Somehow I can’t see Adobe using Microsoft products to build it’s own 