Hacking Away: 3 Column CSS Mess

  • Questions. Problems. Help?
    Try not to laugh at how mangled my site is at the moment. This is a work in progress. I’ve been trying to learn a lot on my own, but there’s only so many hours in a day.
    The left column displays posts in the “normal” manner. I’ve hacked up index.php to give me the latest excerpts from one category in the center column. The third column is for everything else.
    Current burning question: When clicking the links to posts, they appear in the left column. This is silly when I click on a post from the center column and it appears to the left of it. I’d like, instead, for the full posts to appear in a new layout, likely a two column design (basically, the site without the center column). I have no idea how to do this.
    I’ve been searching for a post that showed only the “comments” page when you clicked on the post link. That might help me, even though I’m going to be using forums instead of comments, I could use the comment CSS styles for this cleaner design.
    I know this site has a LONG way to go. I’ve gone about making 3 columns all wrong. I’ve given Dots and Trident a shot, but neither worked for me. My dream of liquid columns is probably foolhardy. My footer is out of whack, the columns bleed into one another and extend beyond their divs, and the #rap doesn’t talk to me anymore. Probably best not to even mention yet the differences in IE vs. Firefox displays.
    I tried. Um, anybody up for some hand-holding?

Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 46 total)

  • Another idea would be to start with a clean design, making a static page and then adding in the WP template tags as you go along to create the look you want.
    Also, if I read it correctly, it sounds like you want slightly different page layouts for different areas of your site, but all created by WP. I too am planning on doing something like that, and found the advice under the Creating separate category and individual files section of Burningbird’s article WordPress Modifications to be helpful in setting up separate template files.
    If you need some help with css layout, aside from WP issues, feel free to send me an email aaron [at] elasticdog.com

    Very spiffy looking blog you have there elastic dog ??

    I learned this the hard way. Just use two columns until the W3C releases CSS3. Until then, three columns are very, very kludgey.

    That was CSS positioning explained in one sentence by a guy who knows. ??

    Sorry…I’m a little slow (should probably read more carefully). I think the only way to acheive what you’re thinking of (which, if I understand correctly, would be a 3-column layout when there are comments to be shown, but a 2-column layout otherwise) would be to make the left column fluid, and floating the other two divs to the right and giving them fixed widths, thus when one div “disappears” the left one will fill in that area…although I’m not sure if that’s exactly the look you’d want to go for.

    Hi,
    I have been scratching my head for — literally — days, and I am hoping a fresh set of eyes can polint me in the right direction.
    The designer of the https://www.passingnotes.com/ bailedi, and I am not a css guy. We were left with the infamous height problem — see https://www.passingnotes.com/index.php?s=ttt&submit=Search+%3E%3E for an example.
    Root’s trident should solve it. I have my attempt at https://www.passingnotes.com/dev/ but I’m missing a key uderstanding regarding widths, I think.
    Any words of wisdom?
    thanks,

    Well you mind need a bit of fine tuning on the positioning. Trident never used to look like that :). I am reading your CSS now.

    You do have the latest release of Trident installed. ? It seems unrecognisable to me.

    umm — I was trying to merge with my style — can you offer a better approach?

    Well you could install Gemini again. Hack away as much as you like. But if you do not touch the layout at the top of the CSS or disrupt the layout related divs in the index it will go fine for you. As to color and stuff, go at it . If you get stuck just post here again. ??

    I now understand the issue.
    Trident is fixed width. the client wanted the middle col to be fluid. is this possible?

    Yes of course. But it is not easy and the result may not in every case be satisfactory. When you say flexible is your client thinking in terms of flexibility in percentage terms, or in ems (related to text size) ? And when is it needed by.?
    I do have Vesuvius on the starting blocks which has a flexible centre col but it is not quite ready.

    basicallyx, I am/was just trying to fix the height issue on https://www.passingnotes.com/.
    the right and left are fixed dimensions.

    Well you just need to add height: auto; to all the parent containers (divs) involved. No big deal.

    umm, it doesnt look like it.
    https://www.passingnotes.com/dev/index.php/thirrd-test/?s=ttt&submit=Search+%3E%3E

Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 46 total)
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