and this is why i haven't done a new design in over three years

Okay, I give up.

I give up.

This was obviously built by insane system programmers, which I am totally conversant on because I read about it once in a book. This--this isn't logical. Who builds a markup language with the assumption of a left justification? Why should I have to fight for right? Why didn't they think of us who like right justification? Some of us aren't into the left side so much. Might be the entire sinister aspect of it, or maybe we just are afraid of it. Ever think of that, sport? That left bothers me? That I feel a little claustrophobic when I have to align everything against the popular left side of the page? Do you realize you gave us ABSOLUTE POSITIONING POWER and yet somehow left out a way to just drag everything left? Why? Why did you do that?

ALIGN-RIGHT. RIGHT THERE. I can do it to an image in HTML in FIVE SECONDS. IF MY FINGERS ARE SLOW. ALIGN. RIGHT. RIGHT THERE.

Oh my God, it cannot have been that hard to do what I can do in regular HTML without twitching. It's right alignment. And what the hell about ALIGN FUCKING CENTER? THREE ID COMMANDS? Are you kidding? Did someone who liked their webpages lined against the right side run over your new iMac? I DO NOT FREAKING THINK SO.

*breathes*

Hi. I am going to kill everyone involved in the standardization of CSS.



#content
{margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
margin-top:auto;
margin-bottom:2em;
width:100%}

Dear CSS people.

See above. What I wanted--crazy, I know--is set all my containers ever into the known center of the screen. You said this would work. You told me auto was magic. You laughed your little laugh and said, heh, yeah, weird how that was left out, do this.

And that bottom thing doesn't work at all. I'd like to thank you for that lovely inability to leave a decent margin at the bottom of a scrolling screen. Beautiful. And by that, I mean, diaf.

You lied.

#wrapper
{position:relative;
margin:0 auto;
text-align:left;
width:100%;}

Continuing--see that width command? I had to add that to make my page stay visible and not wandering off the right side of the page, which just goes to show the anti-Right brigade is alive and well. I don't know why! I'm pretty sure the root of all my problems comes from this.

I still have no idea why you are making me relative position this. I believed you, and I think you did it to fuck with me.

#left {float:left;width:17%;margin-left:3%;}
#right{float:right;width:77%;margin-left:3%;}

That's pretty straightfoward, right? I mean, really. Left, floats left! Right, floats right! Whee! I did my widths in percentage instead of me just for you and even gave margins to gutter so IE to stop being a dirty bitch and killing my containers. I did it just like illustrated.

And I still have a bottom scroll in Firefox (IE has rolled over and showed his throat. Good boy.) What the hell?

.top
{width:100%;
margin-left:.5em;
margin-right:1em;
margin-top:1em;
text-align:right}

This container exists because, for some crazy reason, you kept layering my image over text when I gave it a type class container all its own. Why? I don't know. You don't do that with your precious text. Images, though? Yeah.

.type
{width:100%;
font-size:1em;
margin-left:.5em;
margin-right:.5em;
margin-top:1.5em;
font-weight:bold;}

Okay, this is working. So--okay.

.title
{width:100%;
font-size:.8em;
margin-left:1.5em;
margin-right:.5em;
margin-top:1.5em;}

This seems to be working. I don't know why. Though I have a bad feeling that due to margins, I'm going to need to drop the width by five percent. I haven't gotten that far. What with my image running off the screen like a teenage girl from a slasher (not slash, sadly) movie.

.story
{width:90%;
font-size:.8em;
margin-left:2.5em;
margin-right:.5em;
margin-top:.5em;}

You're doing good. Don't fuck up.

Okay.

Edits since most of you last saw it. The div left was given two break commands and it seemed to fix the problem with the columns when I took out the absolute positioning. That hurt me in ways we cannot discuss, but its a gaping wound I may never heal from completely.



When I grow up and finish programming for the web class, I solemnly swear I will some day sit on the standards board who decides this shit. Then I'm going to make the following rulings:

All web browsers must be compliant with standard or large men with pipes will comes to their houses and make them use Windows Vista every day for the rest of their life. Home Basic edition. With one gig of RAM. Yeah. Have fun with that.

There will be special commands for everyone who wants to design from the right side of the screen. They will be called blessed. They will get cookies.

Someone, somewhere will acknowledge that while there is no standard in screen size and by all the gods of the internets, it will be easy to design from 800/600 straight to 1600/1200 so they look readable no matter what. And a magic font fixer. And a pony, because if my sanity is going to snap building a ridiculously simple webpage, then I am going to ride a pony around and call myself a princess. Also send a tiara.

And I was going to finsih my review of Teal'c's arms Midway. *sad*

It's raining. Of course it is. It's a freaking conspiracy of the anti-right brigade.

Comments

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry. I had to deal with similar things as I herded our Mac-based website developers through designing a CSS-based site to work mostly on IE/Windows machines. There were tears. Many were mine. Good luck in your site redesign, and if you do manage to hunt down the CSS standards people I will be happy to hold your coat while you implement your Entirely Justifiable Retribution.

I hope you'll have a chance to step back and rewatch Teal'c and Ronon flex at one another soon. It's very soothing.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

They were pretty. I never really noticed Teal'c until he was all--well. Beating up Ronon. And then his arms were like--and I thought--right. Of course. Of course.

*sad* I am only sad I have no way to slash John with Teal'c. Yet.

[ratcreature]

Personally I think their prime concern for their standards is job security. I mean, if it was easy and logical to design a simple website all the not really big and rich clients would stop hiring web design specialists. However if you need three days to get a site with list and a margin look decent and go insane during the attempt, well, you are more likely to hire them.

It's really the only theory that makes sense, IMO.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

That's the best theory I've heard yet for this. It just doesn't make sense how much control there is except for anything *simple* and that works cross-browser.

[ratcreature]

Yeah. I mean, I haven't fully redesigned my website since *early 2002*, because it was such a quagmire.

back from B-day stuffs

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

Want me to look at anything? Where is your current stylesheet/page?

To do a span (convert square bracket to pointy, of course):

in css:
.new {color:#ca0823; font-weight:bold;}

in text:
[span class="new"]New[/span] - linky link blah blah.

Or you can email me. I don't have any IM program and it tends to break my brain, so that's no so good.

[brownbetty]

aahahaaa css. man.

The sick thing is that I'm kinda fond of it. Don't hate me.

[starry-diadem.livejournal.com]

(http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y88/AnnaOrr/Glittery%20images%20for%20LJ%20etc/?action=view&current=Tiara1.gif)

I am riding to your rescue!

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I am riding to your rescue!
-- making you an annotated style sheet that takes care of a bunch of things.

I use the CSS-Discuss wiki
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=FrontPage
a *lot*. I also have a well-thumbed copy of Eric Meyer's Cascading Style Sheets (http://meyerweb.com/eric/books/css-tdg/).

Meanwhile, some links about a couple of problems:

1. font size -- the horror, the horror.
This guy:
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/font/index.html
is practically your soul mate re: OCD -- he's made 264 screen shots of different font spec/browser combinations. And then he made more:
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/typography/incremental_differences.html

The upshot of all this, for *me* (YMMV): I set body at either 99% or 76% and size text in ems, with p at 1em.

2. centering:
What I wanted--crazy, I know--is set all my containers ever into the known center of the screen
Here's the general guide I use:
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CenteringBlockElement

More later.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I have made a start:

http://alternateuniverses.com/test/seperis/sgaotherTEST.html
with css here:
http://alternateuniverses.com/test/seperis/recsTEST.css

Includes fancy-dancy image-replacement method from http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ImageReplacement, specifically "Gilder Levin" method. This lets people with images turned off see what page they're on, while letting you keep your pretty page header.

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

My stupid, stupid, STUPID dad got me a laptop for university. I knew I should have made him let me pick it out, because it's using Vista Home Basic with 502MB RAM. Honestly. I have plans, ohyes, and they all involve upgrading to 2GB RAM and sending him the bill.

So the large men with pipes' actions will be totally justified, and also a just punishment.