FP 2003 ease of using layers question

[news.frontiernet.net]

Does FP 2003 make it easy to create layers and change their size, etc like
FP 2002 does for tables?

 

[Jon Spivey]

Hi,
about as easy as you can get There's a couple of things to watch for
though -

When you hit insert layer FP won't actually write top and left positions
unless you move the layer a couple of pixels or type top and left positions
into Format - Layers - Positioning. So 1 of those things before you add
content to your layer.
Anything you type for top, left and width should have a unit of measure eg
100px not just 100
FP adds a height for each layer of 100px - you should delete this. IE will
(incorrectly) allow a layer to expand vertically beyond it's defined height
other modern browsers won't. So a page that looks ok in IE will probably not
look how you expect in say Mozilla.
Watch where FP adds the layer code in HTML view - the safest place is just
above </body>
Dont nest layers (ie put 1 layer inside another) unless you know what you're
doing.
I'd add a doctype - IE6 renders layer widths differently depending on
wether a full doctype is present or not. With a doctype they'll render the
same in IE6 as other modern browsers - without one they may not.

If you follow these your layers should look as you intend in any version 4
and better browser.

Jon
Microsoft MVP - FP

 

[Jim Buyens]

-----Original Message-----

Does FP 2003 make it easy to create layers and change
their size, etc like FP 2002 does for tables?

Tables and Layers are two very different technologies, and
this makes them hard to compare. However, in FP2003, you
can never leave the GUI and still do a lot of work with
layers.

However, if you need to calculate layer positions at
browse time, you still need to hand-code JavaScript
statements.

Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*----------------------------------------------------
|\---------------------------------------------------
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out
||---------------------------------------------------
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming
|| (All from Microsoft Press)
|/---------------------------------------------------
*----------------------------------------------------

 

[Ronx]

If you follow these your layers should look as you intend in any version
4
and better browser

Except Opera4, which requires the layer height, otherwise the height is
defaulted from the top of the layer to the bottom of the visible window.

Opera6+ behaves the same as other browsers, not tested Opera5.

 

[Jon Spivey]

I normally take the view that Opera users are quite computer-savvy and
therefore would update their browsers as soon as an upgrade became
available. Especially considering Opera 7 is a big improvement over previous
versions in terms of CSS and DOM support - one could say it's the first
version to give proper support to CSS and the DOM. In other words I'm not
too interested in Opera versions other than the latest and the 1 previous (6
and 7 at the moment.)

In my opinion FP shouldn't add a height to layers atall - for example if you
had something like this
<div style="position:absolute;left:0;top:0;width:100px;height:100px;
border:1px solid #333">
....a few paragraphs of text......
</div>

Design view of FP will give the impression that the layer will expand
vertically to hold the text - view in IE and this is what happens. So far so
good. View in any other browser and the text has spilled out of the layer.
This is a bug/feature of IE - it also applies to widths. One could even use
this "feature" used to simulate min-width in IE. Of course there may be a
few times when you need to add a height to a layer - using a clip rectangle
for example - but anyone who knew what this meant would probably be quite
savvy with layers anyway. So my advice to anyone in this group getting
started with layers would always be to delete the height setting.

Jon