I'm currently working on a website for a lawyer. It has a side bar on the left. For some reason, the menu cells stretch if there is a lot of content in the content cell of the page. I dont want these cells to stretch, and Id also like them one on top of another instead of spread down along the side. Take a look at it at <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.benavideslaw.com">www.benavideslaw.com</a><!-- w --> so you can see what im talking about. Thanks, Brian<!--content-->Hi, Brian!<br />
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I'm not sure what you mean by "stretch". From what I can see, the width doesn't change, but the height does. As it should.<br />
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But how to get that lengthening down to a minimum... Hmmm.... I took a look at the code you have and I noticed a fair bit of white space on the pages. Some browsers will translate that into actual space, so maybe that's the problem. <br />
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You're using Dreamweaver, right? Rather than separate the sections with blank lines, you could insert comments that would act as invisible dividers without adding a lot of space. You can make the comments show up in a different colour, too, which would help you see them. That's in the "Preferences" section, I think.<br />
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Also, you have specified heights for some of the rows. What would happen if you deleted the height of the "address" cell and changed the vertical alignment to either "bottom" or "center"? Would that close up, or give the appearance of closing up the space, do you think?<br />
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Oh, and make sure that the closing tag of each section is on the same line as the last bit of information. If there's a space between the last character and the closing tags, that could translate as "more space" or "another line" on the actual page.<br />
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Does that help?<br />
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Peg<!--content-->I really appreciate the response, thanks. I'll try your suggestions. When i mentioned stretching I was in fact referring to the vertical stretching. Something wierd though... when i view in opera, the tables dont stretch, they are just spaced far apart. Mozilla and IE both stretch. This kinda baffles me, because opera is very standard compliant (at least it was?? maybe the 7.X series is different), but mozilla and ie react the same and I know mozilla renders nearly everything correctly.<!--content-->Oh sorry, I forgot to mention the major stretching occurs when you click the directions link.<!--content-->I'd noticed that page in particular, Brian. That's why I suggested deleting the height information. I'm using IE on a Mac, *lol* which means things may or may not work as planned, depending on the whim of the browser.<br />
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You are correct, though. If you want to know how your page *really* looks, check it in Mozilla. I'm not sure about Opera. I think, like IE, it works a bit differently, but I'm not so sure how forgiving it is of ... well, not bad code, exactly, but *g* not quite up to specs, shall we say?<br />
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It could be that Opera is reading the blank lines *exactly* and IE and Mozilla are reading it as a percentage of the page or as a single or double line of space in total. I'm not sure I completely understand how it works, myself, but I figure it's kinda like the way Dreamweaver automatically translates my double-space-bar at the end of a sentence as one space, but the double-space-bar sometimes translates as an extra wide space in here.<br />
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Peg<!--content-->
<br />
I'm not sure what you mean by "stretch". From what I can see, the width doesn't change, but the height does. As it should.<br />
<br />
But how to get that lengthening down to a minimum... Hmmm.... I took a look at the code you have and I noticed a fair bit of white space on the pages. Some browsers will translate that into actual space, so maybe that's the problem. <br />
<br />
You're using Dreamweaver, right? Rather than separate the sections with blank lines, you could insert comments that would act as invisible dividers without adding a lot of space. You can make the comments show up in a different colour, too, which would help you see them. That's in the "Preferences" section, I think.<br />
<br />
Also, you have specified heights for some of the rows. What would happen if you deleted the height of the "address" cell and changed the vertical alignment to either "bottom" or "center"? Would that close up, or give the appearance of closing up the space, do you think?<br />
<br />
Oh, and make sure that the closing tag of each section is on the same line as the last bit of information. If there's a space between the last character and the closing tags, that could translate as "more space" or "another line" on the actual page.<br />
<br />
Does that help?<br />
<br />
Peg<!--content-->I really appreciate the response, thanks. I'll try your suggestions. When i mentioned stretching I was in fact referring to the vertical stretching. Something wierd though... when i view in opera, the tables dont stretch, they are just spaced far apart. Mozilla and IE both stretch. This kinda baffles me, because opera is very standard compliant (at least it was?? maybe the 7.X series is different), but mozilla and ie react the same and I know mozilla renders nearly everything correctly.<!--content-->Oh sorry, I forgot to mention the major stretching occurs when you click the directions link.<!--content-->I'd noticed that page in particular, Brian. That's why I suggested deleting the height information. I'm using IE on a Mac, *lol* which means things may or may not work as planned, depending on the whim of the browser.<br />
<br />
You are correct, though. If you want to know how your page *really* looks, check it in Mozilla. I'm not sure about Opera. I think, like IE, it works a bit differently, but I'm not so sure how forgiving it is of ... well, not bad code, exactly, but *g* not quite up to specs, shall we say?<br />
<br />
It could be that Opera is reading the blank lines *exactly* and IE and Mozilla are reading it as a percentage of the page or as a single or double line of space in total. I'm not sure I completely understand how it works, myself, but I figure it's kinda like the way Dreamweaver automatically translates my double-space-bar at the end of a sentence as one space, but the double-space-bar sometimes translates as an extra wide space in here.<br />
<br />
Peg<!--content-->