Keeping Floats from Wrapping

[Travis Newbury]

Ah, marines are just soldiers with too much salt in their ears.

Marine Corps pilots are dickless idiots.

 

[dorayme]

dorayme said many wise, deep and beautiful things...

....

I feel the same way about the background - if it's just a background
image with no bigger meaning, it has to be really subtle. If that's not
possible, give it the room you think it deserves and then fade it to
back or something. Two examples:
1) http://atheino.googlepages.com/index_en.html (my homepage)
2) http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/ (css/edge)
You decide which one is which.

You have illustrated well two different ways to use background images so
that they do not interfere with the text.

Your homepage has a lovely pic and nice how you have prepared it to fade
off as it gets closer to text. Most important of all, it does not
interfere with the text.

Number 2 charts a more dangerous course. It has one idea right (the one
you are meaning to point out), namely to be subtle with the background
image.

But it falls down a bit on the darkish purply background to black text.
It is usually a bit more difficult to make a pic that sits behind
otherwise easily readable text without undue distraction. It fails in
the 'otherwise easily readable text' department.

It is difficult to know how he might have prepared the pic to show with
a white background, it is possible but probably more work. Notice that
by having the astronaut whitish (as astronauts tend to be... but this
will change (I am due to go up on a mission soon and I will be in black
dots and pink stripes with Roger Rabbit icons all over my suit), it adds
to the legibility of the text rather than detract. But then this is
because of the not wholly happy decision to have the purple in the first
place. If one bangs one's head on a wall, it is very nice when one
stops. But one can get that pain-free experience without banging one's
head on the wall in the first place.

 

[dorayme]

The width is fixed because I am anal and
want my boxes to appear side by side -- all three of them. The page isn't
really that wide at 980px so unless you're using a small window you may have
to scroll. I hear what you're saying, but the website is not intended for
people who normally use multiple windows and almost everyone these days has
a full screen min of 1024. Or am I out in left field? The idea of allowing
those boxes (and the three images at the top) to wrap is one that doesn't
feel right to me -- as I said, it may be a personality fault for me -- but I
understand what you're saying. I will think about that some more.

OK, I do understand that sometimes it feels wrong to have something wrap
and you would be right to take steps to avoid it. But these things all
depend on how you are designing and what your content is.

I have a main screen that is 1600 px wide but do not always find it
convenient to have a browser open so wide or even as wide as 1000px.
Quite often 800 to 900 is convenient. I have lots of other things open
too. Perhaps I am in a minority but I would bet this minority was a
sizeable absolute number, in other words, perhaps not to be ignored.

By the way, I was not suggesting you let the top row elements of your
page wrap. That would be bad. It was the informational boxes I meant.

Here is an argument for you to consider. Since you think most people
have browser windows bigger than about 1000px, you would have no concern
that the informational boxes would wrap. So your concern must be for
those who have narrow browsers. Now, consider the point I put to you
before: if these people have narrow browsers, they cannot see the boxes
all on a line anyway because they are out of view. So for these fewer
people (if they be fewer) perhaps it is better for them to be spared the
inconvenience of horizontal scrolling.

If you remove some of your width constraints, you will see how your text
in your boxes (not as much the one with the table in it) would naturally
wrap thus allowing the box itself to be narrower under browser width
pressure. In other words, there would be even less pressure for the
boxes themselves to wrap.

Just some thoughts for you.

 

[Phonedude]

OK, I do understand that sometimes it feels wrong to have something wrap
and you would be right to take steps to avoid it. But these things all
depend on how you are designing and what your content is.

I have a main screen that is 1600 px wide but do not always find it
convenient to have a browser open so wide or even as wide as 1000px.
Quite often 800 to 900 is convenient. I have lots of other things open
too. Perhaps I am in a minority but I would bet this minority was a
sizeable absolute number, in other words, perhaps not to be ignored.

By the way, I was not suggesting you let the top row elements of your
page wrap. That would be bad. It was the informational boxes I meant.

Here is an argument for you to consider. Since you think most people
have browser windows bigger than about 1000px, you would have no concern
that the informational boxes would wrap. So your concern must be for
those who have narrow browsers. Now, consider the point I put to you
before: if these people have narrow browsers, they cannot see the boxes
all on a line anyway because they are out of view. So for these fewer
people (if they be fewer) perhaps it is better for them to be spared the
inconvenience of horizontal scrolling.

If you remove some of your width constraints, you will see how your text
in your boxes (not as much the one with the table in it) would naturally
wrap thus allowing the box itself to be narrower under browser width
pressure. In other words, there would be even less pressure for the
boxes themselves to wrap.

Just some thoughts for you.

Thanks again for the input. Here's a question though: How do I prevent my
top line items from wrapping without doing what I did to the entire page?
It seems to me that if the top doesn't wrap then none of the rest of the
page will either.

As to allowing the content boxes more flexibility I think you're right.
That's my next thing to investigate. The background will require more
thought.

Thanks,

Larry

 

[dorayme]

Just some thoughts for you.

[/QUOTE]

Thanks again for the input. Here's a question though: How do I prevent my
top line items from wrapping without doing what I did to the entire page?
It seems to me that if the top doesn't wrap then none of the rest of the
page will either.

One way is to set a min-width to a particular element that contains the
top row images. If the element is not allowed to go under the width that
would trigger the natural wrap, then the wrap will not happen. Scroll
bars will come up.

As for your particular situation, I recall your top row consisting of
three images. You could make them one image and centre it.

As to allowing the content boxes more flexibility I think you're right.
That's my next thing to investigate. The background will require more
thought.

If I get time, I will take another look.

(btw. Don't get upset by the two oafs who posted their insults. There
would be a whole lot of folk here totally ashamed of them, the
mitigating factor being that they are ignorant vacuous trolls who know
no better.)

 

[Phonedude]

Just some thoughts for you.

Thanks again for the input. Here's a question though: How do I prevent
my
top line items from wrapping without doing what I did to the entire page?
It seems to me that if the top doesn't wrap then none of the rest of the
page will either.

One way is to set a min-width to a particular element that contains the
top row images. If the element is not allowed to go under the width that
would trigger the natural wrap, then the wrap will not happen. Scroll
bars will come up.

As for your particular situation, I recall your top row consisting of
three images. You could make them one image and centre it.

As to allowing the content boxes more flexibility I think you're right.
That's my next thing to investigate. The background will require more
thought.

If I get time, I will take another look.

(btw. Don't get upset by the two oafs who posted their insults. There
would be a whole lot of folk here totally ashamed of them, the
mitigating factor being that they are ignorant vacuous trolls who know
no better.)[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the thought, but insults have no effect unless they are accepted.
Besides, this group contains a body of people and every body requires
certain parts, such as a brain, a heart, and, yes, a waste disposal orifice.
This group is fully equipped.

Larry