Design view of CSS layout is innacurate

Question

Hello all -
I'm beginning to redraft my company's hompage using a full
CSS layout instead of our current nested table layout. Since I need
to ensure that other staff members can edit pages freely - and I'm
the only person comfortable doing straight code - it's important
that the design view is as accurate as possible.
When editing in Dreamweaver 8, my three column layout (a left
table of contents, a center content column, and an additional
content right column) breaks so that the table of contents
dissapears. Some people have spoken with have suggested that my
problem might be the negative margins I'm using to position the
floated columns that form the meat of the page.
You can view the page here:
http://www.southernenvironment.org/test/home_redraft.html
The CSS is here:
http://www.southernenvironment.org/test/style_redraft.css
In addition, the header navbar also appears strangely. In
Design View, two word titles (ie. "Our Programs") break on to two
separate lines, instead of staying in one line as they do in
browsers I've tested.
The frustrating thing about this is that my design seems to
work in most browsers - but without a somewhat accurate
representation in Dreamweaver, I won't be able to sell the idea of
a standards-based revamp to other staff here.
Any ideas?
Matt

Answer 1

Your CSS is not tight enough to get accurate columns. You
shouldn't try to
define the columns with the body tag. For a purely CSS site,
you really find
out why the code is called 'cascading' styles. They cascade
all right. We've
just finished wrestling with a similar re-design with CSS and
the order of
how tags and files come into play is very important.
We have defined the body tag with background color, 0 margins
and font
family, color and size only. Header/footer and columns are
defined by ID.
The three "content" columns are within a page container,
header and footer
outside the page container. How these elements are placed is
important, as
they cascade.
We use 3 linked main css files, 1) Page Layout (3 or 4
different options) 2)
Page presentation (all text styles) 3) Page menu styles (only
menu styles).
They are in that order, as the only body tag is in Page
Layout.
If a page has a watermarked background we import the code
just for the
watermark.
This is not true for the home page, but all other pages in
the site.
http://www.nic.bc.ca/index.asp
I hope this helps.
Marianne
"homestar79" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
> Hello all -
>
> I'm beginning to redraft my company's hompage using a
full CSS layout
> instead
> of our current nested table layout. Since I need to
ensure that other
> staff
> members can edit pages freely - and I'm the only person
comfortable doing
> straight code - it's important that the design view is
as accurate as
> possible.
>
> When editing in Dreamweaver 8, my three column layout (a
left table of
> contents, a center content column, and an additional
content right column)
> breaks so that the table of contents dissapears. Some
people have spoken
> with
> have suggested that my problem might be the negative
margins I'm using to
> position the floated columns that form the meat of the
page.
>
> You can view the page here:
>
>
http://www.southernenvironment.org/test/home_redraft.html
>
> The CSS is here:
>
>
http://www.southernenvironment.org/test/style_redraft.css
>
> In addition, the header navbar also appears strangely.
In Design View,
> two
> word titles (ie. "Our Programs") break on to two
separate lines, instead
> of
> staying in one line as they do in browsers I've tested.
>
> The frustrating thing about this is that my design seems
to work in most
> browsers - but without a somewhat accurate
representation in Dreamweaver,
> I
> won't be able to sell the idea of a standards-based
revamp to other staff
> here.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Matt
>