A Wikidot Page Explained

Posted by gerdami on 15 Feb 2008 19:36, last edited by scottplan on 07 Mar 2012 18:29

Tags: css page themes

rating: +22+x

Not really a HowTo, but gerdami found this post by scottplan interesting and copypasta here

While I'm patiently waiting for my css savior to come along and respond to my posts, I'm slowly figuring some of this out.

For instance, I've learned that many web designers don't have much nice to say about Internet Explorer.

I've also started to understand the geometry and logical puzzles of wikidot's page layout. It's a series of nested boxes, kind of like this:

container

  • In css, wikidot already sets a minimum width for this box (600px),
  • but it seems neither IE nor Firefox respect this universal min-width (?)

header

  • I've set min-width to 750 here, which means the search field no longer collides with the site-title.
  • On other wikis, this width would vary depending on the length of the title.
  • For me, this seems to be a fix with no downsides.

content-wrap

  • In the screen shot, the page-content elements have skipped down below the sidebar, because (sidebar + non-breaking page-content elements) are wider than the window.
  • I want these wide elements to simply extend beyond the window's right edge.
  • So I've set the min-width for this box at 950px.

sidebar

  • If this chart were accurate, then I still don't see how this bug could happen. When page-content jumps, it's to the bottom edge of the sidebar's content. With text in page-content, I've noticed there's a slight jog to the left as it wraps around the bottom of the sidebar. Is this where the fix lies?

main-content

  • But this box contains more than just page-content.
  • By setting content-wrap's min-width at 950, all the other frames (breadcrumbs, all the buttons, and action items) also fill 100% of the main-content width, so now they also run off the edge of narrower windows — not good.

page-title

breadcrumbs

page-content

  • This is the frame I'm most focused on. When it has wide elements and is viewed in a narrow window, how to keep those elements from jumping below the sidebar's content?
  • If (sidebar + non-breaking elements) are wider than 950px, then this box will still skip to the bottom of the sidebar.

page-info

page-options buttons

  • gotta see all those buttons

action item

  • This is where all those wiki-features appear — the editor, the history list, tags, etc.
  • For me, these features always appear beneath the sidebar. Maybe it's the same bug, just not as obvious?
  • By setting a min-width for content-wrap, these features also extend off the window's right edge — not good.

footer ("Hosted by Wikidot.com", etc.)

So does anyone have a straightforward fix? Or should I just blame Microsoft and live with it?

scottplanscottplan. Please visit his/her userPage.

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