Hi all,

Recently my friend and I decided we'd ditch tables in favour of CSS to build our sites in. Our first project worked out reasonably okay and we definitely see the strength of CSS and would like to continue with it.

However, when we try to mix our design with our forum software (phpbb), we get some really odd things happening.

The forum area sometimes disappears 'under' the rest of our design, as if it's been z-indexed or something. At the worst of times, it means stuff like the reply buttons are hidden from the visitors view. Then when you reload it, everything is fine.

It seems to happen exclusively in Mozilla/Firefox. Longer threads have the problems more
often. A good example can be found at:

http://hookedgamers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13

If you don't see it at first, try again, you're certain to get it within the first 3 attempts.

Anyone know how to fix this? Been trying for well over a month now...

*desperate*

This is too common with CSS. You've got to remember that the results will change when you use a different browser and/or screen resolution. So far everything works on your website. May I ask what the advantages are of using CSS vs. using tables?

That's what I'm beginning to ask myself as well.

On that page it isn't that obvious but there are other pages within the site that we've found CSS to be very helpful on.

This problem is also appearing on our second site that's been built in CSS and also only in the forum, in FireFox.

I haven't studied CSS extensivley, in fact I just know the basics and use a tutorial for reference when I need it. So far I don't see how CSS can be relied upon. It seems like everything shifts around too much depending on what is used (browserwise). I'm sticking with tables as they go where you put them-period. Use whatever browser you want, the tables will appear and will do so correctly.

Hope this helps.

maybe theres more glitches in firefox then people realise...

The problem if i remember lies with how firefox renders the page. If i remember correctly the css is one of the last things it parses thus causing some things to be misplaced or not visable.

A refresh fixes it yes but that no good the first time round.

Take some comfort in the fact that most users will be browsing with IE.

Ibbo

For doubters of CSS...

CSS is for people who like to update their pages, and change the design. I use it on almost every page I do. Unfortunately it doesn't work very well on macs, or in browsers outside of IE and Netscape.

If you plan to make a site that you want to be able to edit quickly and efficiently, by all means let the CSS rip, otherwise you're probably better off using more code and time to create a more static universal page.

For doubters of CSS...

CSS is for people who like to update their pages, and change the design

Okay, that makes sense. I use HTML all the time, so editing it has become easy, or at least not impossible. I can see what you mean on it being easier to edit as all of the important information is kept in the top few tags.

Firefox is client friendly, but not in the least programmer friendly. Because of all of the browser problems, I've been starting to rely more on server side scripting. It would be so nice if all of the browsers worked the same! There are things that Javascript can do that are so much faster than waiting on a server side script to run. Oh well, I guess that's what we're in the business for. It provides means for competetion. Who can make the page prettier, faster, more flexible, generate more hits, and work with all browsers.

Originally Posted by collyer_1

For doubters of CSS...

CSS is for people who like to update their pages, and change the design. I use it on almost every page I do. Unfortunately it doesn't work very well on macs, or in browsers outside of IE and Netscape.

If you plan to make a site that you want to be able to edit quickly and efficiently, by all means let the CSS rip, otherwise you're probably better off using more code and time to create a more static universal page.

CSS is for layout and presentation not so you can update your pages easier (although this is an advantage).
Its browsers such as IE that render CSS wrong although every browser has their bugs.

If you plan on making a standards compliant page then you should use CSS. If you dont really care about accesibility then use tables and deprected tags.

Table layouts have lots of problems with them. First of all, from an accessibility standpoint, they cause a complete and utter mess. Second, search engines don't seem to respond to table layouts as well as table-less layouts. Third, it's much easier to manage the code of a table-less layout. The HTML in table layouts can get pretty messy at times, especially if you don't indent things in some kind of standard way. I find that, since I decided to ditch table layouts and go with CSS-based layouts, making webpages is much less of a headache. You still have to deal with Internet Explorer's incompetence, but there are plenty of CSS hacks available to get that stuff to work (don't forget the IE comment rules). Web design is a breeze if you are in a situation where it's safe to ignore Internet Explorer completely, but let's stick to reality for now.

conditional comments is the best way to work with IE as hacks arent great for validation...