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Agent widgets and fonts break my layout

Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:39 am
by Heavy
Hello there!
Look at my site with some different browsers:
http://nordicbionews.com/?viewToday=0

It opens in "today mode" by default, which means that only today's news are shown, and that the page refreshes every five minutes.

But if you follow the link, it should be in "archive mode" (although it doesn't say so anywhere). There are two select boxes above the news listings. These widgets are drawn differently depending on browser and whatever circumstance. I have tested it on linux with mozilla-firefox and IE 6.0 for win98 through wine, and Konqueror for KDE 3.3.0.

It looks OK in most browsers but not in Konqueror. And as konqueror is just about the worst browser I know of, I don't bother very much. (I mean, it doesn't obey requests for pixel font sizes, ie the css syntax: "11px;". And it's javascript support is just about useless when trying to automate some form elements on a page)

Browsers tend to parse information about sizes differently and I wonder if there is a way to access a browser's widgets size in pixels and adjust the layout thereafter. Since konqueror consequently chooses to display bigger characters than I ever requested for, it is always a problem to view a site layout nicely.

(People talk about eye candy in the context of KDE, but noone mentions that fonts display like wanting to take the whole world for a rendering area. Why is that? Are my settings wrong? If they are, it should be about accessibility customizations enabled by default that I don't appreciate. And if it was, other pixel based dimensions should scale accordingly. But I can't find any special scaling settings, so I'm settling for not bothering too much.)

In brief:
Is there any CSS based way to ask a widget to report its current size (the absolute extenst of it's rendered box) so I can adjust other pixel based positions in the page and get a pleasant display?

I guess javascript could do the trick, but I think it is too much to demand from a web designer to have to program certain workarounds to be able to make a page display correctly in konqueror, which will remain a non popular browser as long as these issues exist.

Thanks.
/Jonas

Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:41 am
by Heavy
I can say one thing I actually LIKE very much about konqueror. That is the fact that it obeys theming as far as form widgets go. It's very nice, and I like that more than the look of a mozilla pushbutton or select box. But as I said, it breaks layouts...

Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:44 pm
by no_memories
I think you are referring to font scaling. And yes, there is a method to scale fonts according to various browsers.

sizematters

This is done in the confines of CSS without java or other programming languages. I'm not to sure about how Konqueror would handle such a twist in the CSS; I've personally never used or seen it.

Personally, I design my websites to xhtml 1.1 standards (some xhtml 1.0 trans for versatility), make sure they validate, try and make the best well rounded CSS I can, and don't pull my hair out over every browser tweak that would need to made. It's the browsers that need to make the correction by following the W3C's recommendations on how to handle markup and CSS properly. Linux users have tons of options besides Konqueror (like Mozilla) and by adding MS core Internet fonts, you're sure to have a pleasurable Internet experience with a Linux box.

By giving into the confines of a given browser, you're basically accepting its inadequacy. Don't do it and write the developers of the browser your concerns pointing out specific standards that can easily be found on the W3C website.

But as with all things, Apple had to pick Konqueror as its engine to run Safari (crypy, when will this stupid browser competition end?). I don't understand why the hell OS developers want their browsers to be proprietary? If they would just follow the standards movement, the browser would spread by its own power of accuracy.

Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:06 pm
by Heavy
This reply is kind of an *oops*...
I found I had a minimum font size set in konqueror... Changed it. but it doesn't solve all problems of course.

I agree with you about how to design a website. I do the least CSS magic possible, use simple layout (never liked image based designs) and test it with mozilla and IE. If both works, I am just about satisified.

Then I think it is a fundamental requirement for being able to call a browser a good one that it handles at least some layout control javascript. Both IE and mozilla are good at this as far as I have experienced, but IE has it's own event system for tracking a mouse and keypresses etc.

Thank you for your suggestion. I'll look at the link.

/Jonas