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Layers With Simple HTML: The Limits

What We Can't Do.

There's a number of different things we can't do with Simple HTML. The number one thing is Partial Overlaps of layers

Just like HTML tags themselves, tables and their cells have to be completely inside or completely outside of other cells and tables. Nested cells can be right up against the border of a table but they can't go over.

It might be possible to line up the content of the cells so that the seam between the content of each is smooth and invisible. However this does take some work. And be sure to test it out on multiple browsers.

A bug to watch for: Netscape 4.x has a bug in how it displays TABLE cells that are nested inside table cells that have background images. Netscape will begin to repeat the tiled background image of the parent cell starting at the upper left hand corner of the child cell. If you run across this bug it's easy to deal with. Simply set the background image of the child cell to a transparent GIF, like the one you can download here.

Wrapping Up

Now that we've gone over the features of each layer and looked through the issues that Simple HTML has, you might ask yourself: Could CSS-P be be any harder than this?

As a matter of fact, no. CSS-P is consistent with itself and provides the proper commands and structures to accurately describe complex layouts. However, CSS-P is not very well support yet. If you've got work to do today, and you want to spend as little time as possible and look good in as many browsers and computers as possible, these tips should help.

Article Contents:
Page 1 Introduction
Page 2 The BODY
Page 3 TABLE Alignments and Widths
Page 4 The Backgrounds
Page 5 The Limits

Page 5 The Limits



 
 

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