How to layout a page - beginners

[PGO01]

I'm new to asp .net programming and I am having difficulty with the layout of my pages.

I want a simple input data page with things like Name/DOB/Gender/Hobbies/Etc. What's the best way to lay this out on the page? Using floating divs or a table or both or a different way?

I tried a simple 2 column table but couldn't get the columns width to work correctly, here's what I had:

Stylesheet

.DataInputTable
{
    width: 100%;
}

.DataInputTable td:first-child
{
    width: 20%;
}

HTML

<div>
    <table class="DataInputTable">
        <tr>
            <td>a</td>
            <td>b</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>c</td>
            <td>d</td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</div>

Both columns end up the same width... what am I doing wrong?

PS. I am using Firefox.

 

[kss444]

Looks right to me. Put a border="2" on the table and you will see that the first td is 20% and the second is 80% together they equal the tables 100%.

How you layout your page is upto you, everyone has there own way and or their opinions of the proper way.

If I had to create a web app or web site from scratch I would use .NET's themes and CSS to position everything.
This way you can have multiple themes to give your site differnt looks, colors ect...

Ordinary Programmer

 

[jbenson001]

I'm no guru with CSS but your td class defnintion is incorrect. The ":first-child" does nothing, so each td element is 20%

 

[jmeckley]

i believe too, you need to navigate through the tr tag

.DataInputTable tr td:first-child

that said, this is purely an html/css issue. i would ask the gurus in forum215.

Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.

faq855-7190
faq732-7259

 

[PGO01]

Thanks all.

I've decided to look at the dynamic data and dynamic data entities in .Net 3.5.

Regarding the CSS issue, the border="2" didn't seem to do anything, tried border="1" also. Weird.

Tried tr td:first-child but still nothing. Very strange I think I will take your advice and check out the other forum.

Regards,
Pete

PS. Jason I tried out your database management implementation in your sig. and I have to admit it's pretty damn good! If I weren't going down the dynamic route I would definitely use it.

 

[jmeckley]

thanks Pete. I rarely work with raw ado.net anymore. it's all ORM frameworks now. 99% of the time it's NHibernate. the other 1% of the time is LLBL.

i got the idea for the connection management from NHibernate where session per view is the preferred model for data access for the web.

Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.

faq855-7190
faq732-7259