Is it possible to keep the <td> at a fixed width? 1

[Maim]

I'm creating a table with several cells of a fixed width, exmple...
<table>
<tr>
<td width=&quot;100&quot;>

http://WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW</td>

<td width=&quot;100&quot;>XXX</td>
<td width=&quot;100&quot;>A</td>
</tr>
</table>

What I figured would happen is the cell would take the 100 pixel instruction and apply it thereby not allowing, the

http://WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW's

to increase the width of the cell. I don't care about whatever string getting cut off inside the table as I can always add an onMouseOver event to display the string in its entirety. But I would like the table to keep it's assigned widths.

Thanks for any help

 

[swilliams]

That's not the way html works. If the string is made up of different words, then the string will wrap onto multiple lines, but if the string is all one word, like

http://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww,

then this will increase the size of the cell.

If you find out how it can be done, pleae post it here.

Simon

 

[zefir]

Make a table with fixed width for each cell in pixels.
Write text pre-formatted, <Br> for line break. No</Br> necessary.
Examples here: ----G.Hoffmann

http://www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann

 

[tanderso]

Yes, you can clip the interior of the cell.

<table><tr>
<td width=&quot;100&quot; height=&quot;60&quot;>
<div style=&quot;width:100; height:60; clip:rect(0px 0px 100px 60px); overflow:hidden;&quot;>Your Content Here</div>
</td></tr></table>

You could even do other stuff with the excess, such as wrap or scroll it, by playing with the value of the overflow property and other properties of the div.
Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com

 

[Maim]

Would this work with Netscape 4.XX? I'm hoping to support multiple browsers, if not, I'll just keep the text wrapping...

 

[zefir]

Don´t forget the poor people, using WIN95
with Internet Explorer - does probably not
understand styles (first standard 1996).
What´s the task ? You write the text, you can
put it by breaks in fixed width table cells.
If you add the tag <NoBr> ..... </NoBr>
all around the text, then the browser will
increase the cell width ONLY, if the user
selects a VERY large fontsize.
-----G.Hoffmann

 

[Maim]

Well, it's part of an e-business app so we expect min IE4 and Netscape4. What will be displayed on the grid is data entered into an MSSQL or Oracle database from a separate asp page. and what I REALLY don't want is for the grid to get excessively wide. Height isn't an issue, but I hope nobody tries to enter a long continuous string, which will increase the width of the cell...

Thanks for your suggestions guys

 

[tanderso]

Yes, it should work in NN4+. I believe it is part of CSSP. Tell me if you have any problems with it.
Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com

 

[zefir]

A basic question: The e-business is not interested in
customers with &quot;old fashioned browsers&quot;, let´s say
4 years old ?. Many people have stabilized their system
and they are not interested to update every year.
New software - new trouble.
My students have to prove, that their pages are
understood by a well defined target group of users.
Defining this group is the first step.
G.Hoffmann.

 

[tanderso]

Using website usage statistics on your site will give you an understanding of your demographics. I've found that less than 1% of my visitors on any of my websites uses browsers less than 4.0. Most people update their hardware every 2-3 years and their software every 6-12 months. If those 1% haven't done that, then it is their own fault. They will learn soon enough. If you continue to accomodate them, however, they will never upgrade and we will continually have to design for more and more contingencies. Therefore, I design for the top 90% demographic. I don't have time to accomodate everyone. And even if I did, I would not degrade my pages such that the lowest-common-denominator could view it because then my top 90% wouldn't be interested anymore.
Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com

 

[zefir]

Tanderso: I don´t think it´s a good idea for a businessmen,
to punish people with &quot;old&quot; browsers by &quot; not beeing able
to buy your products&quot;. They get angry and hate your brand then.
It depends also on the target group.
In my opinion it´s rather simple to make good pages by a
reduced instruction set of HTML.
Many professional pages horrify customers by endless downloads
for the first page, full of garbage, which nobody likes to see,
instead of offering a fast and pretty start.
And from where do you know which browser your customers
are using ? -----G.Hoffmann

 

[tanderso]

Zefir,

I punish my visitors in the same way Blockbuster Video punishes Beta VCR owners, or Camelot Music punishes 8-track owners. Technology moves on and I have no interest in servicing people who still use IE3 with the best I have to offer. Sure, I make my pages &quot;visible&quot; to them, but they don't get the benefit of it necessarily looking pretty. If they want the products, they can get them. But they have to upgrade their browser if they want a good user experience. Most brick-and-mortar stores don't put braille sales signs on all of their products, but that doesn't mean they don't want to sell to the blind. I consider technologically challenged people to be disabled. If they want to shop online, then they better get a technologically normal friend to be their &quot;eyes&quot;.

I support legacy technology back a few generations. Some of my sites are still built for the 3.0 browsers. Last year, I stopped accomodating those browsers when more than 90% of users had 4.0 browsers or better. Now I support only 4.0 and up. People have had like three years to upgrade. That is plenty of time to go out and get a FREE product upgrade if not an entirely new computer system with it preinstalled. And most people have done exactly that. The others will follow soon since all of the webpages they go to do not display correctly.

The industry has made the same change in respect to screen resolutions. It used to be that you absolutely had to accomodate 640x480 pixel resolution. Now, only 5% of people use that resolution, so 95% of businesses have upped their minimum to 800x600 where most of the population is and exceeds. This is so that those with average technology can get a good experience.

Unfortunately, the common practice in pubic policy is to dumb-down to the lowest common denominator. Fortunately, business policy can see the value of catering to the largest population and asking the lowest common denominator to smart-up to average or be left out. Capitalism is not a charity practice.

And I get info about which browser, screen size, color resolution, operating systems, search engines, etc. that my customers are using from the user logging and statistics programs that I run on all of my websites.
Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com

 

[zefir]

Tom, thanks for the details. It´s your decision,
and you are responsible for the commercial success.
But HOW do you get the informations about the user´s equipment ?
I won´t agree to someone inspecting my computer !

And by the way: I work with a graphics system, value about 25.000 US$,
STILL Win95, STILL Pagemaker 6.5, STILL Photoshop 5.0, because the
system is STABLE. The result of Updating too fast can be seen from the
contributions in the Adobe User to User Forum for PhotoShop and Pagemaker
--- terrible trouble after Updating or use of Win2000. -----G.Hoffmann

 

[iza]

&quot;I won´t agree to someone inspecting my computer !&quot; then i'm afraid you won't agree to surf anymore soon, coz more and more site just sniff your equipment - i mean, it's easy and sometimes useful (to me, mainly because of those dom incompatibilities), now it depends on WHAT &quot;they&quot; do with what they know about you ;]
but i disagree with tanderso (i mean you can't exclude low band width people - well, actually you can - but it's ... well just like selling only to rich people)
guess we can now open a new thread in the &quot;ethics and info technology&quot; forum ;-)

 

[tanderso]

Hey, I agree... don't fix what ain't broken. I'm using a Pentium 200 with Win95 and Photoshop 5 and whatever MS Office was available in 97. But I did upgrade to IE4 and then IE5 when they became available because they were more stable than previous versions, more standardized than previous versions, more functional than previous versions, and because it automatically reminded me that a new version was available and that it was free for download! Previous versions of browsers were broken in my opinion and needed to be fixed. Now they are much better and still improving.

Website access logging is standard practice and always has been. Your browser sends standard information to the server when requesting a web page such as your IP address, operating system, browser version, etc., so that it can successfully serve you the page requested. Look up the HTTP specification for more info on that. Other info such as screen resolution, plug-ins installed, color depth, etc., is readily made available to JavaScript so that it can also service requests. It is trivial to send JavaScript info back to the server. You have no choice whether or not you send this info if you intend to retrieve and render pages correctly. It is necessary. It does not hurt you for web servers to keep track of it though.

And, BTW, 25.000 US$ means $25 to us here in the US. I think you mean $25,000.
Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com

 

[zefir]

Tom: that´s the reason I use separate computers for the Internet.
And a fundamental misunderstanding: The UNITED STATES are not the WORLD.
In other countries 25.000,00 means 25 thousand . Gernot.

 

[zefir]

Tom: Your Pages look really pretty, but how comes
that browser´s &quot;BACK&quot; doesn´t allow to go back to the forum here ?
Win98, I don´t know the Netscape version. -----Gernot

 

[tanderso]

Iza, I did not suggest excluding people by bandwidth. That would be a bad business decision. However, when 90% of the internet population has broadband access, then I might make that choice.

Zefir, if you said 25.000,00 Deutch Marks I wouldn't have said anything, but using $US, you should at least be consistent. And if the US is so unimportant to you, then why bother telling us what your system cost you in $US anyway? BTW, unless you got a quad Xeon with 2G of RAM, you got ripped off.

What harm is there in a web server knowing that you use IE 5.5 on Windows 95 on an 800x600 resolution with 16 bit color? It's not as if they are recording your name and credit card number! Nothing about your particular setup is really unique to you or identifies you in any way (except maybe your IP address if it is static, but you cannot communicate with any server without giving that out). Nobody really cares what YOU individually are running, however everyone cares what percent of their visitors are using what. It allows developers to know what and how they should develop... why would you want to keep that information from them? It also allows them to selectively serve users information based on their capabilities. If I were so inclined, I might decide to make a seperate site for IE3 users than for IE4+ users, and then send them to the correct one depending on their setup. Or make a special site for WebTV users, etc. What is wrong with that?

Regarding my websites... I haven't updated my company home page in over a year and it has an archaic javascript auto-refresh. You can get BACK, but you have to hit the button twice really quick. One of these days I'll get around to updating it. But I get so many clients that PAY me to create sites for them, it seems unproductive to do it voluntarily. Some day, when I get some spare time.
Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com