[WEB4LIB] Re: sizing width of scroll windows

[Thomas Dowling]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefano Bargioni" <bargioni at usc.urbe.it>
> "Sheryl Eldridge" <sheryl at newportlibrary.org> wrote:

> >
> > Does anyone know what can be done to control the width
> > [of a SELECT element]?...

> Are you sure there is a standard way to do this? IMHO, may
> be you can control the width in some browsers, but using
> propriertary html tags. Try <font size=...>.


The standard for controlling this or any other aspect of presentation is
CSS.  Aside from the all-purpose CSS caveat ("Netscape's buggy
implementation keeps web design two years behind where it should be"), you
should also note that form elements like SELECT will be especially
problematic.  Most browsers use native widgets from the operating system
to generate buttons, drop-down lists, etc., and as the folks at
mozilla.org are discovering, users like that.  It's probable that form
elements will always be less controllable than other elements, by CSS or
by anything else the browser can throw at them.

Also, a CSS width property doesn't give the browser much advice about what
to do with content that's too wide.  IE5 supports, for example, <select
name="foo" style="width: 12em">, but it truncates any OPTIONs that go
longer than 12 ems with no way to see what it cuts off.

In general, I'd say any design that *depends* on controlling the width of
an SELECT element is doomed to failure.

[Obligatory accesibility gripe: the original post included a form that
relied entirely on JavaScript, and which is completely unusable with JS
disabled.  See checkpoint 6.3 on
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/#gl-new-technologie
s>.]


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu