[WEB4LIB] Re: specifying the width, in pixels, of a line of text

[Kevin W Bishop]

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Justin Rounds
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 2:59 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: specifying the width, in pixels, of a line of
text

It depends on which version of IE you're referring to -- IE5's 
implementation of the box model was completely wrong, but IE6 seems to 
be ok (at least I haven't had any width-related problems yet).

The box model specifies width as the width of the _content_ inside the 
box, and does not refer to the box itself, e.g. a <div 
style="width:200px;margin:10px;padding:10px"> would take up a 220px-wide

space on the page, *not* 200px. IE5 treats the width as being the width 
of the box itself, so in the previous example the div would take up a 
200px-wide space on the page, *not* 220px.

I know this is certainly the case with divs, but the rules may be 
different for other block-level elements.

There are hacks to workarounds this, however. Look here for more 
information:

http://www.info.com.ph/~etan/w3pantheon/style/abmh.html

You can read more about the box model here:

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/box.html
____________________________


If you don't declare a doctype, IE6 will go into "quirks mode"
(technical term) and continue to display the wrong box model behavior.  

A fuller explanation, including box model hacks, can be found here:
http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/box-model.html


To the original question: have you tried specifying the width of a
containing div for the images (left and right) and contained text?
Actually, you probably want to define the min-width but, again, IE
doesn't cooperate with us here.  

Hope this helps.
-kb

___________________________
Kevin W. Bishop > bishopk at rpi.edu
Communication & Collaboration Technologies
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute > http://www.rpi.edu/
  RPInfo: http://www.rpi.edu/rpinfo/