[Web4lib] CSS float/clear problem

[VanderHart, Robert]

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions on what has been a particularly vexing issue for me.  

Several people suggested removing the clear span from the markup, which almost works, but the tabs then drop inside of the box.  

Thomas's suggestion about absolute positioning of the left bar appears to offer the best cross-browser solution, as seen here:

http://library.umassmed.edu/~rvanderh/newsite4/index3.cfm

The only issue is that the footer doesn't clear the left bar until the browser window is contracted enough to push the main content down.  I'm wondering, what's the best solution to deal with that issue?  At this point I can't say whether the center content area will have enough content to push the footer down far enough to clear the left bar.  Anyway, that seems like a haphazard fix.

Thanks again!

Bob

--
Robert J. Vander Hart
Electronic Resources Librarian | Lamar Soutter Library
University of Massachusetts Medical School 01655
508-856-3290 | Robert.VanderHart at umassmed.edu
http://library.umassmed.edu | LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertvanderhart


-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Dowling [mailto:tdowling at ohiolink.edu] 
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 10:06 AM
To: VanderHart, Robert
Cc: 'web4lib at webjunction.org'
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] CSS float/clear problem

On 10/28/2010 04:50 PM, VanderHart, Robert wrote:
> I should mention that this problem occurs in Firefox and Chrome but not in IE.
> 

That usually means the markup and/or CSS is broken, but in a way that
happens to be bug-compatible with IE.

Not to second-guess your design, but would things work more easily by
making the list items display:inline instead of floating them, or by
making the sidebar position:absolute instead of floating that?


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu