Genii Weblog

Overlapping columns - how to do it on web?

Fri 24 Jun 2005, 12:00 AM



by Ben Langhinrichs
I don't know whether this is an HTML question or a CSS , but my Linda Discovers CoexEdit story demonstrates the problem if I color the cells at all.  Here is a bit of the table in Notes:
Inline GIF image

and here is the same table (different colors, but otherwise structured the same) on the web:

Inline GIF image

So, why don't the text parts overlap on the web the way they do in Notes?  How can I get that same flow in HTML  This just looks like two columns instead of staggered columns the way I intended.  (To be clear, I created three columns and merged the left two then right two and so on.  In Notes it looks great, but not on the web)

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


330.1. Stan Rogers (06/23/2005 10:11 PM)

Domino is only serving two <td>s per row. In order to get the overlap, the wider of the two cells should have colspan="2" as an attribute. That they have. The missing element is a trick I find I have to use with "fit with margins" tables in Notes from time to time as well: you need at least one row that has a separate cell for every column -- it's the only way the renderer can pick up on the relative widths of the intended three columns.


330.2. Ben Langhinrichs (06/24/2005 07:42 AM)

Stan - Works great. After that, I added an extra column with a fixed size graphic and made the columns proportional, and it is starting to look pretty good. There is quite a bit of white space, which some like and some don't, but I'm happier than before. What do you think?


330.3. Stan Rogers (06/24/2005 08:25 AM)

Much better, but then I like white space. I want more ... but I think that's as far as a self-taught, late-to-the-game code monkey can take you. Time to show it to a few normal folk for feedback. Oddly enough, people who have a feel for how things should look often have a better idea of how things should look than do people who know how to make it look that way.