Static website for local motocross track (circa Jun 2004)
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<h2 class="date">Original Post</h2>
<p>With a little help, I managed to work around a common rendering issue with linked list items and Internet Explorer 5 and 6 for windows. I decided to document my findings with a short tutorial on styling unordered lists (ul).</p>
<p>Special thanks go to Michael Ryznar for his assistance.</p>
<h3>The Rendering Bug</h3>
<p>Without the necessary workaround, Internet Explorer 5 and 6 will add a large amount of white-space under linked list items. In most cases, this effect is undesirable.</p>
<h3>Creating the Menu</h3>
<p>First, let us create a basic, unordered list containing hyper linked text.</p>
<pre>
&lt;ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;<br /> &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=""&gt;Item1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br /> &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=""&gt;Item2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;/ul&gt;
</pre>
<p>For the end product, we want to create a simple menu of two clickable blocks without any white space in between. So now, we will write a the corresponding CSS.</p>
<p>The first step is to get rid of the bullets in the unordered list (ul).</p>
<pre>
ul {
list-style: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 1px solid #555;
}
</pre>
<p>The list style property lets you customize the appearance of bullets. By declaring no values in this property, the display of bullets are eliminated. By giving margin-left a value of zero (for ie browsers) and padding-left a
value of zero (for Gecko browsers), we eliminate the default indent of list
items (li) in the unordered list.</p>
<p>In addition, I added a dark grey border for styling.</p>
<p>Next, we want to style the list items themselves.</p>
<pre>
li {
display: inline;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
</pre>
<p>By setting the display property to the value of inline, we work around a rendering issue in the windows version of Internet Explorer 5 and 6. In addition, the margin and padding are set to zero so that extra whitespace is not created between items.</p>
<p>Next, we want to make the links into solid boxes with the option of changing color on hover.</p>
<pre>
li a { /*/*/
display: block;
margin: 0;
padding: 3px;
text-decoration: none;
background: #ddd;
/* */}
</pre>
<p>For linked elements we will be changing the display property to a value of block. Hyperlinks are normally defined as an inline element, but to make the element into a solid box, we need it to occupy an entire line. This is the purpose of display: block.</p>
<p>The margin is set to zero in order to eliminate whitespace between elements. I added 3 pixels of padding to give each element 3 pixels of spacing along the inside edge.</p>
<p>In addition, a background color was added for styling.</p>
<p>The most confusing elements in this section are the slashes and asterisks. /* This is how text is commented out in CSS. */ The particular pattern of slashes and asterisks prevents Netscape Navigator 4 from rendering this CSS. The browser has been prone to crashing when trying to render this element as a block.</p>
<h3>The Workaround</h3>
<p>To elaborate on the Internet Explorer workaround, we first need to set the display of the list items as inline. Then, the hyper link is set to display as a solid box through display: block. This method ensures that no extra whitespace displays in between the list items.</p>
<p>I had to research this workaround for a new project I am working on. I will be working with Northland College on web accessibility. I don't want to give away too many details about this project, but I will share the code used to produce one of the menus in the redevelopment. Hopefully this will show a real-world context of this workaround.</p>
<h3>XHTML required for a menu:</h3>
<pre>
&lt;ul&gt;<br />&lt;ul&gt;<br />&lt;div class="qlink-title"&gt;<br /><br />&lt;h3&gt;&lt;span&gt;Quick Links &raquo;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;<br /><br />&lt;ul class="quicklinks"&gt;<br /><br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;About Northland&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;Financial Aid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;Contact NC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;Check Email&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;Site Map&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;Northland Store Online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;Transcript Request&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;Online Application&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br />&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="#"&gt;The Bridge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;<br /><br />&lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;/div&gt;<br />&lt;/ul&gt;<br />&lt;/ul&gt;
</pre>
<h3>CSS required for a menu:</h3>
<pre>
div.qlink-title ul.quicklinks {
list-style: none;
margin-top: 3px;
margin-left: 5px;
margin-bottom: 0px;
margin-right: 5px;
padding-top: 2px;
padding-left: 0px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
padding-right: 0px;
font-family: "Verdana";
font-size: 11px;
font-weight: normal;
color: #444422;
background-color: #fff;
border: 1px solid #aaaa88;
}
div.linklist ul.quicklinks li {
display: inline;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
}
div.linklist ul.quicklinks a {
/*/*/display: block;
margin: 0px;
padding: 2px;
height: 14px;
text-decoration: none;
color: #444422;
background-color: #f5f3ea;
border-left: 2px solid #fff;
border-bottom: 2px solid #fff;
border-right: 2px solid #fff; /* */
}
div.linklist ul.quicklinks a:hover {
text-decoration: none;
color: #444422;
background-color: #DEDACA;
}
</pre>
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<h2>Monthly Archives</h2>
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<li><a href="http://alazanto.org/weblog/2004_02.php">February 2004 (2)</a></li>
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<h1><span>More Info</span></h1>
<p>When writing new comments, please keep in mind that I no longer support embedded HTML or textile formatting. As always, please be curtious or I might confuse your words with spam.</p>
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<p>Copyleft 2004 Kevin Davis. All material is free to use - especially, when considering the limitation of text on a screen.</p>
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