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HTML's making me cry
pogo mudder
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
hey, i'm scripting a website on HTML atm and i've got my background all set out to layer the text on top, but unfortunately the background image has tiled so it looks a bit weird when you scroll down/maximise. I've checked the net and i can't find much of an answer on this. Does anyone know of the exact command to stop the background tiling, and exactly where to place it in the script?
thanks
thanks
what a work of art is man, and the most boring choice you can make
pogo mudder on
0
Posts
Either use CSS or make a massive image/tileable image
<style type="text/css">
body {
background-image: url(/path/to/image.jpg); // loads the image
background-repeat: no-repeat; // tells it not to repeat itself
background-position: top left; // puts the image in the top-left corner (adjust to fit your needs)
}
</style>
wasted pixels, i looked at the css functions but was a bit apprehensive of using them. If i put in that script will i have to follow suit with scripting in css for the rest of the page?
Or, you know, save some space:
body { background: #fff url('../images/lolwut.gif') no-repeat top left; }edit: Pogo - what the hell are you even doing trying to code HTML without using CSS?
Get yourself to w3schools and bone up. The internet doesn't need any more web pages with their style entirely hard-coded in.
but yeah i've been slowly making my way through w3schools but having a bit of trouble.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
If your prof. is making you type all the style information for each tag to prove a point, then I would personally kick him in the balls. From a simplicity standpoint I can understand making you guys keep the CSS information inside the HTML page, but having to hand-type the style information per tag is stupid.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
well getting that css background tag to work in my current script ain't working so well atm so i might come back to it later, if i get desperate i'll just make sure i don't maximise the page when i show it too him >.>
thanks for the help anyway guys, you'll prolly hear from me on here again over the next 2 weeks with more html problems for you to help with
Hell, if you really wanted to do it completely in HTML you could use frames with different backgrounds and no margins, and really go old-school.
It makes me cringe to type it, but it's possible.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
CSS shortcuts are awesome if you know anything about CSS. But if you don't know anything about CSS, it's probably a good idea to be able to actually figure out what the hell the code is doing. Thanks for being condescending, though!
Second, your instructor is a moron. Forcing you to do a project the wrong way is idiotic. Examining a few simple examples of 90's era code, and the problems that stemmed from that, should suffice.
Third, from what I can tell, there's no HTML-only way to control background image tiling, even among the deprecated attributes.
Fourth, kick your instructor in the nuts. Seriously. He was probably some douche who thought that using Microsoft FrontPage to create his Geocities-hosted site made him a badass back in the day.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Uhh, angelfire is way better geez...
Does your page have animated gif sparkels and flames?
That's why I included a link to w3schools with the tutorials right there. 5 minutes of reading up and you can get up to speed.
You missed the selector off your example, so I was trying to provide something that would actually work.
Things aren't done like that in the real world. Even bad web designers use CSS. Well, I say use CSS, the WYSIWYG software they use as a crutch fudges the CSS for them. There is no justifiable reason to teach students pure HTML any more, it only serves to teach them bad habits.
vBulletin stripped part of my post, should be fixed now.
You were still a douche about it.
Now I'm doing contract work again and the places I get called into are usually tables + attributes + css and div tags like you would not believe, just total vomit.
You'd be surprised how many businesses are still profitable (even web only retailers) with asstastic web presences.
Is it the place to start your HTML education? No, I don't think so, but it is somewhat useful if you're ever doing maintenance. Hopefully soon it's going to be about as useful as being the best Conestoga wagon wheel repair man in town.
yeah not so much, this is the first scripting (or for nightslyrs' benefit 'documenting') i've ever had to do so i'm still learning as i go along. to give this thread some closure, i managed to get the background to sit in a fixed position on the page as an image using this script:
<table style="position:absolute; top:10px; left:200px" width="1200"><img style="position:absolute; top:10px; left:130px" src="background.png"></table>
it might not be the easiest way to go about it but its working out okay, thanks for the advice anyway.
I, uh, wow. Any course where that is the "right" way to go about something really isn't worth taking.
I'm not even going to start with how semantically incorrect that is, but seriously, just use wasted pixel's code in your <head>.
<style type="text/css"> body { background-image: url('background.png'); background-repeat: no-repeat; // tells it not to repeat itself background-position: top left; // top right, top center, center left, center center, center right, bottom left, bottom center, bottom right background-attachment: fixed; } </style>Or you could position it using pixels
Or even percent
Just please don't use that abomination you posted.
Tell your professor to brush up on his HTML, because 4.01 transitional may not work in the next few years depending on if your browser is a tiny god or not.
Are you talking one page/site using all of those in conjunction. Or are you bitching about each one separate?
Because there are very few ways to escape divs and CSS.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I hope for your sake you're in high school or junior high, because anyone using this method of teaching at a college level has no business in academia. Someone else said it best - this kind of thinking could be useful for showing the problems stemming from the old way, but as an actual assignment? No.
Seriously. I dropped out of college over assignments like this.
All at once, it's a soup.
And I'm talking about shit like:
...
<td>
<div class="text3bb4" style="font-weight: bold;">Login</div>
<div class="text3bb5"><font color="red">Shopping Cart</font></div>
</td>
...
But you know, a gazillion lines like that.
Then we agree -- I would slap the shit out of someone who wrote a page like that.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Ahahahahah hoooly shit.
This isn't a University/College level course is it? Please say no.
I've seen worse. Mostly colleges that tack on a comp-sci degree to get more admissions because of the DotCom era and never updated it.
OK, so I'm a relative newbie to CSS and "modern" web design practices so forgive me for this...but what exactly is wrong with the above quoted markup? Is it just that the styling is inline with the HTML or are some of the CSS properties to be avoided for some reason?
There are several things wrong with it, a few of them are:
Inline CSS styles (bloats file size, CSS can't be cached, inefficient coding, complicates future editing, impacts accessibility)
Using a table for anything other than a table of information (non-semantic, impacts accessibility)
Placing a background image inside the HTML rather than linking it via CSS (If the CSS fails or isn't available, layup breaks hard. Style is not separated from content, unnecessary data is downloaded for users who don't require it)
Edit: ^5 Szech.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
For example you have 6 header tags. They are, essentially, identical because you can make one look like another using styles. Semantically, however, you will have 1 h1 element on the page, each h2 element will describe it's parent h1, each h3 element will describe it's h2 parent, etc. It makes your unstylized HTML logical and outlined, like a text book.
Likewise the paragraph tag, <p> describes paragraphs. Each <p> element should generally be in sentence form. When explaining it to people I sometimes say <p> is your narrative text. <p> is not the correct tag to use for site controls, for example.
The actual library of HTML elements is surprisingly large but it has been pared down in recent years as elements that only deal in style, like <b> (bold) <br /> (line break) and <hr /> (horizontal rule) are being replaced by CSS.
Before CSS was (near) uniformly compliant in web browsers tables were used for page layouts. Part of this was necessity as CSS was awful in early browsers, part of this was a demand by ex-print designers to work within a grid. Throw in WYSIWYG editors, a growing demand for a more graphical web, and early misgivings about CSS and even now you'll see lots of sites that use tables for layout.
A table should really just be a data table. You know, columns, rows, words, numbers? If you want to make the table stylish you'd use CSS, which can put background images, define widths, and with alternating class names on the row you can do the zebra effect to make it easier to read. There shouldn't be anything with the table that isn't data in a table. I don't really like doing the alternating class names thing either because it feels so contrived. Plus it seems every time I run into a table like that it's within a web application where I am already using many javascript controls so might as well do the zebra thing while it's at it.
You can flub it, sometimes, though. HTML is flexible. I have been known to put page controls in the last column of a table. I have also used <br /> tags in pullout quotes.
The important part about HTML is with every move are you better describing the document? Inline style describes the layout and formatting, not the document. Background images describe the formatting, not the document. In general, style belongs in the head and ideally it is external from the document. External style sheets cache, reducing the load on the user and your server.
I disagree with the OP's professor's method of teaching HTML. You shouldn't start with table layout exactly because it is easier to conceptualize, the tools are easier to work with, it makes new web designers think in terms of print, which the web is not, and it makes content the enemy of design.
To be well rounded I think it's a good idea to go back and look at how to deal with table layouts once you have an understanding of best practices and why they are the best practices. I get a lot more contracts for maintenance than I do for original design, so to me, at least, being able to look my hated enemy in the eye has been helpful.