My Lambeth book delivery has arrived

…and look what is in it. More details later.

[By the way - I am aware that my blog page does not work well for Internet Explorer users with small screens - the image and all the blog content drops right down to the bottom of the page. This is more likely to happen if I use 500 pixel wide images from Flickr like this one rather than the 400 pixel wide ones I usually stick to for this very reason.

If any CSS wizard can advise me what I can do to stop this happening I would be incredibly grateful. I have spent three years trying to work this out (not continually) and have been unsuccessful thus far]

Update: How does that look to everyone? [Technical aside: I have used overflow: hidden] If nothing looks out of the ordinary that is a good thing.

16 Comments »

16 Responses to “My Lambeth book delivery has arrived”

1. Sarah B says:
   

   ooooooooooh Exciting! Did the ct come in the box too???

   And where can a Dave Walker fan purchase said book???? (She says, printing out the church of the future sheets to use this weekend :0) )

   July 9th, 2008 at 11:22 am
2. Dave says:
   

   Thanks Sarah – I will do a proper post about the book later on today.

   July 9th, 2008 at 11:29 am
3. Phil Groom says:
   

   Nice one, Dave!

   Solution for the Internet Explorer problem: tell ‘em to upgrade to Firefox — an all round better browsing experience! Honestly can’t understand why anyone is still using MSIE…

   July 9th, 2008 at 11:51 am
4. John says:
   

   You could try setting overlow=’hidden’ in the relevant DIV. Other than that, you’re probably out of luck. The browser’s doing what it’s supposed to – laying the page out so that the reader can see stuff. Browsers are (intentionally) designed to let you see the information on a page at the expense of the design, if necessary.

   One other possibility is to change the order of the DIVs (using the order in which they are declared in the HTML and also possibly their z values); you might find that this allows the RH column to sit on top of the centre column if it overflows.

   But I’d also second Phil above – let them use a better browser. FF, Opera, anything.

   pax et bonum

   July 9th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
5. ferijen says:
   

   Huge congratulations on the second book! What does it feel like, having a box of those delivered?

   July 9th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
6. Steve Hearn says:
   

   Amazing what you get in a box of cereals these days….. just kidding Dave! Hope it sell’s well and you can buy that new bently you keep on about every Sunday…….

   July 9th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
7. Aaron Orear says:
   

   Perhaps not the best solution, but you could try using a percentage for the image width in the img tag. width=”50%”, for instance.

   That is, of course, if you’re writing the tag itself and not using some other image insert code.

   July 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
8. Tim says:
   

   Dave, for multi-column layouts I usually float each column using “float:left”. I declare the content for each column in turn, left to right, and they sit to the right of each other. The total width is then dictated by the width setting of each column, which you could make a percentage if you want to force the full width. I use a pixel width and design for 760 pixels wide so that it fits on an 800×600 display.

   To commenters 3 and 4 I say: a responsible Web designer designs *first* for the majority, i.e. Internet Explorer users, and *then* for other browsers, including Firefox. With 80% of the market, you can’t afford to treat IE with contempt! The good news is that IE5 usage has dropped below 1% so that version can be safely ignored, but I’d always aim for a site to display flawlessly in IE 6/7 and Firefox 2/3.

   July 9th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
9. Dave says:
   

   RE the design: have used John’s idea of overflow: hidden – thanks John. It seems to have made it better.

   Tim: Thank you – What you are suggesting is what I have tried to do in the past, but I think because I am starting with someone elses work and modifying it I have never been able to make it work – despite having spent a lot of time on it (probably days if you added it all up). The two sidebars I want fixed width, the middle column variable depending on the width of the images. In the longer run I think I need to try again to do what you are suggesting.

   Aaron – I prefer not to have % sizes of images as it does funny things in some browsers.

   This is, by the way, part of a cunning plan to be able to sent photo blog posts from my phone at Lambeth. I could use the small size Flickr pictures (as in my June 26 post), but it seems a shame to have them that small.

   Ferijen – thank you. It was rather exciting. I am a fortunate person.

   July 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
10. PK says:
    

    Looks very cool indeed. Nice one Dave.

    Out of interest though does every copy come attached with a cat bookmark or is that just the first few?

    July 9th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
11. Phil Groom says:
    

    To Tim I say: foobar! A responsible web designer will do everything in his or her power to wean people off MSIE. It’s a question of education, really: MSIE simply isn’t standards compliant. Why should anyone have to spend hours finding workarounds for Microsoft’s bugs? I’ll resist the temptation to say more on this topic…

    Dave: it looks fine in Safari

    July 9th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
12. Anne says:
    

    Well, I am on the same side of the Pond as you–in Paris, where I am actually working for the next few days. Won’t even get a glimpse of England. Congratulations on the book–will you let us know how to buy it in the US?

    July 9th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
13. Phil Groom says:
    

    Hey Anne – email me bookshop@lst.ac.uk and I’ll post a copy out to you printed paper rate: shouldn’t be too expensive. We accept payment by PayPal.

    10% discount for all Cartoon Blog readers! Just say you read it here to qualify. P&P at whatever 1st Class Post (or Printed Paper Rate for overseas) works out at.

    Dave: no offence taken if you’d prefer not to let such a blatantly touting-for-business comment stand

    July 9th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
14. Phillip Fayers says:
    

    Would it be an idea to scale the images? I’ve had reasonable success using the details at: http://rjohara.net/server/css-figures-captions/

    July 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am
15. Phelim McIntyre says:
    

    Doesn’t IE stand for Internet Exploder? Am going to go to Lambeth Marketplace so I can say got my book at Lambeth.

    July 10th, 2008 at 10:40 am
16. PeterD says:
    

    It looks ok on my BlackBerry, once I have scrolled down about two miles past the menus. Ah, the problems of a really
    tiny screen.

    July 10th, 2008 at 12:54 pm