HELP: Table height in the new XHTML???

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Arthur Dent - 23 Dec 2005 04:42 GMT

I am completely baffled... i cannot for the life of me get the HEIGHT style
to work on a table in the new 2005-supported XHTML.
I put a HEIGHT: 100% on my table so that my footer row will also show up at
the very bottom of the page (unless content pushes it further down).
But when the browser renders the page, its as if there was no height
specified on the table, it all just shrinks up to the top of the page, as
short as the content will allow.
Ive tried the height as an inline style attribute, a document-level style
tag, and a css style sheet. They all fail.

I cannot imagine the standards-writing-people would kill something like this
without providing a new way to accomplish it... especially seeing as
*almost* every professional and/or corporate site i ever look at has this
style of layout, with a footer which always shows at the bottom of the page,
or bottom of the browser if the content is shorter than the window.

HOW CAN I DO THIS?!?!? its driving me crazy!!

Thanks in advance,
- Arthur Dent.

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Bruce Barker - 23 Dec 2005 17:24 GMT

in xhtml, the body does not have a default height, just a default width. for
a percentage size to work, it needs one of its perents to have an absolute
value to be a percent of, otherwise its ignored.

take:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<body>
<div style="width:100%;height:100%;background-color:red;">
</div>
</body>
</html>

now you might expect this markup to create a full screen div thats red. it
won't, but rather create a div thats the width of the page, and the height
of one text line. this is because there is no specified height anywhere

compare to:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<body style="height:200px;">
<div style="width:100%;height:100%;background-color:red;">
</div>
</body>
</html>

here we specified a body height, so the div will fill it.

note: this is the expected behavior of html 4.0 also.

-- bruce (sqlwork.com)

>I am completely baffled... i cannot for the life of me get the HEIGHT style
> to work on a table in the new 2005-supported XHTML.
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
> Thanks in advance,
> - Arthur Dent.

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Arthur Dent - 24 Dec 2005 00:32 GMT

Okay, but that still doesnt answer the q. of HOW do you make a page with a
footer which always shows at the very bottom of the page between resolutions
and window resizes? Hardcoded sizes are fine, if you know exactly what size
the window will be ALL the time, but thats impossible.....

Can you use expressions as height, so something like HEIGHT:
document.clientHeight; or something like that? or what? what is the new way
to do this???

> in xhtml, the body does not have a default height, just a default width.
> for a percentage size to work, it needs one of its perents to have an
[quoted text clipped - 58 lines]
>> Thanks in advance,
>> - Arthur Dent.

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e_zverev - 17 Jan 2006 18:06 GMT

The only way I found is the client script that applies actual browser window
client height to the BODY element making all content to look as you expect.

Here is an example:
I call this function as soon as client page is loaded i.e. via
RegisterStartupScript method of the Page.ClientScript object on my ASP.NET
2.0.

function BodyHeightSet()
{
var objRegulatingElement;
objRegulatingElement = document.body;

//I don't know if it is working on browsers other then IE 5+
objRegulatingElement.style.setExpression("pixelHeight",
"document.documentElement.clientHeight");
document.recalc(true);

//!!!!! for other browsers !!!!!
//You will have to catch the resize event from the body element and
execute it all the time.
//objRegulatingElement.style.pixelHeight =
document.documentElement.clientHeight;
}

Signature

Eugene U. Zverev,
Senior Programmer

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Alan Silver - 03 Jan 2006 21:23 GMT

>I cannot imagine the standards-writing-people would kill something like
>this without providing a new way to accomplish it...

It's worth pointing out that the standards people didn't kill anything.
There has never been a height attribute for tables in the HTML
standards, certainly not for many versions (and I suspect never). The
only reason why you are coming across the issue now is that MS have
finally decided to conform to standards instead of breaking them.
VS2005/VWD reports validation issues, so you start noticing them where
you never did before.

> especially seeing as *almost* every professional and/or corporate site
>i ever look at has this style of layout, with a footer which always
>shows at the bottom of the page, or bottom of the browser if the
>content is shorter than the window.

AFAIK the way people have abused HTML in the past was not used as a
basis for setting standards for XHTML.

Signature

Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

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simon - 10 Jan 2006 16:23 GMT

Alan, In my example I would like that red table would be streched to
the bottom of parent table(when you see my page you will know what I
mean). It won't work. I have been trying for hours. Nothing helps.
Please can you help me?
(If I remove xhtml11 declaration, than it would work.)

Thanks ,Simon

My page:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head></head>
<body>
<table border=1>
        <tr valign=top><td>
        <table height=100% border=1 style="border-color:red">
     <tR><td height=100% valign=top>
         test
     </td></tr>
        </table>
         </td>
         <td>
            <table>
         <tR><td>
            <table border=1>
             <tR><td>test1</td></tr>
             <tR><td>test2</td></tr>
             <tR><td>test3</td></tr>
             <tR><td>test4</td></tr>
             <tR><td>test5</td></tr>
            </table>
         </td></tr>
            </table>
         </td>
         </tr>
    </table>
</body>
</html>

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Patrice - 10 Jan 2006 16:38 GMT

AFAIK XHTML uses stylesheets instead inline attributes. Google for CSS,
"StyleSheet"

Signature

Patrice

> Alan, In my example I would like that red table would be streched to
> the bottom of parent table(when you see my page you will know what I
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
> </body>
> </html>

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SimonZ - 11 Jan 2006 08:35 GMT

I tried also with css, in fact, I use inline attributes here just because of
ease of example.

The problem is not because of inline-css.

The problem is standard which define:

"for a percentage size to work, it needs one of its perents to have an
absolute
value to be a percent of, otherwise its ignored."

But in my aplication it's impossibble to set absolute value of parent (only
if I use client script).

So I create one very simple example with the same problem.

I wonder if there is someone who can solve this problem using standars(xhtml
1.1).

Otherwise, I'll have to use old declarations.

If that doesn't work by xhtml 1.1 than that is a big lack of functionallity.
"Percent of" is very usefull and sometimes I can't do without it.

regards,
Simon

> AFAIK XHTML uses stylesheets instead inline attributes. Google for CSS,
> "StyleSheet"
[quoted text clipped - 39 lines]
>> </body>
>> </html>

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HELP: Table height in the new XHTML???

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