The Underscore Archives

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:54 PM, Paddy Uglow <paddy at watershed.co.uk> wrote:
> Came across this:
> http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/css/faux-columns-for-liquid-layouts/
> I'd had a go at percentage positioning backgrounds before but got a bit
> lost.
> I've put it together with a footer at
> http://www.stvincentshousing.org.uk/2col.html

You might want to add min-width and max width so that things don't get
out of hand at narrow or wide browser window widths. Having said that,
the old "8-10 words per line" rule of thumb is OK but, on-screen,
increased line-height has as much influence on readability as keeping
line lengths short:
http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2005/05/05/line-height

> Works pretty well in most browsers - Netscape 4.78's the only major problem
> I came across, and IE 6 is a bit flaky...

No-one designs for NS4 any more, do they? Use @import to shield it
from its own incompetence.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/journey/

> Maybe I'll no longer have to worry about whether to design for 800x600...

Go 950/960. It's the way forward, especially if you use Blueprint.
It's great (despite my slagging it off when it first turned up). It's
like open source software: lots of eyes mean that someone else has
squished the cross-browser layout issues for you. Plus there's good
stuff like sane defaults, good font stacks, grids etc.

You can also use Construct to draft your own Blueprint-based layout:
http://constructyourcss.com/

Tim