Invaluable Information Architecture articles

Recently I have been exploring ideas for information architecture white papers and I came across this useful set of articles and links at Elegant Hack. Something for everyone interested in the subject.

27 January 2007

IE with relative/absolute position alongside floats

I have often come across an issue in IE when using absolute positioning inside a relatively positioned container. The absolutely positioned element simply disappears in IE. The fix for me has always been to move the HTML of the absolutely positioned element to a different place in the source code. I never knew why this worked but it did. I often had to try various places in the code before fixing the issue. Thanks to this website I now know this issue occurs when an absolutely positioned box is the preceding or the following sibling of a float in the source code. Any box (even an extra dummy div) "separating" the box from the float in the source code (either being between them, or wrapping one of them) fixes the problem. Hence why moving code around helped me. If anyone knows a better fix for this problem please let me know. I personally hate extra markup to fix problems. 24 January 2007

Firebug

If you haven't already discovered Firebug and you're a web designer or developer then prepare to be amazed! Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript "live" in any web page. When developing CSS I find being able to edit the stylesheet and see changes to my page instantly invaluable for bug fixing. Although perhaps not quite as useful if my bug occurs only in IE! 23 January 2007

Tableless CSS form layouts - Part 2

In part 1 we looked at creating a simple form using CSS for layout. Now we'll move on to something more complex.

In this part I will show you how to create forms that include mandatory fields, fieldsets, multiple checkboxes and radio buttons.

More » 18 January 2007 | No comments yet

Tableless CSS form layouts - Part 1

I've been working with CSS for about 6 years now and have used it for layout in the last 3. In that time I've learnt a lot (mostly from trial and error) and I hope to start writing about it here. First up is form layouts.

Most online articles tell you how to create a CSS layout using floats when you have a simple form with a label and input box on each line. I will show you how to create a more robust design that can accommodate numerous other possibilities including mandatory fields, fieldsets, multiple checkboxes, radio buttons etc.

More » 10 January 2007