Forum Moderators: travelin cat
I am trying to update all pages in my site (for the year end) and correct some bad code along the way from many years back at the same time.
One of the things which really ticks me off is that although a page displays the way I desgned it on my machine, anyone with a PC sees it very differently.
I only just discovered that if you want something to justify left, you have to tell DreamWeaver to do so. On a Mac, pages automatically left hand justify unless you tell Dreamweaver to display it differently. But it seems PC's automatically justify to the center of the page! This seems just plain stupid to me! But ... it is what it is.
I have several pages with lists using the *li* command which are riddled with unnecessary code. At least I think it is unnecessary?
My current code looks like this mess below:
<ul>
<li>
<div align="left"><font size="2" color="#000066" class="ContentText"><a href="map_bvi.html">BVI Maps</a></font></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left"><font size="2" color="#000066" class="ContentText">General <a href="bvi_information.html">British Virgin Island Info</a></font></div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left"><font size="2" color="#000066" class="ContentText"><a href="british_virgin_islands.html">BVI Pictures</a></font></div>
</li>
</ul>
I saw no reason for the "div" or for the "font" to be repeated for each line in the list. So I manually did this:
<div align="left"><font size="2" color="#000066" class="ContentText">
<ul>
<li> <a href="map_bvi.html">BVI Maps</a></li>
<li> General <a href="bvi_information.html">British Virgin Island Info</a></li>
<li> <a href="british_virgin_islands.html">BVI Pictures</a></li>
</ul>
</font></div>
I tested it on an HTNL Validator and that seemed to work OK ... but I am wondering if the "div" is required at all?
Can I do this? Is this proper code?
<ul align "left"><font size="2" color="#000066" class="ContentText">
<li> <a href="map_bvi.html">BVI Maps</a></li>
<li> General <a href="bvi_information.html">British Virgin Island Info</a></li>
<li> <a href="british_virgin_islands.html">BVI Pictures</a></li>
</font></ul>
Why doesn't the "Clean Up HTML" command automatically clean up these things? Am I doing something wrong? Is there a better programme out there for Macs which doesn't need to be manually cleaned up when you are done writing?
IME, DW justifies left unless you tell it otherwise, and that's generally the browser default, as well.
I've never seen DW put DIV tags around LI items, so I'm not sure how you ended up with that code. It shouldn't be needed, and it's probably not valid.
<ul align "left"> is incorrect -- it needs an = sign: <ul align="left"> -- except it shouldn't even need that, because ul's by default are aligned left, although with a left-side padding or margin (depending on the browser).
Did you have a specific question?
I found out unordered lists acually justify to the center (on PC's) unless you tell Dreamweaver to justify left. A friend of mine took a screen shot of one of my pages and sent it to me. I was horrified as a list justified to center just looks nasty!
So when I told DW to justify left, it inserted the div code on every line of the list! In addition, dreamweaver inserts the type face code on every line as well. Is that really necessary or is there a tidier (less cumbersome) way to do it?
I see you're using css (class="ContentText"). What are the properties of your ContentText class, and what other css styles might be being applied to your unordered lists? Remember, with inheritance, other classes can be applied to your lists even if you didn't explicitly apply them. Do you have a "text-align:center" anywhere in any of your css styles?
There are definitely better ways to apply font styling than using font tags everywhere -- setting default fonts in your css stylesheet is best, and making good use of inheritance.
Post some code and let's see what you've got.
