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--oo00oo--
| How
do I control Margins? |
Ah, now this is a bit tricky.
You see, there's no specific tag to control it, well, until you get to IE 3.0.
That's right, it's taken as long as IE 3 before this tag has been implemented.
You see each browser has it's own default margins, usually it's 8 top and 8
left on Apple Mac's. But it varies greatly on the PC versions of the software,
with only IE 3 allowing you to control them. To do it in IE
3, you add LEFTMARGIN= and/or TOPMARGIN= to the <BODY> ... </BODY>
tag. So for example, your body tag could read <BODY BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF
TEXT=#000000 LINK=#008080 ALINK=#FF0000 VLINK=#000080 TOPMARGIN=50
LEFTMARGIN=0>.
This would give you a web page that is 50 pixels from the top, and
flush against the left hand side.
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| Other
Techniques |
Let's say that you've made a
document with the above margins, you have some image buttons flush to the left
hand side. But you want your text to be indented a bit, how do you do it. Well,
you can do it one of several ways, add a <UL> ... </UL> tag around
it.
IT GIVES THIS EFFECT
IT GIVES THIS EFFECT
IT GIVES THIS EFFECT
However, it has the (sometimes) undesirable effect of acting as if it
were a <P> tag, giving a lines space above and below the text. You could
use a <BLOCKQUOTE> ... </BLOCKQUOTE> tag.
IT GIVES THIS EFFECT
IT GIVES THIS EFFECT
IT GIVES THIS EFFECT
But it has the same effect. You also have little control over the
size of the gap. Another way is to use a hidden table method, which I'll go
over in another section.
The final method, and best in my opinion, is to use Frames.
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| Frames |
Frames can be extremely
confusing. You have one separate .htm file to define the frames. This says how
many sections your screen is split into, and it says what .htm file goes with
what frame. It's not a well known fact, that you can have just one frame. This
seems pointless, as you may as well just not use it. But it has the advantage
of being able to control the margins of a page, and until a better and well
supported method comes along, it's the one I going for. To
see an example page that uses this method, click here.
This consists of two web pages, the frames page which is the
controller, and the contents page that you see. The frames page contains the
following FRAME tag.
<FRAMESET ROWS = "100%,*" FRAMEBORDER = NO BORDER =
0>
<FRAME SCROLLING=AUTO SRC = "ex1x.htm" NAME = "main"
MARGINWIDTH = 1 MARGINHEIGHT = 1>
</FRAMESET>
This appears to define two frames, in rows. The first occupying 100%
of the screen, the second occupying the rest. However, the details for only the
first frame are given, and it works just fine. As you can see we've set the
MARGINWIDTH and HEIGHT to 1. This is because FRAMES don't allow a 0 value. So
it's best to put 1 instead of 0, just in case support for 0 values is added in
the future. This is because all your pages will be 1 pixel out.
Remember if you use this technique, to add TARGET="_top" to
the <A HREF> tag, for external pages, otherwise they'll all have 1 pixel
margins and won't look as the designer intended.
This method is not ideal however, as it can cause problems with some
JavaScript pages which make use of "Hidden Frames" and other FRAME
techniques, unless it is linked properly with TARGET="_top".
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