Template talk:Subpages6

Chris, you know this stuff way better than I, but I was wondering if a table within a table was a way to get cells to wrap. Larry mentioned wrapping them here. http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=44778 tells how to do it with CSS but it is above my head at this point.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 03:07, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

So you want fixed size cells? Chris Day (talk) 07:17, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Does he want a column?--Robert W King 09:54, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Fixed size cells that will wrap to two rows if needed.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 12:08, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

To tell you the truth I'm not entirely sure how you want this to look. At present it sounds to me as if you are thinking along the lines of tabs. The tabs will start at the left. If there are only five tabs they will be aligned to the left. As other subpages are added they will be added to the right of the header. So, if there is a maximum of 10 tabs then each tab should be 10% of the max width of the browser. Is this an accurate decription of what you envisage? Another variant would be to have fixed size tabs from the perspective of pixels. Chris Day (talk) 12:35, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

That's the same question I have, essentially, but more specifically described by Chris.--Robert W King 12:36, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Under what conditions would they be needed? Page width? A variable? A flag?--Robert W King 12:08, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Y'know, another possibility would be just not to use one cell per item. Just make it all one big cell for all items. Then the text within the cell can wrap. --Larry Sanger 12:13, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

That's easy enough to do.--Robert W King 12:14, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Ah, it's all possible to have a small image that mimics the table bar between each entry.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 13:18, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

That's true, but there are also ways to make the bars appear between each entry without having the table border. I'll have the example up in just a second. --

See example. Set frame=void and rules=all.Robert W King 13:24, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

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The width of the table is 75%, and each cell represents 16% (given 6 entries). Is this correct? --Robert W King 12:23, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

There are 12 possible entires in the canon, if one includes Main article.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 13:16, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Now it's 100% width, with each one at 8%.--Robert W King 13:24, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

I just made some changes for fixed width. I put them all at 8% but this might not be the best value for all the cells. In most browser windows the word "bibliography" will take up more than 8% and force the cell to be wider. Chris Day (talk) 13:41, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

There are thirteen cells not 12. I reduced everyone to 7%. Timeline clearly needs more but I can't adjust with the current use of the row3 template. i made biblography and definition cells larger. Chris Day (talk) 13:48, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

The fact that "bilbiography" will take up more than 8% is irrelevant; by default it won't be broken up or wrapped, unless you want cells of exactly the same width, all the time.--Robert W King 13:48, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Not quite irrelevant becuase if the cell exceeds its fixed width then the selection of that tab causes the cell/tab to become even larger. This has the effect of dislodging all the other tabs; an effect that can be a little annoying. The reason for this is the bold text (bibliography) is wider than the plaintext link (bibliography) and so forces out the tab a little more. Try toggling between Anthropology/Bibliography and the other tabs and you will see what I mean. The perfect solution (and possibly anal one) is for the tabs to have static appearance. Chris Day (talk) 14:04, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Percent tabs are not of fixed width; unless you specify the NOWRAP flag in the table data; and because they are wrapped by default there's no way each cell is going to be 8% across the whole table row. bibliography or bibliography will take up as much cell width as it needs to and not break up, versus more info or more info will wrap, being less than 8%, of course. However if you specify fixed (let's say 30px) for each table data, then you'll run into problems, of course.--

Not sure this is true. I can go in and fix the bilbliography problem now by increasing it to 12 and decreasing the definitions to 8. You can still see the problem by toggling from Anthropology/Timelines or Anthropology/Tutorials. Chris Day (talk) 14:16, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Are the cells fixed(specified width in pixels) or by percent? If your cell data is bigger than the specified width in either case, the size will automagically be increased no matter what.--Robert W King 14:15, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Just realising where you are coming from here. I have not been varying my browser size, and this issue is browser size dependant, if using fixed percent. So it is important that each tab has a fixed size that is large enough to accomodate the bold text used in that particular tab. Only then can the jiggling of the tabs while toggling between tabs be irradicated. Chris Day (talk) 14:26, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

What about if we created a static size index, and simply did a "grey out" of sections that didn't exist (although they would still be in the navigation template)? Maybe dim the background color by a value and make it unselectable. That way we wouldn't run into cell sizing issues and could make it all uniform.--Robert W King 14:24, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

Modified so each cell width that contains text is 100 pixels wide, with cells on either side that are 100% in width (should be).

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Looking at Larry's suggestion on a second row, perhaps that would be the best course, maybe even a third row, as long as we're talking fixed-widths.--Robert W King 14:08, 9 July 2007 (CDT) Another suggestion: if you can think about how the template might count up how many subpages there are, your template can decide whether to display a second row or not. --Larry Sanger 13:38, 9 July 2007 (CDT)

The way to fix that is to make the cell width some variable which is 100%/subpageNumber, and adjust the font size accordingly as well. --Robert W King 13:42, 9 July 2007 (CDT)