Neverside

Issues with Forms on a layout

Hi,

Im have a question regarding forms, the ruddy things always leave a blank row after/below them which after spending a while coming up with a nice layout, now goes about its ways and destroys the look of it.

Is there something im unaware of which i can use to put this matter to bed once and for-all because its something which has bugged me for years but ive always just ignored it and gotten on with the rest of the site, but this problem leaves me wondering if i can use the layout ive worked on or if it needs to be drasticly adjusted to a state where a row of waste doesnt look strangely out of place.

The layout of the site is centered, which (Unless theres some trick i dont know of) means i cant put the form into a floating layer as the center of the page would depend on the width of the window, so im not aware of a way of maniplulating the co-ords to stay in a spot relative to where i'd want it to appear.

My only thought as a solution to this problem would be to have the whole layout within 1 big form, and when something is submitted then it has to ask itself exactly what its being asked to search for based on what has text within textboxes etc (which causes problems if someone puts text in for a search, then goes to login, info would be in both locations causing problems).

Does anyone know any solutions to the above problems, or have any suggestions before i scrap the design and scratch my head thinking of a way of re-designing things without it being too different to the original design.

Thanks in advance,

PaulC2K

i could probably make a lot of guesses and come up with plenty of wrong answers. but instead, i'll just ask if you can show us a screenshot of the problem or even better the actual layout, cause right now, i don't completely understand what the problem is.

___________________

scudworkz.com.

Ok, i'll get a screenshot of what it looks like in DW and the end result.
tbh, i was expecting it to be fairly understandable, but hopefully thats just cos im doing something wrong maybe?

effectively if i create a table with a cell that is w200 x h20 and then put a form inside it with or without a textbox, the space it now occupies exceeds the 20 pixel height which ive specified for it.

screenshot example:
http://www.qazwert.com/form_problem.gif

The layout ive created simply cannot have a 45pxl tall bar running across the top when only the top half is being used, but for some reason the form adds a further 20+ pixels to really screw things up.

my code creating the 3rd table seen in the example:

<form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="">
<div align="center">
*<input name="textfield" type="text" size="15" />
</div>
</form>

Last edited by PaulC2K, December 6th, 2005 08:31 AM (Edited 1 times)

Nobody can tell me if the example ive given is just how things have to be?

If thats how it is, aways has been, always will be... then fair enough i can start looking at a new design, but atm im still wondering if this is a common mistake im making or if its tough titty and time to work around it.

My other Q was is it possible to fix a layer somewhere on a centered page, so its always in the correct place regardless of the resolution because co-ords would be fine for a left aligned site, but not centered, so is there another way?

well... you should (i cant count how many times someones said this) never trust dreamweavers preview mode. and unless you're working with css, i cant be of much help.
but try removing margins/borders from the forms.

and you cant use absolute positioning (css) with a centered layout because, yes, like you mentioned, the resolution always comes in to play.

___________________

scudworkz.com.

hey there, well ive found that as coolaid said it was to do with the margins. Only thing is that if your code is xhtml compliant it ignores the attribute, so its down to you really. If you decide to get rid of those 2 lines at the top of your code that dreamweaver sticks in by default, this works:

Code:

<form name="blah!" style="margin: 0px;"><input na...