Columns no longer balanced

[Charlesn]

Hi All,

Have been beavering away over the weekend on a clients site:

http://greatmusic.co.uk/acatalog/test/acatalog/

I must have done something without realising as my columns are no longer balanced and the content seems to be spilling out over the top right hand column. If you look at the above link, its OK (although Actinic is not showing it like this - despite it showing the same problem in Actinic at the last upload about an hour ago). If however you look in any of the product sections (except DVD - I've looked and can't see any difference between them) the columns go wonky!

Any ideas? I think it might be something to do with the SubSectionListTop or ProductList but can't see anything that might cause this, nor have I made any changes to these. Weird.

As always, any help is much appreciated.

Thanks
Charles

[Duncan Rounding]

Can't find anything 'wonky'. Did you fix it or can you post a URL of good vs bad?

(Did you clear your browser cache?)

[TraceyHand]

I can see the problem you mean (using Firefox) but, not being a keen-sighted coder some of these lot are, I can't quite work out what the problem is.

If you use firefox, download Firebug and see if you can work out where it's going wrong

editted to add

good url

url with dodgy RH column

[leehack]

First thing i checked was what the little white text in the dark red bar is for. Turns out it is the breadcrumb trail. It has some red text on a red background for part of it. It is also housed on a row, which has 4 columns, but two of the columns have been set to take 50% each, leaving nothing for the other two.

There are also errors coming up on the page and page loading is very long. Download firefox, then firebug and click on 'inspect' you can check each part of the site. Need to get the basic coding right first, there could literally be a number of reasons causing it, in reality it is probably a mixture of them all.

In IE6, the site becomes much worse, especially the cart area, i'd suggest a thorough check of sizes on the site as there are conflicting areas all over the place, all turning up different looks on different browsers.

[Charlesn]

Thanks for the replies folks.

Firstly, the problems I am aware of that I'm on the case with:

The breadcrumb trail - despite using a new CSS style, the breadcrumb trail seems to have a bit of a mind of its own. The colours are alright now, but the sizes are not. Likewise it is repeating the main section names. I'm hoping tech support can shed some light on this.

The amount of products - I'm deploying the site at the end of the week and the client is using a plugin (as recommended by yourself Lee) to change it to one product per section.

The slowness - It'll be moved to our much quicker hosting by Friday also.

I've downloaded Firebug and seemed to have ironed most of the main problems out. Still not right in Safari though (on both Mac and PC) as the right hand column with the cart contents in, is sat on its own at the bottom of the page. Any ideas?

I know there are 2 main errors to be sorted still - One being a Syntax error (no idea what this is?) and the other relating to 2 flash files that are not loading properly (but appear correctly in Actinic).

I have also bought a lovely 'Sams teach yourself HTML and CSS in 24s book' from Amazon (£8.99, bargain!) as it would appear that Actinic 8 requires a lot more knowledge of the backend than 7 did. Especially when you are used to the WYSIWYG simplicity of Dreamweaver. I suppose I was going to have join the 'dark side' sooner or later...

You never know, I might even be able to get some sleep before now and Friday too?

Cheers
Charlie

[Charlesn]

Yes, it is the same problem that I did have working, but then made a slight change and now its knackered again!

The plugin is this one:

http://www.codepath.co.uk/web_plugins.htm

Sounds pretty good (although a little expensive considering its a per site license) but will save masses of work.

Better check my layouts as one of them isn't right. Might try reseting them as I haven't really done any customisation to the inner layouts.

Cheers
C

[Charlesn]

Right, I'm literally about to tear my hair out!

I've reset the SubSectionListTop, the ProductList and SubSectionListBottom (the 3 pieces that make up my innerlayout) to the factory settings and the right hand column is STILL sat at the bottom of the page all on its own!

Firebug is still not showing any errors and the problem is no longer browser exclusive (despite it being just Safari when I went home last night, only to return this morning to find that it does it in any browser).

Can anybody PLEASE help me with this? I have this and the breadcrumb trail to sort out (which I'll continue in the original post to keep things tidier). to sort by tomorrow afternoon!

You can see the problem here:

http://greatmusic.co.uk/acatalog/test/acatalog/

This page is fine, but when you view any of the sections the right hand column heads south...

Cheers
Charlie

[TraceyHand]

ok
in your product layout (I'm assuming you use the same one throughout but I haven't looked)..what do you have set for "table width"?
It's coming up as table width "" in Firebug which *could* be causing a problem.

It looks like it's your product width that's causing the issue now, this problem anyway

[Charlesn]

Its set to 100% in Settings > Site Options > Product > Width of Product List > 100%

Width of Section List is also set to 100% - but this happily nests within the 2 columns on the link shown above.

If you change it to 50%, it does narrow the content but the column still stays at the bottom, despite it having the space to sit in on the right hand side.

Hope this makes sense?

Cheers
C

[Charlesn]

Ok, sorted it. Sort of.

In the Standard Product List layout settings, I had the following:

<table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width=100%"<actinic:variable name="ProductListWidth" />">

Which obviously isn't right (for reference, it was the 100% width that was causing it). So its fine now, except in Safari. The column is still sat on its lonesome at the bottom of the page.

Anybody with any cross browser compliance experience got any ideas?

Cheers
Charlie

[Charlesn]

I've now worked this out and thought an answer on the forum might come in handy for some poor unfortunate who experienced the same problem!

Basically, I had a table within my 2 sidebar layout containing the INNERLAYOUT. Then in the SectionLink layout settings I had removed the table closing tags from the 'end of list' box. Likewise the StandardProductList layout settings. Apparently Actinic doesn't like this. Keep the content floating in the main table area in the sidebar layout, then add the table closing tags back in again.

Roberts your mothers brother...