Curious... I did a search on the site but came up with nothing?

 

Just wondering if any of you building sites in Dreamweaver start out or use Absolute Div tags to position.

 

What's the pros or cons using this method?

 

Thanks,

Dave

What exactly are you using position: absolute for?

What exactly are you using position: absolute for?

 

 

In Dreamweaver the Absolute div tags "AP div" are or seemed to be an easy way to position elements on the page. You can draw them anywhere and move them around by their drag handles. I guess in older versions of Dreamweaver they were an easy way to layer images and text. You can still apply CSS to these.

 

So I'm curious if anyone is using this method for building an entire web page? If you are what issues would one might have if any?

 

Thanks

While absolute layouts might be ok for creating a first mock-up of a site, I would advise against using them for a live site.

They are, by definition, absolutely positioned.

What if you increase the font size on a site to find that half of the text has disappeared underneath another div?

As bluedreamer has mentioned in a couple of posts, web pages aren't static and need to allow for user-defined changes (to an extent).

It all depends on the site in question, I suppose.

No doubt some of the elements can be positioned absolutely (logo for example on a fixed width site).

As well as the fluidity (is that a word?) of a site, you have the problem of IE browsers specifying z-index differently which can cause quite a bit of grief!

While absolute layouts might be ok for creating a first mock-up of a site, I would advise against using them for a live site.

They are, by definition, absolutely positioned.

What if you increase the font size on a site to find that half of the text has disappeared underneath another div?

As bluedreamer has mentioned in a couple of posts, web pages aren't static and need to allow for user-defined changes (to an extent).

It all depends on the site in question, I suppose.

No doubt some of the elements can be positioned absolutely (logo for example on a fixed width site).

As well as the fluidity (is that a word?) of a site, you have the problem of IE browsers specifying z-index differently which can cause quite a bit of grief!

 

I figured it was probably to good to be true...

 

I was taking a bunch of online tutorials and felt that they might be a little behind the times... the mentioned these AP div's along with building the site using tables in table-mode?

 

I know from this forum the best bet is to build using div's and CSS but in a hurry I also noticed that once the page is set up you can change the AP's to either fixed, static, relative or inherit. Does that work?

I figured it was probably to good to be true...

 

I was taking a bunch of online tutorials and felt that they might be a little behind the times... the mentioned these AP div's along with building the site using tables in table-mode?

 

I know from this forum the best bet is to build using div's and CSS but in a hurry I also noticed that once the page is set up you can change the AP's to either fixed, static, relative or inherit. Does that work?

I don't know what your level of experience is but I would recommend getting away from dreamweaver and start to build sites from the ground up by yourself.

WYSIWYG editors can only get you so far.

The best thing to do is learn how html and css fits together.

It is all very well being able to change the position from absolute to relative but do you know what that means?/why you should do it?

Do you understand the difference between fixed, static, relative and positioned?

Ultimately, dreamweaver can't do everything for you and it would be best to learn to do it by yourself.

Two good resources are here and here.