h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can you help me with my page?

http://www.h2g2.com/A439067

For obvious reasons, I would like to divide the two columns up better. It is hard to keep them apart, optically. I would like to keep it in two languages, one on the left, one on the right. How can I get a line to go through the middle, or is my only option to introduce an empty column between them, and, if I do, how can I control its width?

Boy, your problem was very tricky! But I did find a solution for you.

First, find this part of your code:

(auf "Discuss" clicken, oben links, um ein neues Gesprächsforum anzufangen) - oder auf dieser Seite "diskutieren"

***

Then add this line after it:

 

***

Then condinue the rest of your code as usual. To adjust the size of the line, change the number 10 in the line to something higher or lower. To make it a different color, change the word BLUE to some other common color name.

I also have a couple of other suggestions. First, you may want to consider changing your yellow font color. In Alabaster skin, which has a white background, it is very hard to read. Second, you may want to change the tags that read to this:



That way, both columns will start at the top of the page. Otherwise, you may find that one as one column gets longer than the other, one column will also start lower down on the page.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Getting frustrated.....!! Have visited the GuideML Clinic, chatted with various people and experimented continuously, BUT...still cannot get any pictures to 'stick' to my page!
Thus far I've managed to get the text and so on, but all I get in the place where the picture should be is a little white square with a red X in it!!
Any suggestions? Your help would be very much appreciated!
TheOkapi

May I suggest that you instead of just adding

 

adds 3 columns:

   

This way you make a little space between the text and the blue line.

It also could be done by adding a CELLPADDING-parameter to the TABLE-tag:



This would make space all the way around the text though, so in this page I would prefer the extra columns.

Thanks both very much. Should be a great help - I am compiling it all off line first and will try and fill out the page some time this week.

Trillian's child, I admit Ottox's solution looks a bit nicer than mine. I was just trying to keep it simple.

TheOkapi, I'd love to help. But first you need to tell me which page you need help with. Could you copy the link into a post so I can take a look at it?

This post has been removed.

AH HA!!! I've just tried linkiing to my site on freeservers from that link that popped up in the last post....guess what?! Can't do the download thing, which explains a lot! guess i'll have to try Geocities, which seems to the host of choice elsewhere!
That'll teach me to be independant!
Do you agree that this might be the reason...or am I STILL doing something wrong!?
TheOkapi

GOT IT!!! sorry to shout, but it's actually working the way I (more or less) envisioned it! Have a quick look...and thanks so much for your advice!
TheOkapi

It's very impressive and fun, TheOkapi. I normally hate animated thingies, but I'll make a special exception for yours.

Congrats on getting it all working. Do stop by anytime.

AAARGGHHH


This solution has worked fine up to now. I was fiddling about getting the page straight in classic goo tonight and kept getting the message"Attribute starts with illegal character". I thought perhaps I had inadvertently changed something, so I went back to the forum and pasted exactly your words in again (except I changed blue to turquoise, but that had always worked so far). With your own words, I still got that message:

 Attribute starts with illegal
character 

Why?

O God Ottox sorry to keep pestering - it is soo frustrating though when something the parser has accepted up to now suddenly produces red messages.

If you have done exactly what you post here it's because you missed the space between TD and WIDTH in the two last tags. Simple!

And there shouldn't be space between BG and COLOR.

And you don't need WIDTH in the closing tag.

Why don't I look it over properly from the start?

And if my syntax is terrible it's because I'm too tired to worry!
(I'm always too tired! LOL!)

And you don't need to call me God!

And I'm *not* trying to make it into the Top Ten!

Not trying! But nevertheless I just managed to get there for the first time ever.

I was once most erudite - right up at number one - but that was just after I'd posted about 20 pages on German National Celebrations - and look what they made of it!!

The width was in the closing tags because a previous message had demanded it. It baffled me because I had all the other cells starting TDWidth and only finishing /TD and no message there, only on a couple. I couldn't detect any difference, but I put them in and the messages stopped coming.

I tried TDWIDTH and TD WIDTH and BGCOLOR, BG COLOR - you don't know how many different things I tried before I came back to you. However, in the light of the new morning (you obviously don't sleep, perhaps you are a God) I shall have a try, bearing in mind what you have said.

I'm not sure what you mean by what kind of computer do I have - if you mean it only has a limited clipboard memory, that doesn't apply here, because I tried adding more by hand later and it wouldn't accept it.

In my efforts to reduce the amount so it would fit on one page, I cut out all the superfluous editors' entries, removed all the ^p marks, and just got it all in. (which would not allow for new names, once they start rolling in).

But then, to be able to determine the width of the columns for viewing in classic goo, I I added TDWIDTH (in every cell) and that of course, made it much much longer again.

You are being marvellous about this. I do feel a pest, but it is my first project and I am determined to get it right.

Then I tried to

Right - I have followed all the instructions, and while I was at it, added the suggested width of 250 for the columns of writing (which I hadn't done so far, just concentrated on the table underneath). Now I got this:

Bad closing element TD expecting
TDWIDTHAttribute starts with illegal character Bad closing element TD
expecting TDWIDTHAttribute starts with illegal character Bad closing element TD expecting TDWIDTHAttribute starts
with illegal character Bad closing element TD expecting
TDWIDTHAttribute starts with illegal character

This all worked before - has GuideML changed?

There *has to* be space between TD and WIDTH! Otherwisetheparserwillhavetoreadsomethinglikethisandofcourseitwon'tdothat!
If this thing is made correct it won't ask for another closingtag (/TDWIDTH) either. (The parser is a little stupid. *First* it checks that the closing tags fit with the opening tags, *then* it tries to understand what the tag means. Thus if the opening and closing tags don't fit, it won't notice that it in fact doesn't know them.)

I'll be back later!