Random Spaces Problem

[andy.collie]

Hi,

A colleague of mine developed an Actinic V7 site some month ago and the client has been updating it on a regular basis, but have run into problems on pages with loads of products.

On pages which have a lot of product there is a space appearing at the top of the page between the section links and the first products.

The clients website is www.doart.co.uk and this is one of the pages with the problem www.doart.co.uk/acatalog/Accessories.html .

I've sorted out the problem where there is white space on the right hand side as that is just a template problem but im not sure what the problem is with the white space for the products.

If anyone can shed any light on this it will be greatly appreciated as i've been going through the code all morning with no success as yet.

Andrew.

[retekdirect]

Hi Andrew

One thing that i noticed immediately with the site code is that you are specifying heights for tables and table cells. I'd locate where you have these defined and remove the height attribute.

Specifying heights is frowned upon (by the Web standards guys (W3C)), and isn't standards-compliant or future-proof. It can also screw things up when rendering pages on some platforms/browsers.

Commence flaming on table heights! :)
(I'd actually be interested to find out who does and doesn't use table heights and why)


Ryan

[andy.collie]

Cheers for that Ryan,

I'm on going through trying to create a new template with a load of new code as I've found loads of dodgy tags inside from the people who designed the site originally (tables started in the code but not finished).

Will go through and take any references to height out aswell, unfortunately I can't uploaded the changes to the catalog as all the images are on the clients computer so im having to rely purely on the preview.

Andrew.

[NormanRouxel]

I think you've located the problem. Varying white space at the top of a page (probably one or two lines per following product) is usually due to invalid table HTML in the Product Template(s).

[andy.collie]

Not working as yet, I've created a new template and have tried going through the templates in Actinic but am still having the same problem, I've took out all the references to height as they are really needed and have created my own template with hopefully no bad html but am still having the same problem.

[NormanRouxel]

Try to narrow it down. If you add more products does the spacing increase?

[andy.collie]

If a page has 2 or 3 product on the template looks ok, but when the client has made sections in the catalog which have about 10 or 15 products on the white space starts to get bigger, so it usually end up about 250px further down the page than it should be.

[retekdirect]

Like Norman suggested, it sounds like repeating unclosed tags. Do you have a link to a page like you describe above?

[andy.collie]

www.doart.co.uk/acatalog/Accessories.html (http://www.doart.co.uk/acatalog/Accessories.html)

The page above is the page I'm having trouble with, I've gone through created the template again and am still having trouble with it, I've sorted out any broken HTML which I think is there, but unfortunately I can't upload anything as Actinic won't let me with the images being on the clients pc, but on preview im still getting the same problem.

I started again with the templates from scratch going back to the start using the actinic templates then editting them as usual and editting all necessary templates within the templates option in actinic but have had no success as yet. :mad:

EDIT: oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the problem is only occuring in Internet Explorer, I use Mozilla Firefox and it works alright in that. Typical as if it was vice versa then I maybe could have got away with it.

[Nadeem]

Hi Andrew,

Go into "Design | Option | Miscellaneous" and untick "Compact HTML/CGI". Now if you preview the page, copy the address bar and open it in dreamweaver, you should see some tags that begin with "ACTINIC:ACTION". These tell you where the template begins and ends, so hopefully it should help you pinpoint where the problem is stemming from.
From the descriptions above its does seem to be bad html. Have you just tried to add in one product only, then check the source. See if all the tables are correctly defined or not.

Kind Regards

[NormanRouxel]

This code seems wrong. Probably the </table> in it
<TR>
<TD></TD>
<TD></FORM>
<FORM name=wishform action=../php/addwish.php
method=post><INPUT id=prodname type=hidden
value="Tracedown A3 (BELL-TDA3)"
name=prodname><INPUT id=prodref type=hidden
value=a3321 name=prodref><INPUT
onclick=submit(); type=image
src="DoArt_co_uk Accessories_files/wishlist.gif"
value="Add to Wishlist"
name=add2wish></FORM></table></TD></TR>

[andy.collie]

When I've previewed the site on my computer It's doing the same even though.

I've switched the theme to the Actinic Original theme and only editted the Act_Primary.html file so that it looks as though its in the same template as the rest of the site, I've only editted the Act_Primary.html file and nothing else so the page is still using the default logo image, nav etc.

I've also gone through the Act_Primary.html double checking the HTMl code to check that I've made no mistakes in the HTML and I've not as far as I can see.

The only other possibility I think it might be is that I'm working with a huge catalog in terms of amount of products and after components there are 21,600 products and before you take the components into consideration there are 7,000 individual products each will with image full name and description.

i'm starting to run out of ideas on this one and the client is also starting to run out of patience with it aswell :(

[NormanRouxel]

Did you try removing the wishform that contains the isolated </table>? This is probably the culprit.

What I did was to view your page using IE, then Save As to my disk, then open the saved page in Dreamweaver. That showed major problems after the first product containing that extra (non-Actinic) form.

[andy.collie]

I've taken the form out on my catalog and its still doing the same thing, I'd resorted to using the Actinic Original theme with no files editted whatsoever and it is still creating the same problem even though I'm using the themes and templates as Actinic designed them with me making no changes.

[NormanRouxel]

Wierd. If you've changed Themes then all that's common would be your Products. Do you have any embedded HTML there?

[andy.collie]

Not sure if it matters but in the original Act_Primary.html template that I was working from the layout has 2 instances of flash animation embedded into it, 1 as a header including the main navigation and the other as a footer as a scrolling marquee with images.

Sorry for being such a pain but I've tried everything that I can think of using all the usual fixes but but so far none have worked, but the help is much appreciated though as I really need it at the moment.