[pmwiki-users] Strange rendering behavior of vspace

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 03:35:27PM -0500, David Spitzley wrote:
> I've discovered a weird rendering problem:  in Firefox a [[<<]] 
> pushes everything after it below the bottom of the content in my 
> SideBar, but in IE the [[<<]] is seamless.  You can see the effect at 
> http://www.davidaspitzley.org/PotatoPatch/index.php?n=Main.WikiSandbox .  
> Any suggestions as to what's going on here?  

I'm guessing that the sidebar has been implementing using a floating
div, which is one of the typical methods for implementing table-less
columnar layouts.  But one of the downsides to that approach is
that there's not an easy way to clear below one floating element
but not another.  (I.e., HTML+CSS doesn't really have a way to
say "clear below this element" -- it's either "clear below all
elements" or nothing.)

There _is_ a way to set up skins so that the [[<<]] won't skip below
floating sidebar content, but I'm not familiar with the details.
I've always simply used tables because those tend to work everywhere
without too much hassle.

Pm