How to get tables not to 'stretch' out of place when page has lots of content...

[colorado2rein]

Hi there,

I'm new to CMS and template-like stuff, I've been using Adobe GoLive (HTML, some CSS) for all my sites so am somewhat weak on code language period.  (God love WYSIWYG.)  Learning though - love CMSMS!!  It's time to venture into the PHP/MySQL world.

Here's my first CMSMS site, based off a tables/CSS layout I built in GoLive: http://reinwiththeprogram.com

Here's where my problem is: http://reinwiththeprogram.com/index.php?page=sell-yours

You can see that the long form (don't try it, it doesn't work or anything yet - heck, I don't even know how to make a database, it was from an email form from another of my sites) has pulled apart the table so that there is a big open spot on top of the left menu text.

I am not sure if I need to just alter a cell's height somewhere to fix this or what.  i've seen some pretty unintuitive things work in html world.  I can probably figure a way around this short-term, but I'd really like to learn the correct way so that when I DO get a database set up and results are displayed, my layout doesn't come crashing down with the varying page lengths.

Please let me know if you need more info to help - I think you can just see the source code through your browser's View option...

Thank you so much in advance!
Jenn

[Signex]

Well i`m not really into tables anymore, best things would be to make it a css layout

anyway if you run your code through the W3C html validator at http://www.w3.org you`ll notice allot of errors.

so maybe you can see if you can find any problems from there, for example;

  in you source should be   or   and should be closed with not with

here`s the W3C validator

http://validator.w3.org/

Good luck

[cyberman]

Have you tried to use relative width indead fixed one inside the tables ?

[colorado2rein]

Thank you both - you can see I'm really inexperienced at code itself!  I will go through the validator and try to understand the corrections.  I've order two Visual Quickstart books too, those are usually great.

I will reply if I don't find the answer - and also if I do for the forum's sake.

[colorado2rein]

Okay, I tried using relative heights to cells and tables, but that is basically a nightmare, trying to stop up leaks on the ship!

I've come to the conclusion that the Zen Garden (www.csszengarden.com)  is the only way to peace - I am going to have to rewrite using just CSS.  I'm scared!  I love the w3schools.com tutorials but I think it will take awhile to convert this site to straight CSS.

Any tips or advice on this conversion??  Exactly what part of the code will prevent this same problem from happening with the CSS?

[cyberman]

You should try to use a default CMSms template and transform it to your style.

[colorado2rein]

That's basically what I'm doing - I found a good little tutorial here: http://www.456bereastreet.com/lab/devel ... out/2-col/

Thanks for your help!  The medicine is painful but worth it in the end.  Hello, CSS layouts.