uploader html

[Eli Cochran]

Hi folks,
The markup is indeed odd but, at the time, it was the only way I could figure out how to pull this off in a way that supported all of the browsers that we needed to support. IE was, as you can imagine, a total bear. But back then, even the "modern" browsers didn't handle fixed headers and footers on tables quite right. I don't remember what all the problems were but I seem to remember columns getting messed up and not rendering correctly. (By the way, at the time, many toolkits and sites were using the same technique to achieve the same results so I was in good company.)

If we willing to degrade on some of the browsers or the browser set has been "upgraded", Heidi's recommended structure is certainly better both semantically and structurally. 

- Eli 

On Nov 15, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Colin Clark wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> I'm including Eli on the cc list, since he might have some insights into the original markup design and why it's structured the way it is.
> 
> Colin
> 
> On 2010-11-15, at 1:50 PM, Valles, Heidi wrote:
> 
>> hi gang!
>> 
>> I've been checking out the uploader today and noticed that the html could be cleaned up a bit.
>> 
>> Right now there are 3 tables being used:
>> 
>> 1) A 1 row, 3 cols table for the values "file name, size, space". It has the caption "File Queue"
>> 2) A dynamic data table with no caption, 3 cols. It holds info about uploaded files
>> 3) A 1 row, 2 cols table for the footer. The first col has the # files/total size data, and the second has the browse file input.
>> 
>> I'd like to suggest an alternative:
>> 
>> 1 data table, with both the header information and the data
>> the footer styled with css
>> 
>> I'm guessing one reason it was done this way was to make the data scrollable but have a fixed header. We can still achieve this with css, and also keep the semantic connection of column headers to data. 
>> 
>> I've created a jira for this:  FLUID-3837
>> 
>> cheers,
>> heidi
>> 
> 
> ---
> Colin Clark
> Technical Lead, Fluid Project
> http://fluidproject.org
> 

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Eli Cochran
manager of user experience design
user interaction developer
Educational Technology Services, UC Berkeley

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
    - Antoine De Saint-Exupery