Conversion problem with a webpage [Archive]

JimThompson

01-17-2004, 03:58 AM

Hi - When I use iSiloX to convert this FrontPage webpage
http://jimthompson.net/boating/CelestialNav/MyNoonSun.htm
for reading on the handheld, a few seconds after opening the page on my T2 the page flickers once and then a number of things are wrong:
- the text margins widen beyond the right side of the screen;
- the hyperlinks within the document do not work and the page simply jumps back to the top of the document.

My iSiloX settings for this document are:
- Ignore left and right margins and padding.
- Process table width formatting; ignore pixel specifications.
- Include images, 600x600 pixels.

If I turn off table formatting, then the page works fine except of course I lose table formatting.

What is the problem? Thanks.

iSilo

01-17-2004, 10:09 AM

Thank you for providing the URL.

The issue stems from the fact that you have a top-level table for the entire page and then you have other tables nested inside that top-level table.

The flicker is iSilo redisplaying the page after having finished the page's layout. See table layout and redisplay for a more detailed explanation on this.

The width of a table widens to accomodate the widest row in the table. On your page, the widest row appears to be the one that contains the nested table titled Celestial Navigation Data. If you view your page in a browser on your desktop computer and make the browser window narrower than that table, you will also see the same result. That is, a horizontal scrollbar appears and lines of text that appear to be body text and which you would expect to reflow to the next line actually extend beyond the right border requiring horizontal scrolling.

There is a limitation in iSilo with regard to hyperlinking within tables. The limitation is that if the target of a hyperlink is to content within a table, then the jump occurs to the beginning of the top-level table row containing the target. In your scenario, the reason why the jump appears to go to the beginning of the document is because you have a top-level table with essentially one row and one cell (e.g., a 1 x 1 table) and so a jump to any location in that table results in a jump to the beginning of that one row.

You have two possible solutions to the issue.

The first possibility is to remove that top-level table with the one row and one cell. It serves no useful purpose that I can see. And when you have iSilo honor such a layout, things can get very slow when iSilo needs to display the content of a very large table cell. The further you scroll to the bottom of a large table cell, the slower the display becomes.

The second possibility is to use the option in iSiloX to only include the innermost tables. To do this, follow these steps:

Go to the Properties dialog in iSiloX for the entry you created for conversion of the document.
Click the Tables tab.
Make sure Process table formatting is enabled.
Check the option Include only tables reachable up to 1 levels from the innermost tables.
Click OK to accept the changes.
After following through with either of the above suggestions, reconvert.

JimThompson

01-17-2004, 06:06 PM

The issue stems from the fact that you have a top-level table for the entire page and then you have other tables nested inside that top-level table.Thanks! But what is a top-level table? Would it have to do with the shared border thing that FrontPage uses on this page? I do not see any reference to a table in the HTML around the header information, until I get down to the data table that I cut-and-pasted from Excel.

iSilo

01-17-2004, 06:29 PM

By top-level table, I mean a table that is not nested (e.g., embedded/contained in) in any other table (e.g., an outermost table). Actually, on your page, you have two top-level tables. The first just contains the title First Noon Sun and the one after it contains everything else. I don't use FrontPage so I don't know how it shows tables, but if you look at the HTML source, you can see how the tables are used.

If you are still unclear on what a top-level table is, take a look at the Tables: Embedded (http://www.isilo.com/support/sample/iSiloDisplaySample/tables/embedded.htm) page of the iSilo Display Sample document. The table with the green column headers is considered a top-level table. The table with the gray column headers and the table with the blue column headers are nested within that top-level table.

JimThompson

01-18-2004, 03:20 AM

By top-level table, I mean a table that is not nested (e.g., embedded/contained in) in any other table (e.g., an outermost table). Actually, on your page, you have two top-level tables. The first just contains the title First Noon Sun and the one after it contains everything else. I don't use FrontPage so I don't know how it shows tables, but if you look at the HTML source, you can see how the tables are used.Here is the code down to that title:
-------------
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<title>My First Noon Sun Sight</title>
<meta name="Microsoft Border" content="tb, default">
</head>
<body>
<p><b><font size="1">Updated 
</font></b></p>

<h1><font size="3">
</font></h1>
<h1>My First Noon Sun Sight</h1>
---------------
I wonder if that navigation webbot, inserted by FrontPage, is the code that is creating that pesky table?

I have used FP for years, and just purchased DreamWeaver last month. If FP's navigation bot is at fault here, then either I'll have to use the workaround you suggest (easy), or iSiloX maybe could be coded to detect this glitch (perhaps tricky/expensive), or I'll have to convert all my sites to DW from FP (big job, could take a year or more).

Meanwhile I am using DW to build new pages with handhelds in mind.

The workaround (tables property adjustment in iSiloX) worked fine, by the way. Thanks for your help with this issue.

iSilo

01-18-2004, 09:46 AM

Sorry about not being clear about what I meant about the title. It is not the title of the HTML page I am referring to, but the heading in the body of the page that serves as the title. See the snippet below from your page, where the first table whose begin and end tags are in red, contain the title First Noon Sun. The second table, with its begin tag in purple contains everything else on the page.

<body><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td>
<p align="center"><font size="7">First Noon Sun
</font>
</td></tr></table><table dir="ltr" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td valign="top">
<p><b><font size="1">Updated January 05, 2004
</font></b></p>
<h1><font size="3"><nobr>[ <a href="../Celestial_Navigation.htm" target="">Up</a> ]</nobr> <nobr>[ <a href="CelestNotes/IntroCN.htm" target="">CN Study Notes</a> ]</nobr> <nobr>[ <a href="SumnerTrip.htm" target="">Sumner's LOP</a> ]</nobr> <nobr>[ First Noon Sun ]</nobr> <nobr>[ <a href="NoonSunSight.htm" target="">Noon Sun</a> ]</nobr> <nobr>[ <a href="CelestialSphere.htm" target="">Celestial Sphere</a> ]</nobr> <nobr>[ <a href="DatesTimeDiagrams.htm" target="">Dates in CN</a> ]</nobr> <nobr>[ <a href="WinterSolstice.htm" target="">Winter Solstice</a> ]</nobr>
</font></h1>
<h1>My First Noon Sun Sight</h1>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="#My sight data">My sight data<br>

JimThompson

01-18-2004, 03:44 PM

Thanks. I guess this is what they mean when they talk about FrontPage's bloated HTML. Sigh. Anyway, the workaround works fine.