Metapost: Footer Bar

In keeping with this month's focus on website tweaks, you will notice that the Header O' Buttons has been duplicated to live down as an additional Footer O' Buttons.


Why would you want a Footer O' Buttons? Well, there's a ROT13 button down there, easy to access if you're typing out a comment. There's also a Google Search box down there, again easy to launch mid-comment. Since both buttons launch a new window or tab, you won't even lose your comment. Groovy!

Are there easier ways to do this with Firefox plugins? Oh my goodness, yes. Does Ana's work limit the use of Firefox plugins for security reasons? Alas, yes. Is this all an elaborate ploy to turn the blog into Ana's one-stop-shop homepage? Probably.

So why are the rest of the buttons down there? Ana requires symmetry or her head explodes. Sad but true.

(Weirdness: I cannot get rid of that little blank space under the bar. My Test Edits page displays correctly and my text comparison tool says that my HTML for that site is essentially identical to my HTML for this site. It's driving me nuts. Any HTML gurus who want to tell me what I'm doing wrong will be greatly appreciated.)

5 comments:

Bronwyn said...

Chances are your footer or one or its parent elements has a padding or margin creating that space. It could be a bug if it were IE, but in Firefox not so likely.

Actually, here in Firefox there is only a pixel or two of extra space, so you probably are using IE at work? If so do not stop at checking logical things like padding and margins. In IE, *anything* can trigger weird layout bugs. Here's what I had to to do fix one in a nav list I worked on:

/* BLOODY IE HACKS */
/* removes extra space under sidebar and archive list items in IE6 */
/* Hides from IE5-mac \*/
* html ul li.widget ul li, .entries ul li, ul li.widget ul li ul li {
border-bottom: 1px solid white;
}
/* End hide from IE5-mac */

So also try adding bottom borders to things in your footer and see if the extra space suddenly goes away.

Brin Bellway said...

Bronwyn: Actually, here in Firefox there is only a pixel or two of extra space, so you probably are using IE at work?

There's a significant amount of space in my Firefox, but Linux is weird sometimes.

chris the cynic said...

I'm getting the extra space in Chrome and Firefox, so I don't think it's an IE thing.

Ana Mardoll said...

Sometimes it shows in Firefox for me, and other times not. The really odd thing is that it's *not* doing it in the Test Edits board, which has an almost identical HTML and CSS.

Bronwyn, is that HTML or CSS? I speak neither, but it *looks* like CSS to me. o.O

chris the cynic said...

What I've found is that it's always there in both Chrome and Firefox but in Firefox there's a bit of weirdness that makes it so it doesn't always look like it's there. Sometimes going to the end of the page Firefox doesn't go all the way to the end so it looks like the space isn't there, but if you then manually scroll down a little further you'll see that the space is there.

No idea why it does that.

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