CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlcssinternet-explorerline-breakspocketpc
Chris Marasti-Georg
Chris Marasti-Georg

Reputation: 34680

Non-breaking non-space in HTML

I have a bowling web application that allows pretty detailed frame-by-frame information entry. One thing it allows is tracking which pins were knocked down on each ball. To display this information, I make it look like a rack of pins:

o o o o
 o o o
  o o
   o

Images are used to represent the pins. So, for the back row, I have four img tags, then a br tag. It works great... mostly. The problem is in small browsers, such as IEMobile. In this case, where there are may 10 or 11 columns in a table, and there may be a rack of pins in each column, Internet Explorer will try to shrink the column size to fit on the screen, and I end up with something like this:

o o o
  o
o o o
 o o
  o

or

o o
o o
o o
 o
o o
 o

The structure is:

<tr>
    <td>
        <!-- some whitespace -->
        <div class="..."><img .../><img .../><img .../><img .../><br/>...</div>
        <!-- some whitespace -->
    </td>
</tr>

There is no whitespace inside the inner div. If you look at this page in a regular browser, it should display fine. If you look at it in IEMobile, it does not.

Any hints or suggestions? Maybe some sort of &nbsp; that doesn't actually add a space?

Follow-up/Summary

I have received and tried several good suggestions, including:

What I ended up doing

*hangs head and mumbles something*

Yes, that's right, a transparent GIF at the top of the div, sized to the width I need. End code (simplified) looks like:

<table class="game">
    <tr class="analysis leave">
        <!-- ... -->
        <td> <div class="smallpins"><img class="spacer" src="http://seasrc.th.net/gif/cleardot.gif" /><br/><img src="/img/pinsmall.gif"/><img src="/img/nopinsmall.gif"/><img src="/img/nopinsmall.gif"/><img src="/img/nopinsmall.gif"/><br/><img src="/img/pinsmall.gif"/><img src="/img/pinsmall.gif"/><img src="/img/nopinsmall.gif"/><br/><img src="/img/nopinsmall.gif"/><img src="/img/nopinsmall.gif"/><br/><img src="/img/nopinsmall.gif"/></div> </td>
        <!-- ... -->
    </tr>
</table>

And CSS:

div.smallpins {
    background: url(/img/lane.gif) repeat;
    text-align: center;
    padding: 0;
    white-space: nowrap;
}
div.smallpins img {
    width: 1em;
    height: 1em;
}
div.smallpins img.spacer {
    width: 4.5em;
    height: 0px;
}
table.game tr.leave td{
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;
}
table.game tr.leave .smallpins {
    min-width: 4em;
    white-space: nowrap;
    background: none;
}

P.S.: No, I will not be hotlinking someone else's clear dot in my final solution :)

Upvotes: 11

Views: 16872

Answers (18)

DanDuran
DanDuran

Reputation:

I figured out that there is a setting on the client where they can select the view as 1) Single Column, 2) Desktop View, and 3) Fit Window.

According to MSDN, the default is supposed to be to Fit Window. But my wife's IE Mobile phone was defaulting to a Single Column. So no matter what, it would wrap everything into a single column. If I switched to any of the other two options it looked fine.

Well, you can set this with a meta tag:

<meta name="MobileOptimized" content="320">

will set the page width to 320 pixels. But I don't know how to make it go to auto.

This does not work on BlackBerry's prior to v4.6 - you're stuck with single column unless the user manually changes to desktop view. With 4.6 or later, the following is supposed to work, but I haven't tested it:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=320">

Upvotes: 2

Tyler
Tyler

Reputation: 28874

  • There isn't any nobr HTML tag; I am not sure how well-supported this is, though.
  • You could use CSS overflow:visible and non-breaking spaces between your elements (images), but no other white space in the HTML content for those lines.

Upvotes: 1

Michel
Michel

Reputation: 726

You can replace img with span and use a background image with each span, depending on a CSS class:

<p class="..."><span class="pin"></span><span>&nbsp;</span><span class="pin"></span>...
<p class="..."><span class="pin"></span><span>&nbsp;</span><span class="pin"></span>...
<p class="..."><span class="pin"></span><span>&nbsp;</span><span class="pin"></span>...
<p class="..."><span class="pin"></span><span>&nbsp;</span><span class="pin"></span>...

(Personally I think it's better to have four lines with a p tag instead of a single div with br.)

Then in CSS you can have something like this:

p.smallpins {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    height: 11px;
    font-size: 1px;
}
p.smallpins span {
    width: 11px;
    background-image: url(nopinsmall.gif);
    background-repeat: ...
    background-position: ...
}
p.smallpins span.pin {
    background-image: url(pinsmall.gif);
}

Upvotes: 1

zorantula
zorantula

Reputation:

Since you're going for maximum compatibility, consider generating a single image representing the frame.

If you're using PHP, you can use GD to dynamically create images representing the frames based on the same input that you would use to create the HTML in your question. The biggest advantage to doing this is that any browser which could display a PNG or GIF would be able to display your frame.

Upvotes: 2

scunliffe
scunliffe

Reputation: 63676

Would it not be easier if you do it like this?

<div id="container">
  <div id="row1">
    <img/><img/><img/><img/>
  </div>
  <div id="row2">
    <img/><img/><img/>
  </div>
  <div id="row3">
    <img/><img/>
  </div>
  <div id="row4">
    <img/>
  </div>
</div>

Whereby your CSS would handle the alignment?

.container div{
  text-align:center;
}

Upvotes: -1

Ken Ray
Ken Ray

Reputation: 2528

You could try the css "nowrap" option in the containing div.

{white-space: nowrap;}

Not sure how widely that is supported.

Upvotes: 26

racurry
racurry

Reputation: 422

What would make the most sense is changing out which image is displayed on the fly:

<div id="pin-images">
    <img src="fivepins.jpg" />
    <img src="fourpins.jpg" />
    <img src="threepins.jpg" />
    <img src="twopins.jpg" />
    <img src="onepin.jpg" />
</div>

Upvotes: 4

Sam Hasler
Sam Hasler

Reputation: 12627

Have separate images for every possible arrangement of each row.

That would only require 30 images (16+8+4+2)

Upvotes: 1

Michel
Michel

Reputation: 726

Do you have tried to define a width for the column? Like <td width="123px"> or <td style="width:123px">. And maybe also for the div ?

Upvotes: 1

Kibbee
Kibbee

Reputation: 66152

Maybe this is just one case where you could use tables to enforce layout. It's not optimal, and I know you aren't supposed to use tables for things that aren't tabular, but you could do something like this. 

<table>
<tr>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;></td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><img src="Pin.jpg"></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>

Upvotes: 0

Mike Dimmick
Mike Dimmick

Reputation: 9802

Use the word joiner character, U+2060 (i.e. &#x2060;)

Upvotes: 1

Paul Whelan
Paul Whelan

Reputation: 16809

Why not have an image for all possible outcomes for the pins? No Messing with layouts for browsers an image is an image

Generate them on the fly caching the created images for reuse.

Upvotes: 4

Gersan
Gersan

Reputation:

Add a "nowrap" in your td tag...

Upvotes: 3

Teifion
Teifion

Reputation: 111079

I may have misunderstood what you are after but I think that you can do what I've done for logos on a map.

The map background tile is drawn then each image is told to float left and given some interesting margins so that they are positioned as I want them to be (view source to see how it's done).

Upvotes: 1

Chris Serra
Chris Serra

Reputation: 13546

Try it with the <div> tag on the same line as <td>...</td>

Upvotes: 1

Ferruccio
Ferruccio

Reputation: 100718

Since you are using images anyway, why not generate an image representing the whole layout on the fly? You can use something like GD or ImageMagick to do the trick.

Upvotes: 3

Tim Cochran
Tim Cochran

Reputation: 1876

I've got around this type of issue in the past by dynamically creating the entire image (with appropriate pin arrangement) as a single image. If you are using ASP.NET, this is pretty easy to do with GDI calls. You just dynamically create the image with pin placement, then serve to the page as a single image. Takes all the alignment issues out of the picture (pun intended).

Upvotes: 4

Josh Stodola
Josh Stodola

Reputation: 82513

You might need an actual space immediately following the semi-colon in  

Upvotes: 1

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