One line preview on a table?

AlexMK92

Hi guys; Im making a website for my ICT project and an element of it is creating a forum based section
I have all my code working and everything posts properly so hopefully this question shouldnt be too hard to solve

I was just wondering, is there a) anyway to assign an ID to a <td> as so I could bring the bottom margin of some of my elements to the top of the table as there flaoting in the middle atm.
or b) is there anyway I can force my script to only display a snippet of the post that gets entered when the person make a post??

here you can see a screenshot of my current system
http://gyazo.com/824a80c2b6b48e7bd621633b832d47c7

I basically want the post content to be displayed through 1-2 lines rather than flooding the div

Thanks!
Alex.

Bonesnap

All HTML elements as far as I know can have an ID attribute. As for only displaying a snippet of the post... check the post's length and if it's over a certain value truncate it (this is usually complemented with "..." to indicate there's more).

AlexMK92

Thankyou Bone, how would I go about changing the length? would I change this in my database or is it something that I will declare in line in my PHP/HTML? if so what function should I apply?
Thanks
Alex.

Bonesnap

You wouldn't actually be changing the post's length, just checking it. Let's say you want to display the first 100 characters, but the post is 500 characters. Test if the post is greater than 100 characters. If it is, use the substr() function to display the first 100 characters. If it's less than or equal to 100 characters, then just display the post as-is.

johanafm

AlexMK92;10990214 wrote:
bring the bottom margin of some of my elements to the top of the table

What does this mean? What elements? How can there bottom margin be brought to the top anything?
Margin is something that extends around an element. The next element will have it's margin-top touch the margin-bottom of the previous element, and there is no way around that, unless you break something out of the ordinary content flow, by using either an absolutely or fixed positioning or floating content with the float property.
If you do not want the margin to extend around the element, you set it to 0. But the total height of an element is still margin-top + border-top + padding-top + height + padding-bottom + border-bottom + margin-bottom.

AlexMK92;10990214 wrote:
as there flaoting in the middle atm.

What is floating where and how? There is no float: middle, only left and right.

Bonesnap;10990260 wrote:
this is usually complemented with "..."

It is most likely complemented by ellipsis rather than 3 dots, which usually would mean …, although this is language dependent, and possibly even country dependent.

Bonesnap

johanafm;10990295 wrote:
It is most likely complemented by ellipsis rather than 3 dots, which usually would mean …, although this is language dependent, and possibly even country dependent.

An ellipsis is three dots. How he chooses to display it is up to him, I was just adding that text that is cut off is usually accompanied by "...". I would probably do it …, too, but literally adding three periods is perfectly acceptable.

johanafm

Bonesnap;10990339 wrote:
An ellipsis is three dots.

An ellipsis looks like three dots but you cannot universally assume that you will not break either rules or guidelines by using 3 separate dots (just like how >> and &raquo aren't interchangeable). Either way, it has to be one unbreakable unit.

There is also a difference between an ellipsis ligature and 3 separate dots. The ellipsis ligature usually (always?) has the average width of . . . and ... , which I believe is reason enough for using it.

Some languages also have rules governing wether an ellipsis before a full stop should be followed by a white space or not. If it should not be followed by one and you use 3 non-spaced dots, you get ....
If it should be followed by a white space and you use 3 spaced dots, you get . . . .

Since the ellipsis ligature uses different spacing, it should work in conjunction with either rule.

Bonesnap

johanafm;10990343 wrote:
An ellipsis looks like three dots but you cannot universally assume that you will not break either rules or guidelines by using 3 separate dots (just like how >> and &raquo aren't interchangeable). Either way, it has to be one unbreakable unit.

There is also a difference between an ellipsis ligature and 3 separate dots. The ellipsis ligature usually (always?) has the average width of . . . and ... , which I believe is reason enough for using it.

Some languages also have rules governing wether an ellipsis before a full stop should be followed by a white space or not. If it should not be followed by one and you use 3 non-spaced dots, you get ....
If it should be followed by a white space and you use 3 spaced dots, you get . . . .

Since the ellipsis ligature uses different spacing, it should work in conjunction with either rule.

Wikipedia wrote:
The most common form of an ellipsis is a row of three periods or full stops (...) or a pre-composed triple-dot glyph (…).

Whether there's spaces before or after is irrelevant; an ellipsis is still three dots. If a language calls for spaces before or after, he can still put those in, regardless if he uses three literal dots or ….

johanafm

Ellipsis followed by dot or four dots?
. . . .
Ellipsis followed by dot or four dots?
....
... .
Compared to
… .
…. (Difference is visible if barely)

I bleieve that if you are creating web pages containing text, you should adhere to common typography practices where you are dealing with . Furthermore, I believe that if you are using characters in computing, you most definitely should consider the implications of these choices.
You are after all dealing with 3 1 glyphs or 3 1 characters vs 1 ligature (3 graphemes combined into 1 glyph) or 1 character.

echo html_entity_decode('&hellip;', ENT_QUOTES, 'utf-8') .': ' . mb_strlen(html_entity_decode('&hellip;', ENT_QUOTES, 'utf-8')) . PHP_EOL;
echo '...: ' . mb_strlen('...') . PHP_EOL;

And

SELECT t.ch, '...'
FROM
  (SELECT '...' AS ch UNION SELECT '…') t
ORDER BY ch

Bonesnap

johanafm;10990378 wrote:
I bleieve that if you are creating web pages containing text, you should adhere to common typography practices where you are dealing with .

And using three literal periods is perfectly acceptable.

johanafm;10990378 wrote:
Furthermore, I believe that if you are using characters in computing, you most definitely should consider the implications of these choices.

Nowhere did I say you shouldn't consider your choice. In this case, he's doing a simple text replace. It literally doesn't matter if he chooses to use three literal dots or …. You're making this into something much bigger than it needs to be.

johanafm;10990378 wrote:
You are after all dealing with 3 1 glyphs or 3 1 characters vs 1 ligature (3 graphemes combined into 1 glyph) or 1 character.

And it doesn't matter which one he chooses to use so long as he's consistent.

Weedpacket

I'm sure the original poster would be aware if the language being used uses a different ellipsis from the "…" that English uses.