THE COMMENTARIES OF CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR

ABOUT THIS SITE

This is a simple test site that I made to work out some simple solutions to issues of cross-browser compatibility, 508 compliance, and Web Standards that I have encountered in other more complex projects.

Fixed positioning

The menu pane on the left uses fixed positioning to keep the menu visible when the page is scrolled down. Internet Explorer can often encounter problems with fixed position elements when the text is zoomed to a larger size, whether by the browser zoom command or by the dynamic resizing controls on the page. The problems arise when auto margins are used to center the page content. Other browsers do not have this problem, so I used a conditional comment to left align the page content in IE only. Other browsers display centered content.

Persistence of text resizing

The text size controls on the Contents pane apply the selected size value to the body tag. Ordinarily, this change would affect the current page only. I wanted to make the change persistent throughout the site, without using cookies. This was a simple fix; I pass the em size from the old page to the new within the window.name object. The em size is then applied to the body element by a script immediately following the body tag. This makes the behavior of the on-screen controls identical to the browser zoom command in all browsers.

508 and Web Standards compliance

These pages validate as well-formed CSS and HTML 4.01 Strict. Presentation is separated from content, and 508 compliance standards are met.