CSS-P: Demystifying HTML Element Positioning Contexts
By Evan Egalite
The purpose of this article is to show how to use Cascading Style Sheets to control the layout of nested HTML elements on a page, and to demystify the confusing absolute and relative element positioning scheme used by the browser.
The Problem with HTML Tags
HTML tags become a problem when you use them to manage both content and how the content is displayed. Consider the following HTML code: This is a sample sentence, fiend.
Let’s say we want to apply bold formatting to the word ‘fiend’. We simply add the b (bold) HTML tag. This is a sample sentence, fiend.
Now let’s say we want to apply italic formatting to the whole sentence. This is a sample sentence, fiend.
We would also like a certain font and font size.
This is a sample sentence,
fiend.
You can see how this can become a problem. Every time you want to add a new style, you have to add another set of formatting tags. The amount of formatting is proportionally to the number of formatting tags. HTML code written this way is difficult to read and maintain.
If we could separate the content code from the presentation code, then we could centralize the formatting code is a separate location – like a file. Then whenever we wanted to change the way the content is presented, we could simply modify the formatting code. Luckily, such a technology exists, it is called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
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psSendMail DLL
psSendMail™ is a Windows™ DLL that provides the ability to send e-mail messages. The purpose of this DLL is to make e-mail capability possible for those development environments that are capable of communicating with a DLL but cannot send e-mail directly. There are two interfaces to the DLL. The first interface, or Standard Interface, does not limit the length of the strings passed into each of the functions. This allows the calling program to add as many addresses as desired in the To, CC, and BCC fields. It also allows for unlimited length in the subject and the body of the e-mail. The downside, however, to this interface is that the calling program must make a call to each step in the process and must utilize PChars (Pointer to array of character, null terminated). The second interface, or Quick Send Interface, is a wrapper function that internal makes a call to each of the appropriate functions from the first interface. The downside to this interface is that you cannot supply CC or BCC addresses and the To, Subject, and Message Body are each limited to 255 characters, but they are passed as standard strings.
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