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I just finished the sketches for an entire book in one week *faints, but proudly* Now, there's finally time to get back to work on our new, cool, searchable auto-archive. No more excuses. No distracting fandom kerfuffles. It's almost finished, too... all that's left to do is transfer about 350 stories over from the old archive. Piece of cake *faints again*

Let's go see if

whichwitch666 and

valkyrn are in an updating mood, too. Misery loves company ;o)

In case you wonder, I'm just posting this so people can kick me in the ass if I start procrastinating again.

Also, there's one minor layout thingy I haven't figured out how to do yet. Anyone here happen to know something about stylesheets?

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No distracting fandom kerfuffles.

You said "kerfuffles"! One of the bestest words ever! *lol*

Congrats on getting all of those sketches done so quickly. :) What are the 350 stories from?

Anyone here happen to know something about stylesheets?

*raises hand* How can I help?

I like 'kerfuffle', too. But apparently LJ's spell checker doesn't...

What are the 350 stories from?

I'm playing archivist for the Better Buffy Fiction Archive (http://s8219.net/BetterBuffyFic/Archive/index2.html). For the longest time we've been updating the archive by pasting additional story info straight into the html. And not once, but five or six times over, one for each category. That was, as you can imagine, a total pain in the butt. So now we're changing to an auto-archive (http://s8219.net/bbfarchive/). In the long run that'll save loads of time, and it's so much more reader-friendly too. But those 400plus stories archived in the old place need to be moved first.

*raises hand* How can I help?

Oh, excellent! On the main page (http://s8219.net/bbfarchive/) , you can see a black line around the white text field. I want that same black outline on the quicksearch (http://s8219.net/bbfarchive/archive/quicksearch.html) and on the search engine (http://s8219.net/bbfarchive/cgi-bin/search.cgi) pages. Those two are dynamically created, unlike the main index page, and they use this stylesheet (http://s8219.net/bbfarchive/archive-form-stylesheet.css).

I'm not familiar with whatever language that thing is written in, but I figured that this line here creates the outline I want: [border: 0px solid black;]. Um, it's been a while, hope I remember this right.... if I remember correctly I changed that line to [border: 3px solid black;], and I may have had to move it to a different place in the code, too. Got the desired result for the quicksearch page, so no problem there - only that same stylesheet totally messed up the search engine page, drawing black outlines of varying sizes everywhere. I thought, no problem, I'll just use two different stylesheets... but I couldn't figure out where to place that line to get the search engine page look right. I tried every possible variation. You got any ideas?

Okay, I see what's causing the problem. The stylesheet defines a subclass of table called "content".

table.content {
    background: #ffffff;
    color: #000000;
    padding-top: 10px;
    padding-bottom: 10px;
    padding-left: 10px;
    margin: 0px;
}

The quicksearch page has only one table with the "content" class specified. (I'm replacing the angle brackets with square brackets so that the code shows up.)

[TABLE CLASS="content"]
[TR][TD]
The following quicksearch links are completely up to date and will run much faster...

The search page has several.

IMO the best solution is not to use a separate stylesheet, but to define a new subclass for the outside table only (the one you want to have a black border around). It could look like this:

table.outside{
    background: #ffffff;
    color: #000000;
    padding-top: 10px;
    padding-bottom: 10px;
    padding-left: 10px;
    margin: 0px;
    border: 3px solid black;
}

In the search page source code change this (just before the beginning FORM tag):

[TABLE CLASS="content"]
[TR][TD]

to this:

[TABLE CLASS="outside"]
[TR][TD]

Lemme know if it works. :)

I just finished the sketches for an entire book in one week

*pats you* Ooof. Yay for you, though.

I just gave up the inking on one of my books, because of the whole going-around-the-twist factor looming. Now I'm merely frantic, as opposed to certifiable. :)

Okay, I see what's causing the problem.
I like hearing that. Thank you, that's very helpful! The usual response I got whenever asking someone a question about the archive was, Guh?!

In the search page source code change this (just before the beginning FORM tag):

Okay, I see what you mean. Problem is that I can't go and change the html in the search page, as all the forms are dynamically created by the cgi scripts... using form_lib.pl, I _think_... I just spent a few happy hours trying to figure out how and where exactly the html for the forms gets created, but to no avail. Way out of my league.

However, I did make some progress, using your table.outside idea. I'm not exactly sure what I did or why it works, but I may be getting somewhere. I used an old, discarded version of the archive to practise (http://s8219.net/BBF/cgi-bin/search.cgi). I had to use an separate stylesheet for the search form after all, but at least now I have one outline on each page, hopefully at the right place. Hard to tell with the white background. I'm gonna try it out in the real archive tomorrow or so.

Whohohooo! It worked. Maybe not the most elegant solution, but voila, outline! Hehe. That was a great tip, thanks.

*pats you*

::purrs::

It's a good feeling, being so productive. I just wish it wouldn't come and go in waves. I fear this one will abate soon.

I just gave up the inking on one of my books, because of the whole going-around-the-twist factor looming. Now I'm merely frantic, as opposed to certifiable. :)

Right. Yay for sanity ;o)

Yay! You're most welcome. Glad to help. :)

Problem is that I can't go and change the html in the search page, as all the forms are dynamically created by the cgi scripts... using form_lib.pl, I _think_

Blargh -- perl. I wouldn't want to mess with that, either.

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