Problem creating an article border from background images.

[Nokonium]

I'm working with Mephisto114, TP 0.983 & SMF 1.1.4. No other mods.

I am trying to create articles with a frame to match the theme, but not resort to using tables. I have done similar with an html block, but not without problems. For the html block I have managed to use a three piece background and border. The top and bottom I had to put in img tags, but the mid section displayed and repeated OK as a background with css.

When trying to make a matching article with a graphics border I cannot get any of the images to display as background images, which I really need to have because the pages will load better if I can get the middle graphics to repeat-x or repeat-y.

Altering the article code to use an images border would be ideal, but I'd have no problem using an html 'template' in say Dreamweaver to create articles to paste in, which is what I've been trying to do for several hours. The site owner will be the only one creating articles and there will not be a large number. It is a business site and eventually the articles and gallery will be for 'guests' and the forum for 'clients' and 'associates'.

It is still only rough with no content apart from some stuff I copied and pasted from wikipedia for setting up.

I do also have another problem that I haven't looked at yet, I turned off the right sidebar before removing the code to flip the sidebars. It is OK as an admin views it, but guests get a phantom right sidebar. I expect it will be down to changing a database value, but I don't know which one.

Any assistance will be greatfully received. 

[Nokonium]

I never solved the border problem, I had to give up on it and develop the customisation along another line.

However I didn't solve the phantom right panel problem. The database clearly shows no right panel so I'm now thinking it could be a cookie setting as in here possibly?

Code Select Expand

        // Guests don't have theme options!!
        if ($context['user']['is_guest'])
                echo '
                        document.cookie = "upshrink=" + (mode ? 1 : 0);';
        else
                echo '
                        smf_setThemeOption("collapse_rightbar", mode ? 1 : 0, null, "', $context['session_id'], '");';

        echo '
                        document.getElementById("upshrinkRightbar").src = smf_images_url + (mode ? "/upshrink2.gif" : "/upshrink.gif");

                        document.getElementById("rightbarHeader").style.display = mode ? "none" : "";

                        current_rightbar = mode;
                }
        // ]]></script>

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"><!-- // --><![CDATA[
var current_header = ', empty($options['collapse_header']) ? 'false' : 'true', ';

function shrinkHeader(mode)
{';


Any ideas?

[lebisol]

Hey nokonium,
Can you show us the link to border issues? why not use tables? If you are using divs then you would have to use relative positioning of those divs.
I suppose you cleared cookies or tried it in another browser?

[Nokonium]

I tried divs & tables, even with tables where all the cell sizes and image sizes were set and no spaces between tags & line breaks within tags I still had gaps between left and center, center and right.

On the cookie thing, I did try a different browser where I hadn't previously logged in and the phantom right panel was still there.

This is what I mean

[lebisol]

On tables side it depends on your slices. When in doubt you can set columns to be a few px or % smaller than actual image so you can use the images as "stoppers"....post your table code.
About panel,are we are talking about this panel being visible when viewing this article or FrontPage? I would check to see if the value is saved in the DB first before messing with the theme...especially if the panel works good on other parts of page and articles....
post back!

[Nokonium]

It is only the front page that has the problem with the phantom sidebar.

The database tp_settings table shows leftbar value of 1 and the rightbar value of 0, however on closer inspection I have found that the tp_settings_frontpage_visual table has the value 'left, right', editing the value to just 'left' has solved the problem.

Thank you for you time lebisol 

[lebisol]

Hey nice to hear!
Sometimes it is worth inspecting the db...after all browser is "just an interface".
Nice work!

[ZarPrime]

The phantom sidebar problem is something I reported in the bugtracker quite a while back.  It is now closed but I don't know if it was ever solved.  The link is ...
http://www.tinyportal.net/index.php?action=bugtracker;sa=bug201

[Nokonium]

I will check out this when we get the next alpha version to test.