CSE 154: Web Programming, Spring 2013

Homework 2 (Movie Review) FAQ

Q: How do I get the rotten image and the "33%" text to line up?

A: The most common way to get it to look right is to play with the vertical alignment properties of the image. It should line up with the bottom of the text. Also try the usual tricks such as alignment, box model stuff (padding-margins-sizing), and floating elements. If you can't get it to look quite right, also consider setting the line-height property of the containing block element. This controls how tall the overall line of text/images should be on the page.

Q: My page looks right, but I used a lot of absolute positioning to do it. Is that what you wanted?

A: No. Don't use absolute positioning. You shouldn't need it at all on this assignment.

Q: The HTML skeleton file has a bulleted list, but on the page there are no bullets. So can I just remove the bulleted list tags and replace them with new tags?

A: No, you should not do that if you want full credit. Try to find a way to change the way the list is displayed by the browser instead.

Q: There is a gap between my banner and the top and sides of the page. Why won't it go away?

A: Some tags have default padding and margins. Try removing these using CSS rules. Think about other tags you may not have covered yet with your CSS rules.

Q: How do I make rounded corners on an element? How do I make an element semi-transparent? How do I put shadows underneath text?

A: These are new CSS features in CSS3, the new version of CSS that goes with HTML5. The book discusses how to do all of these things in Chapter 3, or you can Google it.

Q: I think I made my page correctly, but it does not line up perfectly in the web page comparison tool. Will I lose points? How different can they be before I will lose points?

A: Keep in mind that fonts and other things look different on every operating system and browser. The only way you would be likely to exactly match our expected output pixel for pixel would be to test it on the newest version of Firefox on Windows 7. If you want to do that, you can go to the IPL and use their computers. But even if you test on the same OS and browser, it may not match perfectly. As long as you properly follow the guidelines given in the spec, even if your image does not match pixel for pixel, you could still receive full credit.