When Can We Expect a Fix for FireFox HTML Rendering?

[steve.ledger]

BONES have a read through Xara's Google doc regarding HTML Website Creation in Xara Xtreme, particularly under the heading Line Spacing & Point Sizes. Does this help any?

[covoxer]

covoxer, let's not go there. Suffice to say that I found out the hard way that the CD version is the latest, and the problem is still there.

This bug (repeating object names) was fixed in the 5001 build of Xtreme (html filter version 1.1.0.311) on April 16. That's all I can say. If 4966 is the latest available build then I can't help much. You'll have to wait for the next update which will definitely contain this fix.

PS Meanwhile, you may look at this post: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...30&postcount=9
It also contains the fix.

[BONES]

I'll read through things more thoroughly tonight but, on the face of it, I am already doing all this stuff so it is very likely the bug covoxer mentioned. That, of course, sort of answers my original question, so I suppose I will have to keep using my faithful PageMill for a little while longer.
I actually thought of using the Flash export a while ago to create a new site but there are too many fiddly things that would be a PITA to organise doing it that way. This new feature seems really, really powerful by comparison but I suppose I will just have to be patient until the bug-fix becomes available.

[covoxer]

You don't have to read it! This post: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...30&postcount=9 has a newer version of the filter attached. That version is recent enough for you, it has this bug fixed. So, just follow the link, download and instal the filter, and use it! That simple...

[BONES]

Cool, that solves the problem, thanks! That said, it has just made me focus on the next one, which is not as bad but still annoying. I notice that when you resize text in the browser, the lines remain intact and just stretch across the page, rather than remaining inside the original bounds of the text box and flowing to the next line. It makes multi-column layouts a bit tricky but it is at least manageable.
Thanks again.

[covoxer]

I notice that when you resize text in the browser, the lines remain intact and just stretch across the page

You can get it only in FireFox2 and Safari. All other browsers, including Firefox3 work well. Unfortunately, thiscan't be avoided.

[BobInce]

the lines remain intact and just stretch across the page, rather than remaining inside the original bounds of the text box and flowing to the next line.

You can see what happens when Xtreme does flow to the next line by using justified text. This changes the text layout to a block-based one with reflow.

The problem is in this case the differences in text size pile up, instead of resetting on each line. Then the end of a block of text can crash into the next block or the bottom of the page. This is typically a worse failure than each line growing independently.

Text size on the web is never reliable. There can be small differences due to font replacements and different rendering options and rounding, or more significant differences due to the user changing the text size. (There are many options that can affect text size across many browsers, not just the default text resizer on the View menu.) With Xtreme the best way to cope with this is to include lots of whitespace and wide leading, so that there is a buffer for text to grow a bit larger without breaking everything.

The 'proper' web way to do it is to allow the page to grow bigger and smaller in response to font size changes and window resizing. But that's simply not possible in a visual-based (WYSIWYG) design tool like Xtreme. There would have to be huge changes to Xtreme's capabilities to make it understand pages in which certain areas can grow and shrink - effectively it would have to become a full-on web authoring package. And I don't think that's a fruitful direction to take a vector graphics editor.