I have trouble remembering what the values in shorthand correspond to, e.g., in:

margin: a, b, c, d;

... which of a, b, c and d correspond to top, leftside, etc.

Is this something you just remember with practice, or do you have a mnemonic to help you remember? Also, is the shorthand in the same order for padding?

It's an example of something that you think "this will take too seconds to look up in my reference books", but actually end up taking ten minutes, so to date I've found it quicker to use the longhand!

Cheers,

Carl

Yes, it's the same for padding. I use to think of a clock, starting at 12:00 (00:00), the order going clockwise. Top - right - bottom - left. You just have to remember to start at 00:00 and then follow the hand.

Come on, now! :)
Then you need to go there more often. Starting either here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/propidx.html
here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/cover.html#toc
or here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/indexlist.html
will take you here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/box.html#propdef-margin
and here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/box.html#propdef-padding
in a couple of seconds. But if you find it hard, why not bookmark the bits or note the rules down?



--
http://yupapa.com

Brilliant, that's exactly what I needed - don't think even I could forget a clock starting at 12!

Cheers,

Carl

And I have taken you up on the suggestion of bookmarking your excellent links. Thanks meow!

Just FYI for anyone else that reads this, it is always...

Four values: top, right, bottom, left (e.g. margin: 2px 2px 2px 2px)

Three values: top, right and left, bottom (e.g. margin: 2px 2px 2px)

Two values: top and bottom, right and left (e.g. margin: 2px 2px)

One value: all four sides. (e.g. margin: 2px)

This applies to all applicable properties, margin, padding, border-color, border-width, border-style, etc.

Regards,
Rich

--
[http://www.smilingsouls.net]
Mail_IMAP: A PHP/C-Client/PEAR solution for webmail
Author: Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets For Web Design

I was experimenting with a document today, and was using the following style rule:

margin:5px 10%;

i.e. note the mixture of measurement units.

It's for the main "wrapper" div, containing and boxing up all the document content, and seems to work OK in the browsers I have. But is it legitimate as far as the W3C are concerned, and do any browsers have trouble with it?

Easiest answer is: Try it in other browsers and see if it works.

Or if you have lots of free time, you could read the w3c spec on CSS.

-Peter