How to set the indent between bullet and text in FrontPage table

[laimele]

How do I set the indent between bullet and text in a FrontPage table? There
is no way to do this manually that I can see and the default is to have NO
space between them. Incomprehensible. And there is NOTHING, zero, zip, zilch,
nada, in the Help in FrontPage or5 online.

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Part of the reason you don't find anything is really very simple, there
isn't anything directly in HTML that enables you to do this.HTML itself
lacks a lot of features that you'd normally find in things like Word.
Normally you would be able to extend the properties of certain HTML elements
using what is known as Cascading StyleSheets (CSS). Unfortunately, I've
never seen any CSS that let's you define the space between a bullet and the
text after it. Applying things such as margins, padding, etc. don't function
on the bullet itself or the text itself, but on everything as a whole. Even
the tricks you might use to try to apply CSS to the text part of the list
item only don't have any effect at all usually.

Hope this helps,
Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage

 

[laimele]

Hi Mark -

I'm sorry, no, it doesn't help. Having space between a bullet and the text
that follows it is a standard style requirement. I have never seen ANY
document that does not have this. Even MS's little thumbnails for bulleted
lists do not have the bullet sitting directly next to the text. There's got
to be a way to do this. So how do you do it?

Laimele

 

[Dan L]

Hit the space bar a couple of times or add =&-n-b-s-p-;= in html view

 

[laimele]

Hi Dan -

That helps in single line bulleted items, but not when you have more than
one line for each bullet. Then the lines align to the bullet, not to the
correct beginning of the paragraph, and look highly unprofessional. Surely
there is some better way of dealing with this.

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Remember though, HTML is a different kind of document. It was originally
meant to be very, very simplistic. It is not a layout language such as SGML,
it is simplya a language that describes the content of a document and not
necessarily the positioning of elements. HTML has evolved, but some things
have remained fairly rigid. Do not expect FrontPage, or any other HTML
editor for that matter to be able to do things you would normally find with
other document mediums. Even looking at the HTML standards doesn't offer any
information because a bulleted list in HTML is not a stylistic
representation, but an organizational one that, unfortunately, doesn't
expose a lot of features that can be controlled. A bullet in HTML is simply
an unordered list element (<ul>) with a number of list items. The list items
themselves (<li>) don't expose any features that would let you alter this
behavior. The thumbnails MS uses for buttons are actually standardized
buttons that MS even includes in their software development tool packages
and are re-used almost everywhere. About the only things that can be changed
about the bullet are it's type (circle, disc, roman letters, etc...) or an
image to use in it's place.

Hope this helps,
Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage

 

[Dan L]

Table with cells? Bullets in one cell, text in other?
________________________
| o | Now is the time for all |
| | good men to come to |
| | come to the aid of |
| | their country. |
|__|___________________|
| o | And so on... |
|__|___________________|

 

[laimele]

Dan, that works! Thanks!

Mark, I understand your point, but that doesn't help me. Nor does it help
any of the many people who need to know how to accomplish this simple
formatting task. If you have functionality for bulleted and numbered lists,
you need to provide some way of formatting them properly.

Dan, I really appreciate your help.

 

[Wally S]

You could use an image for the bullet and include the space in the image.

Wally S

 

[MikeR]

Or put a transparent .gif between the bullet and the text.
HTML is. I wouldn't try (a second time) to wax my kitchen floor with a jackhammer.
Different tools, different capabilities.

MikeR

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

I'm sorry that I focused too much on working with only bulleted list
formatting. I should have discussed the other options which are all cludges
and not really what youa re asking for, which is a formatting issue. THe
bottom line though is MS can't provide functionality that doesn't exist in
the HTML standard. I would love for FP to have a way to adjust the spacing,
but there's just no way it can since there is nothing in HTML that would let
it do that. A table with individual bullets in cells is an excellent way of
doing this, but MS can't have FrontPage creating bulleted lists like this
because that's not the HTML people expect it to create. A lot of designers
get real fussy about the HTML that is generated because using something like
a table instead of an ordered lists has another entire bunch of issues as
you know have to deal with how the various browsers render tables (sometimes
they can do something funky and unexpected). The real issue though is the
web is not like any other type of document medium. There are a lot of things
that just work a certain way and that's it. Coming from other mediums we
often expect to have this functionality but it just isn't so. Remember, HTML
was not created by a bunch of document gurus, it was designed at a nuclear
engineering lab and may not always do what we wish it to.

Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage

 

[Arlene]

First, type an unformatted list. Then select the unformatted list, Format,
Bullets and Numbering, Specify picture, Browse, OK; in the List Properties
dialog box, click Style, Modify Style, Format, Spacing Before--type 0,
Spacing After--type 0, OK, OK, OK. In design view select the items to be
nested, click Increase Indent twice, then click the Numbering button--voila!!
BTW, this tip is courtesy of a brand new brilliant FrontPage student. Kudos
to her.

Arlene

 

[Arlene]

Please ignore my previous post and use these steps.

To fix extra spacing in a list (with or without nests) courtesy of Seol-Ah
Park, F06 class: First, type an unformatted list. Then select the unformatted
list, Format, Bullets and Numbering, Specify picture, Browse, click the
desired picture, Open; in the Picture Bullets tab, click Style; in the Modify
Style window, click Format, Paragraph; in the Paragraph window, Spacing
Before—type 0, Spacing After—type 0, OK, OK, OK. In design view select the
items to be nested, click Increase Indent twice, then click the Numbering
button--voila!!

Arlene