Vcard spacing question - CSS or other solution?

[theo867]

Self-confessed newbie here. I've looked through quite as no. of posts, but didn't this addressed.

The vcards when displayed look too cluttered. The page's look would greatly benefit by having a generous amount of space between vcards. But how? 

I was hoping I could find a CSS way to increase the amount of spacing BETWEEN the vcards (not within). 

Adding to the table.sobi2Listing just increased the space above and below vcard block. Padding and margi changes on table.sobi2Listing td, just affected the space within ea vcard.

Any way to do this, folks? 

I'm really happy SOBI's here for Joomla. I'm really want to use this for a pending site and am testing on localhost.

Any light shed appreciated!

[Syrinx]

Are you using the vcard template?  Using margin should work.
You could always wrap your vcard info in a new div or table between the main <td></td> tags and add some padding or cellspacing.

[theo867]

Thnx so much for your reply. I tried both with the vcard template on and off first without modifying the vcard template. (Have not added any custom fields yet.)

One thing that helped was simply going to the general config and changing the border match the page's white background. But I'd like to do better. 

PROBLEM: When I edit the css and increase border thickness:  save, preview: no effect; it ignores the change (because the thickness setting's pre-empted by the system config. setting? --could I place an important tag in the css and get around this?).

Doesn't matter whether the vcard template's on or off--this css setting gets ignored. 

Was able to do margin/padding revs to the overall table, but this doesn't address the td info.

Though I've been re-reading what documentation there is, it's still confusing to me how the vcard and css interact along with system config settings. 

Any light on this appreciated. 

I am really trying to understand how this works. I know SOBI is a work in progress and there is great community interest in its success. In part that will be determined by SOBI updates, but that's not just that. As with Joomla's popularity, ease of use, and the amount of help and support from other users and developers, will make all the difference for that huge body of wretched newbies like me. 

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ONE related problem: the editor window works fine for css revs and retains the formatted source code.  But not so for the vcard template. I can't scroll down to view, as it immediately contracts to one wide line. Is this normal?  When I toggle-editor, formatting's lost and jammed together. Hence I  paste into & from a text editor to revise.

Also noticed that sometimes the vcard template source window goes totally blank. Does it get corrupted or what? (Ok I'll ask about this in sep. post!) 

[Syrinx]

PROBLEM: When I edit the css and increase border thickness:  save, preview: no effect; it ignores the change (because the thickness setting's pre-empted by the system config. setting? --could I place an important tag in the css and get around this?).

Doesn't matter whether the vcard template's on or off--this css setting gets ignored. 

Yes you can use !important in a css statement to force it to overrule all others. Example:

border-width: 10px!important;

Also, sometimes when you change your CSS files it does not seem to reflect on your site because the old style is still cached. You can force a site refresh by hitting CTRL-F5 and this will usually reload the CSS changes.

Also noticed that sometimes the vcard template source window goes totally blank. Does it get corrupted or what? (Ok I'll ask about this in sep. post!) 

The actual file is probably not corrupted but all I can say is that anytime something weird happens while viewing the vcard template DO NOT SAVE IT! I learned this the hard way

ONE related problem: the editor window works fine for css revs and retains the formatted source code.  But not so for the vcard template. I can't scroll down to view, as it immediately contracts to one wide line. Is this normal?  When I toggle-editor, formatting's lost and jammed together. Hence I  paste into & from a text editor to revise.

This only happens to me when I am using Opera browser. Not sure how to remedy this otherwise. It's never occured while using Firefox or IE. Maybe check your javascript error console?  Are you using the default admin template?

[theo867]

Thanks for replying. I think the important tag did it. I did increase the spacing this way, but then got error msg probs and took out the tag thinking that caused it. (?!)

After the css edit, save & repeated F5's, the page displayed and the td spacing reflected the increased border width--even though I'd taken the important tag out. (Huh?) Is Sobi doing some caching of its own?  Yes, I'm confused.   

Re TinyMCE display. you're absolutely right: I've been using Opera for localhost testing. Had tried Prism, a stripped down Firefox, after hearing the raves, but then SOBI's SAVE buttons didn't work consistently on Prism.

I'd still like a better remedy than having to increase border thickness. I'd like to have a 1px black border for ea vcard, but haven't found a way to do this without other things screwing up. I tried adding a class in my css and editing the vcard's td to use it, but that didn't want to work. Hmm...

If anyone else has some ideas about how to pull this off, please share!

This must be doable. I'm hoping the SOBI developers will fold a setting for this into a newer version.

[Syrinx]

After the css edit, save & repeated F5's, the page displayed and the td spacing reflected the increased border width--even though I'd taken the important tag out. (Huh?) Is Sobi doing some caching of its own?  Yes, I'm confused.   

Yes SOBI2 does have its own cache and you can clear it in the SOBI2 backend configuration - look in the upper right area for the "Empty Cache" button.