[manfreds]

I would like to make a nice drop shadow (similar to that of windows) around a table. How can I do that?

I have GoLive 6.

[redJag]

I have never used Adobe GoLive, so there may be a better/easier way to do it using that but:

Safari (and others?) has support for drop shadows via CSS. I'm not sure this applies to all objects, it might just be a text effect.

One way to attack it would be to fire up Photoshop, create a box, and create a dropshadow. Then take the corners and slices of the in-between. Tile the in-between...in-between the corners!

<font family="Courier">
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; +
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |
+---+
</font>

So the '-' is the slice from the bottom piece, the '+'s are the corner pieces, and the '|' is the slice from the side piece. Hope that clearer than mud at least.

p.s. that was a pain to get somewhat lined up, hope the 'graphic' helps..

[justinkim]

You could also nest a table. It wouldn't be all pretty and anti-aliased, though.

[James L]

To do what you want to do would truly require using graphics, sliced and placed together, around the table.

Some people try to fake it by just apply a border to 2 sides of the table... i.e. the bottom and right hand side. It doesn't really work well though, for the effect you are after.

[manfreds]

I tried graphics, but the problem is that it doesn't work at the corners. The shadow doesn't only change inside the corners, the shadow also changes near the corners at the sides. I tried to make such shadows in Photoshop but couldn't figure out how to.

[Simon Mundy]

Originally posted by manfreds:
I tried graphics, but the problem is that it doesn't work at the corners. The shadow doesn't only change inside the corners, the shadow also changes near the corners at the sides. I tried to make such shadows in Photoshop but couldn't figure out how to.

There's a fantastic article at http://www.alistapart.com/ that discusses the concept of 'sliding doors' - one large graphic is manipulated in such a way as to resize to fit a box of any size. The beauty behind the concept is that it's fully CSS-driven (no ugly tables), you require only one graphic to achieve your effects and it's fully automated once you set up your pages.

If you're handy with CSS and keen for a challenge, you could use the 'sliding door' concept and apply it to your needs, perhaps even utilising transparent .png files to achieve true transparent shadows.

Good luck

[James L]

Good call!

[manfreds]

Originally posted by Simon Mundy:
http://www.alistapart.com/

This is a very interesting site. Thank you.

However I don't see how I can use this sliding door concept for a shadow around a table, since the table is variable in width and height.

I will experiment with that.