[thelist] Tables vs Layers

[Kevin B. O'Brien]

At 10:44 AM 9/15/2000 -0700, Erika Meyer said something remarkably like 
(but somehow subtly different from):

>When you are going for gen 4 & above, does this mean it can be UNUSABLE on 
>lower browsers?  Or just not pretty?  It's sort of defeating the 
>accessibility purpose (mentioned earlier--though this thread has 
>wandered...) to exclude other browsers, isn't it?

There is certainly no reason it has to be unusable. On NN3, all of the 
things in my layers are flushed to the left, but perfectly usable. Strict 
attention to structure helps a lot here. If you use header tags for 
headers, rather than as a poor substitute for font effects, etc. you will 
have code that dergrades gracefully.

>I agree that XHTML strict has more potential for FORWARDS-compatibility 
>than HTML.  What is the argument against XHTML?

As far as I can tell, the main argument is that it means change. But there 
are some minor problems with browser incapacity. NN4, for instance, will 
not let you use CSS to remove the blue border around linked images. If you 
use border="0", the page will not be XHTML-compliant.

>I try to code my sites so they follow the WAI as much as I can.  I don't 
>know how successful I am, but one thing I don't sweat at this point is 
>tables for layout.  I just try to keep them simple.
>
>I don't use CSS positioning except here & there.  Mainly this is because 
>half the time I try to add positioning, I get seemingly random Netscape 
>crashes (yes I close my <div>s).  Sometimes even IE5 Mac will crash on 
>pages that use positioning.
>
>When your browser crashes, how accessible is that????

I guess I haven't been adventurous enough, since I haven't crashed anything 
yet. But I have a bias towards simplicity.<g> I design my pages so that 
none of the layers overlap, and there are no layers in layers. Avoiding 
those two seems to be the key for me, anyway.


--
Kevin B. O'Brien                TANSTAAFL
ahuka at ahuka.com
Help fight SPAM. Join CAUCE. http://www.cauce.org/
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."
                     G.K. Chesterton