[thelist] Moving to CSS for layout and design (was: CSS layout site check)

Erik Mattheis gozz at gozz.com
Tue Dec 11 09:36:22 CST 2001


At 11:20 AM +0100 12/11/01, Mark Howells wrote:
>By sticking
>with tables to control page layout, web design and development will reach a
>point where there are no further opportunities for expansion, not least
>because of the sheer amount of development time it takes to find and fix
>bugs in a page containing nested tables more than a few levels deep.

Think about it - the vast majority of page views for NN 4.x out there 
are from people who don't know any better or are viewing it in NN 
because they're forced to by system admins. I gladly sacrifice the 
warm gushy feeling of only using CSS for the benefit of those poor 
folks.

About fixing tables taking forever ... I'd guess that you don't code 
by hand, but edit your HTML by hand every once in a while ... every 
HTML editor I use nicely points out my errors; if it takes me more 
than 30 seconds to fix, I give myself three score minus one lashes 
and wear a hair shirt until the next New Moon.

But my point to the originator of the thread was if one cares enough 
that the posted layout looks consistent among browsers, it's 
pointless to attempt it without tables ... or at least fiddle with 
relative positioning instead of using float: [insert meaningless 
value here] ... or why not do it with tables and give each TD 
positioning styles as well?

CSS is grrrreat ... I haven't used a font tag since 1999, maybe 98, 
and have no problem with things looking different (but not ugly) in 
NN 4.x ... however, for the kind of stuff the posted URL was 
attempting it only makes sense if you know only browsers that will 
get the layout right will load it.

>By changing the code on one simple page
>in my current project from HTML tables to CSS, I reduced the file size by
>over 50% at the first "sweep".

Sure, but maybe the 3% of that 50% that are table tags should stay 
... case in point: did you look at the stylesheet for the posted URL? 
A lot larger filesize wise than the table tags which would be 
required on the four pages of the site ... and on top of that, it 
looks like crap in NN.

It's pointless to "just" use CSS if you're also going to allow it to 
be seen by browsers that will botch your intentions ... the phrase 
"throwing out the baby with the bath water" comes to mind.



-- 

__________________________________________
- Erik Mattheis

(612) 377 2272
http://goZz.com/

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