[thelist] why doth i hate css? let me count the ways.

Chris W. Parker cparker at swatgear.com
Fri Oct 10 11:06:13 CDT 2003


Jeff Howden <mailto:jeff at jeffhowden.com>
    on Thursday, October 09, 2003 5:25 PM said:

> good, cause i think you hate css cause you don't understand how it
> works, not because it doesn't work.

If by "understand" you mean I don't spend day and night screwing around
with it to learn all of it's lame idiosyncrasies then yes, you'd be
right. css shouldn't be as complicated as it is. It doesn't even NEED to
be this complicated.

> there is, it's called "color".

I wasn't asking "how do I change the color of text?" I was trying to
illustrate how CSS is illogical. They have all these different
properties that say "font-" and then for some odd reason they break
their convention and use 'color'. Why? Seems like bad planning.

> there is no "align" property.

I know.

> the "text-align" property deals with
> content *inside* the box, not the box itself.  the property you
> "need" is the "float" property.  be careful using "float" though
> because if you don't understand fully how it works it can
> quickly wreck your work.

Why 'float'? If you've got the word align in 'text-align' being used to
describe it's ALIGNMENT, why would they all of a sudden create an odd
property called 'float'? They might as well have called it 'car' or
'trainwreck'.

> ok, so you know why.  technically that's a rant and not a plea for
> help.

You're taking that comment out of context. It was meant for the entire
email not just this point so...

> just in case you're open to having a handy reference sheet for how the
> various things like height/width, margin, padding, and border play
> off of each other, check these out

I will thanks.

> simple, a height of 100% is 100% of what?  the viewport?  the browser
> window?  the body?  if it's the body, is the body 100% of the
> viewport or less or more?

Of course not the browser, or viewport. That's like asking "The Titanic?
The universe?" The 'height' property should adjust itself so the height
of it's container (whatever that might be) just like 'width' does.

> the "vertical-align" property only applies to table cells.

It should apply to everything.

> see above.

see above.



Chris.


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