[thelist] Total separation of content and presentation

[Tony Crockford]

At 15:28 on Tuesday, 21 Dec 2004, Ellen Kanner wrote:

> We are looking to use <divs>, most definitely.
>
> What we're trying to accomplish is a page laid out in the CSS,  
> independent of the order/structure it appears in the HTML.  <divs> that  
> are independent of one another and could be relocated, within the CSS,  
> without having to go into the HTML.  Not using container <divs>, if it's  
> possible.
> We're trying to establish our 'perma-code', so should a new design come  
> down the pike, we could modify the style sheets in a few locations,  
> rather than go in to thousands of HTML pages and do the restructuring  
> there. Anyone done tests without container <divs> and hacks? Our layout  
> will be three fluid columns, any length, with flexible vertical sizing  
> on divs so text can be resized.
>
> We'd like to talk with anyone who has experience with this...

have you thought this through?  the source order affects the presentation  
unless you make all the divs absolutely positioned, in which case the  
content might over-run.

I don't understand why you'd have thousands of pages to modify?

surely you should be using a few html templates, some CSS style sheets and  
a database to hold the content.

that way you just modify the templates, tweak the CSS and squirt in the  
data.

(and yes, I've built a fair few CSS sites without tables and from content  
in a database.) (see http://www.torbytes.com for an example)

still can't see how you're hoping to have an absolutely positioned (so you  
can move content about) flexible layout because the only way I can see  
that working is to use ems or %'s for all dimensions, including element  
positioning, and that limits the use of images in your design, since they  
don't resize in the same way.

Intriguing problem...

have you looked at the CSS zengarden to see how that uses one set of html  
with different CSS?

http://www.csszengarden.com


;o)