[thelist] Are you designing with CSS and web standards?
Ian Anderson
ian at zstudio.co.uk
Fri Mar 11 10:04:59 CST 2005
Rich Points wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm curious how many designers out there are using valid html or xhtml
> and pure CSS layouts these days.
As a trainer, writer, and consultant as well as a web developer, I have
been practising and evangelising web standards-based design for some
years now, inspired principally by Zeldman like so many others.
I did my own site as CSS layout back in 2003; it isn't very complex or
challenging from a design perspective (it's at zstudio.co.uk) but I
estimate it took between 5 and 10 times longer to build than the same
thing in tables. I know a heck of a lot more about CSS layout now than
I did then, and there are many more great resources out there to turn to
when it goes pear-shaped. On my current project I am trying to get the
design to work as CSS, but I am finding it such a drag having to fight
with bug after bug; mainly but not limited to IE.
When I found a fix to one of the problems on positioniseverything.com, I
was happy for about two minutes, until I read about the fixes to a whole
bunch more problems that I had also come across and worked around. My
heart sank. This is what we worked so hard to achieve?
You can compromise the design to make it work, or you can spend the next
couple of days trying to get a bunch of interlocking CSS hacks to work.
Float this, make that relative, does it work now? Holy cow, what a waste
of time.
Really, just doing the Voice-Family hack where necessary is enough in
itself to put me right off doing pure CSS design, then there are all the
other issues. As a self-employed person, I am terribly conscious of the
things I am *not* doing because I am trying to build pages without
layout tables.
Yes, it takes longer to build pages with CSS; it's a fact. Where is the
ROI of using CSS layout? I haven't seen any benefits other than a warm
fuzzy feeling yet, personally.
It's a lottery whether your design will hit certain bugs; if it does,
you can kiss your weekends goodbye. There are more hacks in CSS design
than in table based design. How is that better for the web? You have to
write conditional rules in your style sheets and hide them from
different browsers - there is NO DIFFERENCE between this and code
forking in JavaScript to support NN and IE in the old days. Most web
designers don't even have access to all the different browsers you need
now for testing. I spent £1400 on a Powerbook primarily to do browser
testing because the inconsistent renderings in the Mac browsers my
clients used were such a nightmare to troubleshoot (then they brought
out Mac mini a few weeks later, swines). It's insane, I tell you.
The amount of knowledge you need to have to succeed at pure CSS layout
is ridiculous. I am only inspired to continue because I see many other
web designers who have seemingly persevered and achieved what they were
after.
To be honest, I have my doubts about pure CSS layout; I think the design
model of CSS 1 and 2 is fatally flawed, and not suitable for real world
design. Look at the stupid things you have to do to:
1. Center content vertically within a container
2. Create columns with coloured backgrounds where any column can be longest
3. Create columns - full stop!
4. Lay out forms in an appealing way
See, the FUD about tables has become mainstream knowledge; we all 'know'
using tables for layout is evil and inaccessible, right? Except, nowhere
in the spec does it actually say you *can't* use tables for layout, and
having considerable background in web accessibility, I have proved that
simple layout tables *don't actually have* any accessibility problems as
long as the content linearises properly. (Excessive nesting is a bore,
granted)
In fact, when used appropriately they occasionally help in structuring
the information on a page and making it more accessible, even when not
dealing with strictly tabular data.
Tables for layout are robust, well supported, easy to use, powerful for
controlling fine nuances of design - especially when combined with CSS
layout
CSS layouts are usually partially or totally screwed for editing in
Dreamweaver, even in DW MX 2004; this matters in some contexts where
non-experts have to maintain the sites. I like using Dreamweaver as an
environment, personally, but the CSS layouts become barely usable in the
visual editor. I'm a knowledge worker, not a typist; I don't want to use
notepad and I don't want to spend all day tapping into Code View.
Why, when you get down to it, are we bothering with pure CSS layout?
Not trolling for a fight; just feeling a bit cheesed off and
disillusioned with the whole CSS thing today...
Cheers
Ian Anderson
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