[thelist] Are you designing with CSS and web standards?

Robert Hanson rhanson at mva.com
Fri Mar 11 15:38:31 CST 2005





The entire discussion about web standards I think is overblown.  The goal
is to get some information you have, onto the browser window of your
visitor.  Whether you use straight HTML or XHTML or XML or HTML with CSS is
not so important as the final result.   It's what we've all been doing for
years.

Consider a room full of novelists, caught up in a debate about which tool -
Word or Wordperfect or a typewriter or paper and pencil - produce the best
novel.   (hint - it's the author)  Same with the agument for/against CSS.
It is a tool to help you create your presentation, and nothing more than
than.

Having said that, I design web applications (as opposed to simple web
pages), so I'm responsible first for the content and functionality, and
second for the appearance.  I create all my (new) pages with the assumption
that I'll use CSS to style it.  I put in <DIV> and classes where I think
they are appropriate, without worrying about the final appearance.  When
the functionality is correct (all the forms and buttons work, and all the
database tables update) then I go back and apply CSS to each page (without
changing the markup) to get the look I want.

If you spend lots of time worrying about layout, typesize, etc as you're
creating the content for your page, then you should be using CSS to style
it.  Then you have a disconnect - content first, style/appearance second.

Sure, there are lots of flaws with the way that browsers impliment CSS.  If
they all had perfect implimentations, then there would be nothing to gripe
about - which is no fun at all.



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