[thelist] Tip o'the day (x2)

Charles F. Johnson charles at littlegreenfootballs.com
Sun Feb 18 11:12:35 CST 2001


hi shirley,

one of the big drawbacks to using DIVs for layout instead of tables (and
zeldman discusses this in his article) is that there's currently no way to
achieve a liquid design of more than 2 columns, without resorting to
javascript that adjusts sizes and positions when an onResize event happens.

and if you really look at the method zeldman is using to get his 2-column
design on A List Apart, it's as ugly and kludgy as any table i've ever seen.
to get a 75% width DIV, you set it to 67%? this is logical? looks like a
whole lot of trial and error went into that page. isn't that exactly what
CSS is supposed to deliver us from?

he mentions in the article that CSS3 will address this shortcoming, but
since CSS1 adoption has taken years (and still isn't 100% supported even in
the best browsers), i figure we'll be able to use CSS3 in about, oh, 2012...

for static designs, CSS is great for layout. it creates clean, easy to read
code, and not much of it. but tables are still the only way to get liquid
designs that don't rely on javascript.

charles johnson
lgf web design
http://littlegreenfootballs.com





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