[thelist] Re: thelist Digest, Vol 5, Issue 43

Alexander C. Garcia Alexander at Garcia.Name
Wed Jul 16 08:56:21 CDT 2003


Diane

   Well, I can only speak for myself. This was my first attempt at make a
website using <div>'s and CSS layout instead of tables. So far I would say
that you're right on the money.

  When I created a layout with several <div>'s that weren't that deeply
nested, (3 levels down was the most I think) and I followed the W3C's box
model specs, and used the appropriate CSS rule sets, only Opera behaved as
it should. While Mozilla 1.3 and Netscape 7.01 (at the time they were the
latest versions) didn't! As for IE, we know how crappy their support is! I
was stumped and spent days, and days for a work around and solution.
Scourging the Internet for sites that provide hacks or some other solution.
Once Netscape came out with it's latest release, NN7.1 it behaved as Opera
and the site looked fine.

  But even Opera has it's own problems, since version 6 (I think) renders
the box's incorrectly, just like IE. In the end I ended up using Perl for
browser sniffing and served up the appropriate page with their own style
sheets.

  Since IE was the browser used by the majority of users out there, I had to
use some hacks and sacrifice the chance that they could validate (which
wasn't such a concern). Then there's JavaScript... nuff said.

  One thing I know, is that using <div>'s and CSS didn't simplify things at
all, unless I wanted a plain vanilla site, with minimal changes when someone
selects a theme. All this has taught me, is that until the majority of
people out their use a CSS2 compliant browser, the change isn't worth it.

  It's enough to make me consider using tables and or frames!!!!....

Peace be with you.

Alexander Garcia
Alexander at Garcia.Name

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Diane Soini
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 9:51 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] Re: thelist Digest, Vol 5, Issue 43

I'm curious about something and please forgive me if you have already
talked about this here. I feel really ambivalent about the whole
philosophy that using div tags for layout is somehow better than using
table tags. I would love to fall squarely on the side of web standards
and css and div tags, but I have yet to ever make them work well.

I checked my web stats and I still have a significant number of
Netscape 3 users, as well as about 15% Netscape users as a whole.

I have yet to find a single css standard that is supported consistently
across the board. So what is a good web designer supposed to do? It
would be nice to be able to say "Netscape 3 and 4 users get on with it
and install a better browser!" but my audience is not technical at all.
The subject of my web site can even be considered anti-technology! So
I've been stuck with keeping my html very simple and basic and it kinda
sucks.

As for div tags, they are nearly worthless if you want to make a layout
as complex as something you might design in Quark. And isn't the
argument quite semantic? Why is div somehow more correct than table?
And don't say "separation of content from presentation" because all you
are really doing is removing a few lines of presentation code from the
content. Otherwise the content and code is still together.

I'm rambling now, but I'm conflicted.

> [snip]
>>   Go to this URL: http://www.bluerobot.com/, which offers two =
> different ways
>> to center a <div> with CSS. On the right hand side the menu that
>> lists =
> 'CSS
>> centering 1' and 'CSS centering 2'.
> [/snip]
>
> Thanks a whole load of bananas, Alexander. Glad we did not give up.
>
> Whoopee, this worked! I used the CSS #2 solution at the Blue Robots
> site =
> and tweaked til it looked just right. No matter the resolution, there
> is =
> an equal amount of space left and right on the newer browsers (well, =
> IE5.5 and IE6.2). Actually NN4.7 looks much better when I changed the =
> table width from percentage to fixed-width pixels on the html
> page...and =
> text-aligned "center" the .bottom class (instead of text-align: left)
> in =
> its stylesheet.
>
> For IE and N6.2 (and hopefully IE6 and N7.x and others):
>
> stylesheet changes:
>
> div#bot { position: absolute; left: 50%; width: 500px; font-weight:
> 500; =
> color: #009; font-size: .8em; margin-top: 10px; margin-left: -166px; =
> padding: 10px;}
>
> (Note: I had tried a negative margin solution very similar to this
> about =
> 3 days ago but left out the crucial left: 50%, so I gave up.)
>
> and
> changed the .bottom class to text-align: center" (was "left").
>
> Best,
> Sharon
>

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