Sent by Dave G on 19 November 2003 06:06
Simon,
Thanks for listening. I'm glad you saw the humour and light
hearted nature in my post, and I hope that spirit gets conveyed to the
other members of the Web Standards project Learn team. I have a cynical
sense of humour which sometimes doesn't come out as intended for fun
when expressed in text format.
Anyway, you do make a good point, one which I think is helpful,
which is that CSS requires that one thinks in terms of what the content
is, not just how it's presented. That is a shift in perspective which
I'm sure would help people, me included, come to terms with CSS. It does
however, get confusing fast. A web page is the *presentation* of data,
not merely the storage of it. So *how* one presents the data is
essential to the purpose of a web page. Am I using CSS for storing the
data, in which case it makes sense to structure it purely according to
what it is, or am I also showing it, in which case where things appear
on the page is just as important, as humans need to look at it? I
thought CSS was the solution to both considerations. But actually CSS is
about 70% identifying what data is, and 30% presenting it. At least
that's how it looks to me right now.
I think the promise of CSS made by enthusiasts are better if
they are toned down somewhat. Take the claim that I quoted from
htmldog.com:"With a combination of positioning, floating, margins,
padding and borders, you should be able to represent ANY web design and
there is nothing that can be done in tables that can not be done with
CSS." That's simply not true. And it's only after one attempts to do
recreate table designs that one starts seeing the difficulties.
I think the enthusiasm of CSS evangelists just needs to be toned
down. Less "CSS will solve everything" and more "CSS is better in the
long run but not there yet".
Of course, I'm just bitter because the responsibility lies with
me. I got excited and rushed in. But hey, look at this seductive
presentation: http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html It sure sold
me.
Anyway, I would shut the heck up right this minute if I could
just get a footer. This page:
http://www.tanfa.co.uk/css/layouts/css-3-column-layout-v2.asp
has the perfect layout, but man... that CSS script is crazy!
Every time I make a modification, and I am sure shooting in the dark
when I modify it, it goes nuts on me.
--
Cheers!
Dave G
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