Sent by Marilyn Matty on 22 June 2002 15:03
on 6/20/02 12:49 PM, Charles Wiltgen at [EMAIL-REMOVED] wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm an XHTML/CSS newbie, using the "tables for layout, CSS for formatting"
> philosophy. I've found some good online resources, and feel like I'm
> starting to have a handle on the basics.
>
> Now that I'm having some success, I'm concerned whether or not I'm doing
> things in the _best_ way. (All I have is a hammer, so everything looks like
> a nail!)
>
> Specifically, I would like a critique of the simple one-column layout at
> <http://wiltgen.net/articles/dotnet/>. This layout uses a one-cell table
> centered in a 3x3 table, and I just feel like there must be a compatible
> (I'm not worried about Netscape 4), "CSS way" to do this.
>
As a devoted Mac user, you've got the framework of a valuable site here, and
you can easily do some reverse engineering to get it rolling in CSS. You can
take a look at some of The Noodle Incident's box models, and get start from
there:
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html
For more resources, list member Shirley Kaiser has the best organized source
I've come across:
http://www.websitetips.com/css/index.shtml#cssp
However, I don't think a one column layout is a very effective way to
present all the information you have here. Consider this: you've got almost
as many characters/words to fill more than one tabloid sized newspaper page,
but have you ever seen a newspaper article of more than a few paragraphs
occupying a single column? It's tiring to the eyes of the beholder, and hard
to read. And particularly on the web, it's a big benefit to readers to be
able to navigate quickly to areas that they are particularly interested in.
Another list member, Glish, has a great layout that effectively fits a ton
of information into one page with two columns:
http://glish.com/css/
Or it might be a good idea to set up a shorter one page intro column, with a
sidebar of links to sub pages - similar to the way the articles in
Hotwired's Webmonkey:
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1
.html
The Noodle Incident offers a bunch of layouts you can consider:
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html
HTH,
Marilyn
