Todd Seal wrote: > Taran, turning off the style sheets in your browser and separating > content from design are not mutually exclusive, in fact they depend on > each other. It is *because* you separate content from design that > turning off style sheets in your browser works well. That's exactly > why style sheets play an important part in the future of Web design: > they allow you to present style to those that can handle it and > content to everyone...EVERYONE. There's the emphasis.
Err. You're talking about NOW. We're talking - or I *hope* we're talking - about the future. Frankly, turning off style sheets is a kludge and is something that shouldn't be encouraged because it doesn't force people to fix what they did wrong. It's sort of like just cleaning your bed buying more toothpaste without saying a word when a 5 year old sprays the toothpaste all over your bed. Unless you communicate somehow that the spraying of toothpaste on a bed is not acceptable, you can expect to continue the cycle. So it is with style sheets. > > And I don't think we're talking about browser standards. We're talking > about how to code sites so that they play nice with older browsers; > we're talking about coding standards, the thing we have control over. > If we're talking about browser standards, those standards are already > in place with new browsers. We can't impose any browser standards on > old browsers (I know the subject line implies that discussion, but I > think we turned from that a while ago; the original topic was a call > for the lowest common denominator in browsers). No, we're exactly talking about the *lack* of browser standards. Coding standards are a separate issue, and are being handled quite well by W3C and voluntary webmasters who assure that the code on their sites works. Please don't mix the issues. > I still believe we're creating an issue where there isn't one. Turn > off style sheets and everyone can browse the internet and even start a > blog. The current W3C standards have made a big move toward that > separation of content and style. That's exactly what we should all > want since that makes the content accessible to everyone (remember my > emphasis from earlier). I think that people who don't see the issue are helping perpetuate the issue, and I cannot seem to communicate properly such that the importance of fixing things that are broken is understood. You should be able to turn on your computer and do exactly what you want with it without dinking in the background. Linux is getting there after Windows paved the way, OS/X simply works and I still long for the days of the Vic-20. The truth is that the *lack of enforced standards* is an issue. And what's funny is that we want to organize bodies to enforce standards so that we have someone to handle problems for the software we run. But we should be doing that with the manufacturers of our software instead, since they ARE responsible for the software we use. That's the beauty of the FLOS community that is lost on many: If you have a problem, you talk to the developer. For everyone else, call customer service or sign a petition. Or create an organizations body so that you have more money going down the tubes to do the same thing, and have plausible deniability... Well, I guess my personal opinions are pretty apparent. But I think that they are also pretty well substantiated. Take a look around. -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: Panama City, Panama [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxgazette.com http://www.a42.com http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
