"Arlo White" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > That's because HTML/CSS is a pretty terrible language for anything beyond > simple layouts. It shares more with Word/PDF/PostScript in terms of its > purpose and history than it does with real gui layout engines (GTK, QT, > etc). > > Hardcore HTML/CSS people tout the virtues of separating the content from > the presentation. The problem is that HTML has implicit presentation that > you often can't override with CSS. There are limits to what you can do > with positioning. If I want to rearrange elements in my page I have to > change the HTML, I can't do it all on the CSS side. That's not separation > of content from presentation! > > Real separation of the presentation has to happen right at the data layer. > But that's server side in most applications. So you run your data through > one view abstraction (template language such as Freemarker, PHP, JSP etc), > then to HTML, and then polish it with CSS. Oh, and that application runs > on an app server that runs in a Java virtual machine that runs in an > VMware OS that runs on a real OS that actually accesses real hardware. > That's an absurd number of layers... > > Anyway, to get back to HTML. They'll say use divs not tables because a > table represents a distinct concept not a layout element and it has > accessibility implications. And yet I you can't layout things with divs in > the same way that I can with a table. And even if there are obscure CSS > properties that let me, half the user's browsers don't support them. > > Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that sees the naked Emperor. People > are so excited about the Internet but they don't realize that browsers are > just implementing one view language that's 15 years old and really isn't > all that great. The beauty of the Internet is the emergent properties that > arose from the concept of linking sites. But that's not something that has > to be unique to the HTML language itself. > > And sure there's some cool stuff in HTML5 but a pig's still a pig even > when you velcro a TV to its head and a database on its back. >
I seem to have met my doppleganger ;) Seriously, if I didn't know better I'd have to check the "From" line to know I hadn't written that myself. Welcome to the Amish-of-programming club. We're small, but growing ;)
