<snip>HTML was always intended to render semantic information</snip> I know it was always intended. I'm just wondering, where does that stand now we have XML? Hasn't HTML become a formatting language, in an evolutionary kind of way? If you want a semantic markup language for your information, don't we now have the option of producing a really powerful customised one for our specific subset of data?
<snip>Why waste our time trying to get one page that renders the same in all browsers</snip> I totally agree. I hate NS4, particularly the size of FORMS. I'm canning support for it next year. Alistair -----Original Message----- From: Berin Loritsch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 1:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [OT] Design Rant Alistair Hopkins wrote: > -1 > > Unless someone can explain WHY tables are a bad way to lay out HTML. 'They > weren't intended for it' isn't really good enough! If they provide a richer > functionality without nasty side effects why not? How are they so bad for > text browsers? Now, the argument behind FORMATTING using css is rock solid, > but I always thought that HTML was about LAYOUT and CSS was about > FORMATTING. Looking at w3c, they go on about 'adding style': I always read > that as 'formatting'. In my work, I'm clear: Here are some really *practical* reasons why tables suck for layout purposes, beyond "div" is supposed to represent logical divisions: * Their use means that you are trying to support outdated browsers, and they _all_ represent tables differently. * Using broken browsers like Netscape 4.x (creature features are great, but the rendering code sucks), tables slow down the rendering to a crawl. It is not uncommon for a 8k page to take over 30 seconds to render on that browser. * Due to inconsistent layout engines (in some browsers, whitespace makes a *huge* difference), you have to have several proprietary attributes. * People try to be too tricky with them, and it backfires in page download size explosions, and the content does not render the same. * You can never be as espressive with table rendering as you can with CSS styling in your layout. The argument regarding HTML representing FORMAT is false. HTML was always intended to render semantic information. That is the reason for <h1>, <p>, <strong>, etc. The bold, italic, and teletype tags (<b>, <i>, <tt>) were all hacks. Are there some implicit styles for the elements? Yes. In the CSS2 documentation, they have an appendix that shows the _default_ style for every tag--including the display properties. Also, there are things that CSS can let you do that HTML won't, or that you would need to write 100 lines of javascript code to accomplish (like watermarking-- an image on the background of the page). The power of HTML+CSS is incredibly powerful. CSS was designed to be a declarative description language, so that when the interpreter encountered a tag of a particular class and/or id, it knew how to render it. With the default CSS styles defined by the W3C, your page will be rendered more consistently. > XML [data] -xsl-> HTML [data+layout] -css-> Screen [data+layout+formatting] > > To change the layout, I change the xsl. I design the xsl so that > site-global layout is managed from a single point. If I want HTML without > any HTML markup for non-browser-usage, I use - well, XML! If I want 'HTML' > to print nicely, I use FO and FOP. I am all for XSL--but the XSL layer is best used for transforming a simple page into vastly different presentations. For example, I have set up a system with Cocoon so that the web site can be re-themed on the fly. This is to show off what our pre-packaged web themes look like, without giving work away. Each conceptual design is so vastly different, it would never be possible to correctly express in CSS. This is where XSL comes in. > Pragmatism over purism, I say. The pragmatism is this: We all only have so much time to devote to developing the site and the projects. Why waste our time trying to get one page that renders the same in all browsers when you are working around four year old BUGS, that have been fixed in later releases. Four years is enough time for people to buy new computers, much less upgrade their browsers. Who wants to develop three renditions of the EXACT SAME page? There is little feeling of payoff for it. I mean, unless you want to _pay_ me to do it ;) -- "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin --------------------------------------------------------------------- In case of troubles, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- In case of troubles, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
