Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Hi, This post is another one that might be better asked on a CSS-list, but it is relevant to this thread. The calendar at http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ seems to have a similar issue to a problem I am havingcell borders (sometimes) disappear in Firefox when you zoom out. In both this calendar and mine, the behavior is unpredictable---sometimes a border will be there, and other times not. In my case, I have a javascript mouseover, and the mouseover changes the border behavior below it. Does anybody have any experience with this? Thanks! -jessi tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? Cheers, tedd -- Jessi Berkelhammer Downtown Emergency Service Center Computer Programming Specialist -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Thu, 2009-05-21 at 13:05 -0700, Jessi Berkelhammer wrote: Hi, This post is another one that might be better asked on a CSS-list, but it is relevant to this thread. The calendar at http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ seems to have a similar issue to a problem I am havingcell borders (sometimes) disappear in Firefox when you zoom out. In both this calendar and mine, the behavior is unpredictable---sometimes a border will be there, and other times not. In my case, I have a javascript mouseover, and the mouseover changes the border behavior below it. Does anybody have any experience with this? Thanks! -jessi tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? Cheers, tedd -- Jessi Berkelhammer Downtown Emergency Service Center Computer Programming Specialist I've just zoomed out to the maximum Fx allows me, and the borders remain all the way through. Using Fx 2 on Linux. It could be a known issue, have the you checked Bugzilla? Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
There appears to be a bug in the FF3x cell line generating code. border-collapse is a mess, it doubles up some cell lines and drops others when drawing and redrawing tables. I had to make a nice lines between cells by assigning tds with bottom and right sides only. Al... Jessi Berkelhammer wrote: Hi, This post is another one that might be better asked on a CSS-list, but it is relevant to this thread. The calendar at http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ seems to have a similar issue to a problem I am havingcell borders (sometimes) disappear in Firefox when you zoom out. In both this calendar and mine, the behavior is unpredictable---sometimes a border will be there, and other times not. In my case, I have a javascript mouseover, and the mouseover changes the border behavior below it. Does anybody have any experience with this? Thanks! -jessi tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? Cheers, tedd -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
I just wanted to run this past you guys for thoughts and opinions or even just to get brains ticking, it's all web development related and touched on throughout this thread. At the core of this we have a single problem, we create websites and web based applications, which we want to be delivered to users clients, and have them function and render correctly. This is made impossible because we have multiple client vendors all with varying support for varying features and standards. To solve this we'd need force the users computer to use the client which the application / website was created for use on - similar to conventional software products which run on x and y platform but not z. The aforementioned forcing is impossible though, we can't force a users computer to switch to firefox for this site and ie for that and so on. It appears to me then that the only way to address this issue would be to literally send the needed client along with the requested content to the users computer and have it open. To achieve this feasibly you'd need to have a sub-client which could run inside any client (or the majority of clients). At this point we have a rough model to work with. currently the model is: user requests content content is sent to users client client determines how it functions and renders. and the new model outlined: user requests content sub-client and content is sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client determines how it functions and renders. addressing another issue. we often have the need for realtime server client / client server push, without polling - as we know the http protocol does not support this as it's a request response based protocol not a persistent bidirectional (stream based) connection. Thus we'd need the sub-client to support protocols other than http, ideally any form of tcp connection(s) to any port(s) using whichever protocol(s) we require for a specific application. Realistically we'd want our content to be requested, delivered and updated freely, which would mean using the sub-client to handle all of this, connecting up to whatever server based software application(s) we specify. revisiting the model, now we'd need: user requests content sub-client and _content loading instruction_ sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client connects to server application(s) and requests content. sub-client determines how content functions, updates and renders. this still leaves us with the sub-client determining things for us though, it is a markable improvement though as now we have the user running our application / viewing our content in the client we designed it for. so taking this further what we really need to start this off is a standard sub-client that's lightweight and runs applications, and those applications determine how the content functions, updates and renders. In this scenario we could either select general pre made / third party application to display our content, or create our own application. This application would obviously run inside the sub-client which is inside the users client, and we'd have all the major problems addressed. Speed, in order to keep the speed up with this any client, single sub-client, multiple application scenario it'd be a big bonus if the sub-client was held client side and downloaded / updated as required. updated model: user requests content sub-client required and application location are sent to users client. sub-client is launched within users client sub-client loads required application application connects to server application(s) and requests content. application determines how content functions, updates and renders. other considerations not all requests are made by users, we have bots, spiders and there-in seo to consider here not to mention accessibility. To cut this bit short the obvious answer is two versions of the content (talking text based specifically here), one version that's available if the client doesn't support our sub-client, and another that's loaded inside the application. Alternative content I guess. implementing model using current technologies none of this is any good unless we can do it, and do it with technologies that the majority of users have today - so how does this sound. users client requests content uri via http protocol http response is sent back which includes: - standard format document for bots/accessibility/unsupported clients - sub-client requirement, application location, and instantiation code ... from this point on the application inside the sub-client can forget the http protocol and client limitations and do what we want, the way we want it to. addressing the http response mentioned above, we currently have (x)html supported pretty much everywhere possible, and (x)html supports the object which let's objects (sub-clients) run inside a users client. The
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Paul M Foster wrote: On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 05:55:47PM -0400, PJ wrote: Marc Christopher Hall wrote: and so I don't feel like a complete ass http://jeffhowden.com/code/css/forms/ __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4084 (20090518) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com Funny, you should mention it... been there, done that... actually, that was one of the sites I had in mind... nice examples but there is no explanation of where it comes from and what it means... I have found no clear references to this type of stuff on w3org or any manuals. :-( Ahem. The CSS used is at the bottom of the page, and the code (HTML) itself is viewable by View Page Source in your browser. It's all there for you to peruse. Of course, this assumes a fair knowledge of CSS, which you would have to obtain elsewhere. (Although, I have to say, this example goes pretty far in illustrating how CSS works.) Paul I do appreciate the input, but I think the main thrust of my even asking for suggestions is beyond the obvious. I am perfectly aware and have done exactly what you suggest, as I generally do when looking at examples and tutorials. However, I have been looking for explanations of what some of the syntax of CSS is supposed to mean; in other words, some of the code that does not make sense in relation to what is shown on the CSS W3org and tutorial pages. They are rather elementary and do not clearly explain relations of the different elements. At least to my Martian understanding of logic. :-) -- Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme. - Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote: I just wanted to run this past you guys for thoughts and opinions or even just to get brains ticking, it's all web development related and touched on throughout this thread. At the core of this we have a single problem, we create websites and web based applications, which we want to be delivered to users clients, and have them function and render correctly. This is made impossible because we have multiple client vendors all with varying support for varying features and standards. To solve this we'd need force the users computer to use the client which the application / website was created for use on - similar to conventional software products which run on x and y platform but not z. The aforementioned forcing is impossible though, we can't force a users computer to switch to firefox for this site and ie for that and so on. It appears to me then that the only way to address this issue would be to literally send the needed client along with the requested content to the users computer and have it open. To achieve this feasibly you'd need to have a sub-client which could run inside any client (or the majority of clients). At this point we have a rough model to work with. currently the model is: user requests content content is sent to users client client determines how it functions and renders. and the new model outlined: user requests content sub-client and content is sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client determines how it functions and renders. addressing another issue. we often have the need for realtime server client / client server push, without polling - as we know the http protocol does not support this as it's a request response based protocol not a persistent bidirectional (stream based) connection. Thus we'd need the sub-client to support protocols other than http, ideally any form of tcp connection(s) to any port(s) using whichever protocol(s) we require for a specific application. Realistically we'd want our content to be requested, delivered and updated freely, which would mean using the sub-client to handle all of this, connecting up to whatever server based software application(s) we specify. revisiting the model, now we'd need: user requests content sub-client and _content loading instruction_ sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client connects to server application(s) and requests content. sub-client determines how content functions, updates and renders. this still leaves us with the sub-client determining things for us though, it is a markable improvement though as now we have the user running our application / viewing our content in the client we designed it for. so taking this further what we really need to start this off is a standard sub-client that's lightweight and runs applications, and those applications determine how the content functions, updates and renders. In this scenario we could either select general pre made / third party application to display our content, or create our own application. This application would obviously run inside the sub-client which is inside the users client, and we'd have all the major problems addressed. Speed, in order to keep the speed up with this any client, single sub-client, multiple application scenario it'd be a big bonus if the sub-client was held client side and downloaded / updated as required. updated model: user requests content sub-client required and application location are sent to users client. sub-client is launched within users client sub-client loads required application application connects to server application(s) and requests content. application determines how content functions, updates and renders. other considerations not all requests are made by users, we have bots, spiders and there-in seo to consider here not to mention accessibility. To cut this bit short the obvious answer is two versions of the content (talking text based specifically here), one version that's available if the client doesn't support our sub-client, and another that's loaded inside the application. Alternative content I guess. implementing model using current technologies none of this is any good unless we can do it, and do it with technologies that the majority of users have today - so how does this sound. users client requests content uri via http protocol http response is sent back which includes: - standard format document for bots/accessibility/unsupported clients - sub-client requirement, application location, and instantiation code ... from this point on the application inside the sub-client can forget the http protocol and client limitations and do what we want, the way we want it to. addressing the http response mentioned above, we currently have (x)html supported pretty much everywhere possible, and (x)html supports the object which
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
PJ wrote:
Nathan Rixham wrote:
lol
Glad
/snip as they say
did you ever get any help explaining css?
just in case here's the ultra basics
you have selectors and declarations
selectors can be:
.classname (a class, to be applied to many objects)
#someid (a single object)
p (redefine an html element)
declarations combine to make a rule
background-color:red;
border-width:1px;
font-size:22px;
you combine declarations together and wrap them in a selector to make
rules, rules are applied to html element(s) that the selector matches.
p {
font-size:11px;
color:blue;
}
the above will give all text inside a paragraph blue text sized 11px.
then you can combine selectors to match specific element(s) and thus
style your document.
div p strong {
color:red;
}
div ul strong {
color:blue;
}
the first example will turn any text in a strong which is in a
paragraph inside a div red.
while the second will turn any text in a strong which is in a ul
inside a div blue.
you can also use commas to give one declaration multiple selectors
table, image, div {
border-style:none;
}
the above will ensure all tables, images and divs have no border.
p strong, blockquote strong {
font-size:15px;
}
and the above will match all strongs inside either a p or a
blockquote and make the font size of them 15px.
we also have more selectors which are less commonly used
p strong {
}
this will match any strong that is a direct descendant of a p
so it will match pthis is strongsomething/strong else/p
but it won't match pthis spanstrongnot matched/strong at all/p
then we have #id's and .classes; in html documents each item can have an
id attribute, id's should be unique as its an identifier (id) lol - so
#something {
text-align:center;
}
div id=something the above would match this.. /div
ids have the highest precedence, so if you had the following:
div {
text-align:left;
}
#something {
text-align:center;
}
div this would be aligned left /div
div id=something and this would be centered /div
as for classes, they can be used with any element, and applied multiple
times.
.redText {
color:red;
}
p normal text but span class=redthis is red/span and back to
black/p
and you can use multiple classes such as:
p class=red padleft center myborder some content.. /p
and then combine the selectors too
div p.red {
color:red;
font-weight:normal;
}
ul li.red {
color:red;
font-weight:bold;
}
so a p class=red inside a div will be red
and a ulli class=red will be bold and red
help any?
--
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Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote: I just wanted to run this past you guys for thoughts and opinions or even just to get brains ticking, it's all web development related and touched on throughout this thread. At the core of this we have a single problem, we create websites and web based applications, which we want to be delivered to users clients, and have them function and render correctly. This is made impossible because we have multiple client vendors all with varying support for varying features and standards. To solve this we'd need force the users computer to use the client which the application / website was created for use on - similar to conventional software products which run on x and y platform but not z. The aforementioned forcing is impossible though, we can't force a users computer to switch to firefox for this site and ie for that and so on. It appears to me then that the only way to address this issue would be to literally send the needed client along with the requested content to the users computer and have it open. To achieve this feasibly you'd need to have a sub-client which could run inside any client (or the majority of clients). At this point we have a rough model to work with. currently the model is: user requests content content is sent to users client client determines how it functions and renders. and the new model outlined: user requests content sub-client and content is sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client determines how it functions and renders. addressing another issue. we often have the need for realtime server client / client server push, without polling - as we know the http protocol does not support this as it's a request response based protocol not a persistent bidirectional (stream based) connection. Thus we'd need the sub-client to support protocols other than http, ideally any form of tcp connection(s) to any port(s) using whichever protocol(s) we require for a specific application. Realistically we'd want our content to be requested, delivered and updated freely, which would mean using the sub-client to handle all of this, connecting up to whatever server based software application(s) we specify. revisiting the model, now we'd need: user requests content sub-client and _content loading instruction_ sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client connects to server application(s) and requests content. sub-client determines how content functions, updates and renders. this still leaves us with the sub-client determining things for us though, it is a markable improvement though as now we have the user running our application / viewing our content in the client we designed it for. so taking this further what we really need to start this off is a standard sub-client that's lightweight and runs applications, and those applications determine how the content functions, updates and renders. In this scenario we could either select general pre made / third party application to display our content, or create our own application. This application would obviously run inside the sub-client which is inside the users client, and we'd have all the major problems addressed. Speed, in order to keep the speed up with this any client, single sub-client, multiple application scenario it'd be a big bonus if the sub-client was held client side and downloaded / updated as required. updated model: user requests content sub-client required and application location are sent to users client. sub-client is launched within users client sub-client loads required application application connects to server application(s) and requests content. application determines how content functions, updates and renders. other considerations not all requests are made by users, we have bots, spiders and there-in seo to consider here not to mention accessibility. To cut this bit short the obvious answer is two versions of the content (talking text based specifically here), one version that's available if the client doesn't support our sub-client, and another that's loaded inside the application. Alternative content I guess. implementing model using current technologies none of this is any good unless we can do it, and do it with technologies that the majority of users have today - so how does this sound. users client requests content uri via http protocol http response is sent back which includes: - standard format document for bots/accessibility/unsupported clients - sub-client requirement, application location, and instantiation code ... from this point on the application inside the sub-client can forget the http protocol and client limitations and do what we want, the way we want it to. addressing the http response mentioned above, we currently have (x)html supported pretty much everywhere possible, and (x)html
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Shawn McKenzie wrote: Nathan Rixham wrote: I just wanted to run this past you guys for thoughts and opinions or even just to get brains ticking, it's all web development related and touched on throughout this thread. At the core of this we have a single problem, we create websites and web based applications, which we want to be delivered to users clients, and have them function and render correctly. This is made impossible because we have multiple client vendors all with varying support for varying features and standards. To solve this we'd need force the users computer to use the client which the application / website was created for use on - similar to conventional software products which run on x and y platform but not z. The aforementioned forcing is impossible though, we can't force a users computer to switch to firefox for this site and ie for that and so on. It appears to me then that the only way to address this issue would be to literally send the needed client along with the requested content to the users computer and have it open. To achieve this feasibly you'd need to have a sub-client which could run inside any client (or the majority of clients). At this point we have a rough model to work with. currently the model is: user requests content content is sent to users client client determines how it functions and renders. and the new model outlined: user requests content sub-client and content is sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client determines how it functions and renders. addressing another issue. we often have the need for realtime server client / client server push, without polling - as we know the http protocol does not support this as it's a request response based protocol not a persistent bidirectional (stream based) connection. Thus we'd need the sub-client to support protocols other than http, ideally any form of tcp connection(s) to any port(s) using whichever protocol(s) we require for a specific application. Realistically we'd want our content to be requested, delivered and updated freely, which would mean using the sub-client to handle all of this, connecting up to whatever server based software application(s) we specify. revisiting the model, now we'd need: user requests content sub-client and _content loading instruction_ sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client connects to server application(s) and requests content. sub-client determines how content functions, updates and renders. this still leaves us with the sub-client determining things for us though, it is a markable improvement though as now we have the user running our application / viewing our content in the client we designed it for. so taking this further what we really need to start this off is a standard sub-client that's lightweight and runs applications, and those applications determine how the content functions, updates and renders. In this scenario we could either select general pre made / third party application to display our content, or create our own application. This application would obviously run inside the sub-client which is inside the users client, and we'd have all the major problems addressed. Speed, in order to keep the speed up with this any client, single sub-client, multiple application scenario it'd be a big bonus if the sub-client was held client side and downloaded / updated as required. updated model: user requests content sub-client required and application location are sent to users client. sub-client is launched within users client sub-client loads required application application connects to server application(s) and requests content. application determines how content functions, updates and renders. other considerations not all requests are made by users, we have bots, spiders and there-in seo to consider here not to mention accessibility. To cut this bit short the obvious answer is two versions of the content (talking text based specifically here), one version that's available if the client doesn't support our sub-client, and another that's loaded inside the application. Alternative content I guess. implementing model using current technologies none of this is any good unless we can do it, and do it with technologies that the majority of users have today - so how does this sound. users client requests content uri via http protocol http response is sent back which includes: - standard format document for bots/accessibility/unsupported clients - sub-client requirement, application location, and instantiation code ... from this point on the application inside the sub-client can forget the http protocol and client limitations and do what we want, the way we want it to. addressing the http response mentioned above, we currently have (x)html supported pretty much everywhere possible, and (x)html supports the object which let's objects (sub-clients) run inside a users client. The
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote: Shawn McKenzie wrote: Nathan Rixham wrote: I just wanted to run this past you guys for thoughts and opinions or even just to get brains ticking, it's all web development related and touched on throughout this thread. At the core of this we have a single problem, we create websites and web based applications, which we want to be delivered to users clients, and have them function and render correctly. This is made impossible because we have multiple client vendors all with varying support for varying features and standards. To solve this we'd need force the users computer to use the client which the application / website was created for use on - similar to conventional software products which run on x and y platform but not z. The aforementioned forcing is impossible though, we can't force a users computer to switch to firefox for this site and ie for that and so on. It appears to me then that the only way to address this issue would be to literally send the needed client along with the requested content to the users computer and have it open. To achieve this feasibly you'd need to have a sub-client which could run inside any client (or the majority of clients). At this point we have a rough model to work with. currently the model is: user requests content content is sent to users client client determines how it functions and renders. and the new model outlined: user requests content sub-client and content is sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client determines how it functions and renders. addressing another issue. we often have the need for realtime server client / client server push, without polling - as we know the http protocol does not support this as it's a request response based protocol not a persistent bidirectional (stream based) connection. Thus we'd need the sub-client to support protocols other than http, ideally any form of tcp connection(s) to any port(s) using whichever protocol(s) we require for a specific application. Realistically we'd want our content to be requested, delivered and updated freely, which would mean using the sub-client to handle all of this, connecting up to whatever server based software application(s) we specify. revisiting the model, now we'd need: user requests content sub-client and _content loading instruction_ sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client connects to server application(s) and requests content. sub-client determines how content functions, updates and renders. this still leaves us with the sub-client determining things for us though, it is a markable improvement though as now we have the user running our application / viewing our content in the client we designed it for. so taking this further what we really need to start this off is a standard sub-client that's lightweight and runs applications, and those applications determine how the content functions, updates and renders. In this scenario we could either select general pre made / third party application to display our content, or create our own application. This application would obviously run inside the sub-client which is inside the users client, and we'd have all the major problems addressed. Speed, in order to keep the speed up with this any client, single sub-client, multiple application scenario it'd be a big bonus if the sub-client was held client side and downloaded / updated as required. updated model: user requests content sub-client required and application location are sent to users client. sub-client is launched within users client sub-client loads required application application connects to server application(s) and requests content. application determines how content functions, updates and renders. other considerations not all requests are made by users, we have bots, spiders and there-in seo to consider here not to mention accessibility. To cut this bit short the obvious answer is two versions of the content (talking text based specifically here), one version that's available if the client doesn't support our sub-client, and another that's loaded inside the application. Alternative content I guess. implementing model using current technologies none of this is any good unless we can do it, and do it with technologies that the majority of users have today - so how does this sound. users client requests content uri via http protocol http response is sent back which includes: - standard format document for bots/accessibility/unsupported clients - sub-client requirement, application location, and instantiation code ... from this point on the application inside the sub-client can forget the http protocol and client limitations and do what we want, the way we want it to. addressing the http response mentioned above, we currently have (x)html supported pretty much everywhere
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Shawn McKenzie wrote: Nathan Rixham wrote: Shawn McKenzie wrote: Nathan Rixham wrote: I just wanted to run this past you guys for thoughts and opinions or even just to get brains ticking, it's all web development related and touched on throughout this thread. At the core of this we have a single problem, we create websites and web based applications, which we want to be delivered to users clients, and have them function and render correctly. This is made impossible because we have multiple client vendors all with varying support for varying features and standards. To solve this we'd need force the users computer to use the client which the application / website was created for use on - similar to conventional software products which run on x and y platform but not z. The aforementioned forcing is impossible though, we can't force a users computer to switch to firefox for this site and ie for that and so on. It appears to me then that the only way to address this issue would be to literally send the needed client along with the requested content to the users computer and have it open. To achieve this feasibly you'd need to have a sub-client which could run inside any client (or the majority of clients). At this point we have a rough model to work with. currently the model is: user requests content content is sent to users client client determines how it functions and renders. and the new model outlined: user requests content sub-client and content is sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client determines how it functions and renders. addressing another issue. we often have the need for realtime server client / client server push, without polling - as we know the http protocol does not support this as it's a request response based protocol not a persistent bidirectional (stream based) connection. Thus we'd need the sub-client to support protocols other than http, ideally any form of tcp connection(s) to any port(s) using whichever protocol(s) we require for a specific application. Realistically we'd want our content to be requested, delivered and updated freely, which would mean using the sub-client to handle all of this, connecting up to whatever server based software application(s) we specify. revisiting the model, now we'd need: user requests content sub-client and _content loading instruction_ sent to users client sub-client is launched within users client sub-client connects to server application(s) and requests content. sub-client determines how content functions, updates and renders. this still leaves us with the sub-client determining things for us though, it is a markable improvement though as now we have the user running our application / viewing our content in the client we designed it for. so taking this further what we really need to start this off is a standard sub-client that's lightweight and runs applications, and those applications determine how the content functions, updates and renders. In this scenario we could either select general pre made / third party application to display our content, or create our own application. This application would obviously run inside the sub-client which is inside the users client, and we'd have all the major problems addressed. Speed, in order to keep the speed up with this any client, single sub-client, multiple application scenario it'd be a big bonus if the sub-client was held client side and downloaded / updated as required. updated model: user requests content sub-client required and application location are sent to users client. sub-client is launched within users client sub-client loads required application application connects to server application(s) and requests content. application determines how content functions, updates and renders. other considerations not all requests are made by users, we have bots, spiders and there-in seo to consider here not to mention accessibility. To cut this bit short the obvious answer is two versions of the content (talking text based specifically here), one version that's available if the client doesn't support our sub-client, and another that's loaded inside the application. Alternative content I guess. implementing model using current technologies none of this is any good unless we can do it, and do it with technologies that the majority of users have today - so how does this sound. users client requests content uri via http protocol http response is sent back which includes: - standard format document for bots/accessibility/unsupported clients - sub-client requirement, application location, and instantiation code ... from this point on the application inside the sub-client can forget the http protocol and client limitations and do what we want, the way we want it to. addressing the http response mentioned above, we currently have (x)html supported pretty much everywhere possible, and (x)html supports the object which let's objects
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote: Java anyone? eh? how do you get java from that? . user requests content sub-client required and application location are sent to users client. sub-client is launched within users client sub-client loads required application application connects to server application(s) and requests content. application determines how content functions, updates and renders. . finally, if the sub-client was independent, ie not limited to use in clients, could be used on desktops, phones, inside tv hardware etc as well, then our content could be viewed and applications used virtually anywhere. . Also, have you ever looked at: http://www.openlaszlo.org? I built one of their small tutorial apps several years ago but it looks much more mature now. looked at, never used to be honest, any good? Haven't tried it in a while, but might be worth an evening of playing with it now that it has matured. and now I see how you get java - flash is more lightweight though and v good with fp10 and as3, hell you can even use alchemy to add c code to your flash apps now, and it's much quicker than as3 code because its optimized during swf compilation. will make for some killer 3d apps. I have only briefly played with Flash or Java and it's been a couple of years. It just sounded like Java to me when you were explaining it. It's hard for me to remember who the Java versus Flash proponents are, so I expected a Java punchline instead of the Flash one :-) -- Thanks! -Shawn http://www.spidean.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Shawn McKenzie wrote: Nathan Rixham wrote: Java anyone? eh? how do you get java from that? . user requests content sub-client required and application location are sent to users client. sub-client is launched within users client sub-client loads required application application connects to server application(s) and requests content. application determines how content functions, updates and renders. . finally, if the sub-client was independent, ie not limited to use in clients, could be used on desktops, phones, inside tv hardware etc as well, then our content could be viewed and applications used virtually anywhere. . Also, have you ever looked at: http://www.openlaszlo.org? I built one of their small tutorial apps several years ago but it looks much more mature now. looked at, never used to be honest, any good? Haven't tried it in a while, but might be worth an evening of playing with it now that it has matured. and now I see how you get java - flash is more lightweight though and v good with fp10 and as3, hell you can even use alchemy to add c code to your flash apps now, and it's much quicker than as3 code because its optimized during swf compilation. will make for some killer 3d apps. I have only briefly played with Flash or Java and it's been a couple of years. It just sounded like Java to me when you were explaining it. It's hard for me to remember who the Java versus Flash proponents are, so I expected a Java punchline instead of the Flash one :-) lol I'm PHP, Java, Flash / Flex (well AS3 to be specific) - but technologies aside I'm all for anything that promotes the model outlined, only really use AS3 and Java because they allow me to point as much work as possible towards this - and php in the middle. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] CSS tables
All in the head... 8000+ lines of code in the head of this page; mostly CSS Academia.edu -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote:
PJ wrote:
Nathan Rixham wrote:
lol
Glad
/snip as they say
did you ever get any help explaining css?
just in case here's the ultra basics
you have selectors and declarations
selectors can be:
.classname (a class, to be applied to many objects)
#someid (a single object)
p (redefine an html element)
declarations combine to make a rule
background-color:red;
border-width:1px;
font-size:22px;
you combine declarations together and wrap them in a selector to make
rules, rules are applied to html element(s) that the selector matches.
p {
font-size:11px;
color:blue;
}
the above will give all text inside a paragraph blue text sized 11px.
then you can combine selectors to match specific element(s) and thus
style your document.
div p strong {
color:red;
}
div ul strong {
color:blue;
}
the first example will turn any text in a strong which is in a
paragraph inside a div red.
while the second will turn any text in a strong which is in a ul
inside a div blue.
you can also use commas to give one declaration multiple selectors
table, image, div {
border-style:none;
}
the above will ensure all tables, images and divs have no border.
p strong, blockquote strong {
font-size:15px;
}
and the above will match all strongs inside either a p or a
blockquote and make the font size of them 15px.
we also have more selectors which are less commonly used
p strong {
}
this will match any strong that is a direct descendant of a p
so it will match pthis is strongsomething/strong else/p
but it won't match pthis spanstrongnot matched/strong at all/p
then we have #id's and .classes; in html documents each item can have
an id attribute, id's should be unique as its an identifier (id) lol - so
#something {
text-align:center;
}
div id=something the above would match this.. /div
ids have the highest precedence, so if you had the following:
div {
text-align:left;
}
#something {
text-align:center;
}
div this would be aligned left /div
div id=something and this would be centered /div
as for classes, they can be used with any element, and applied
multiple times.
.redText {
color:red;
}
p normal text but span class=redthis is red/span and back to
black/p
and you can use multiple classes such as:
p class=red padleft center myborder some content.. /p
and then combine the selectors too
div p.red {
color:red;
font-weight:normal;
}
ul li.red {
color:red;
font-weight:bold;
}
so a p class=red inside a div will be red
and a ulli class=red will be bold and red
help any?
Of course it helps.
But I am most grateful to Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis for his links. In
particular, * http://css.maxdesign.com.au/selectutorial/ which I just
dashed through and found it most clear and informative. I now understand
things much, much more clearly and should have much less stress in
coding CSS.
Thank you Nathan, thank you Benjamin all who were kind and generous
enough to share your invaluable insights. :-*
--
Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme.
-
Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com
http://www.ptahhotep.com
http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php
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RE: [PHP] CSS tables
At 4:56 PM -0400 5/18/09, Marc Christopher Hall wrote: and so I don't feel like a complete ass http://jeffhowden.com/code/css/forms/ Marc: Well... don't feel like a complete ass with that post -- that's a great looking and working form. Very nicely done. I'm book-marking that for future thievery. :-) Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 4:03 PM -0700 5/18/09, Michael A. Peters wrote: tedd wrote: However, I cite things like a calendar, and your MUD site, and other such solutions that would be very difficult to accomplish using pure css. I don't know about the MUD site - but again, a calendar is tabular data and therefore belongs in a table. The design sin is using tables for page layout, not logical display of tabular data. I agree, but I'm usually in the minority. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 1:56 PM +0100 5/19/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: I just wanted to run this past you guys for thoughts and opinions or even just to get brains ticking, it's all web development related and touched on throughout this thread. -mondo snip- lol - i needed to get that out my system Nathan: You make my head hurt! :-) I'm much simpler. I simply design a site and make it look good on all modern browsers. It will not pixel perfect, but it will hold together and work. Anything more than that is more work than I feel necessary. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Robert Cummings wrote: CSS3 will make our lives easier once it's fully supported by all major browser vendors... Rob, sorry to have to point this out to you, but all major browser vendors don't even support CSS1 or CSS2 completely/correctly yet. Plus, parts of what they do have implemented of CSS1 and CSS2 act differently between the different browsers that it is a PITA to work with them. SARCASM: They will be on to CSS5 or CSS6 before they get most of CSS3 features implemented. I guess I'm saying, don't hold your breath... Jim -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On 18/5/09 08:03, Jim Lucas wrote: all major browser vendors don't even support CSS1 or CSS2 completely/correctly yet. I don't think any browser vendor intends to implement the original CSS2 Recommendation; instead they are aiming for compliance with the CSS 2.1 revision. We do have /very/ nearly complete implementations of CSS 2.1 from all major browser vendors. This was the state of play /before/ IE8 - already pretty good: http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-css Now: Opera: http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/presto211/#css IE: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc351024(VS.85).aspx Safari: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariCSSRef/Articles/StandardCSSProperties.html Firefox: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS_Reference There a couple missing pieces - for example, in the upcoming Firefox 3.5, The :before and :after pseudo-elements have been updated to full CSS 2.1 support, adding support for the position, float, list-style-*, and some display properties. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.5_for_developers But all in all, vendor support for CSS 2.1 is arguably now as good as or better than for HTML 4.01. Also, the fact that CSS2.1 implementation is not complete has not dissuaded browser vendors from experimenting with implementations of CSS3 drafts (e.g. border-radius, text-overflow). -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Well. If you really really want to go Table less css. You have to you one of those CSS frameworks. I suggest YAML And even with YAML. You have to fix your design to IE6. My point of view positioning with DIV was time consuming process and very frustrating experience (especially with IE6). And to those pesky Table Nay sayers. Damn get over it. Did you still believe those TABLES ARE SLOW marketing buzz ? Hello we are in 2009. We got wordwide broadband access and guess what. Images and flash contend much bigger than any html and css data. And your JS generate more load than html parsing to client cpu. Yes CSS was most elegant solution and most time consuming. Regards Sancar -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 4:05 AM +0100 5/18/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: And by the way, this attitude of My code is fine; your browser sucks; upgrade can be the worst kind of arrogance, and people react to it exactly as though it were arrogance. There used to be the same kind of attitude with regard to screen resolution. 640x480 was just so 80s, and *all* the latest monitors supported 1280x1024 or whatever. So we design for 1280x1024 and screw those Luddite users. I would agree if someone's using Netscape 4; you'd have to kindly break it to them that they really should upgrade. But beyond that, it gets gray. -snip- yeah - major difference being that upgrading your web browser if free, and as we well know you can have multiple browsers installed with no problems. I understand what you are saying, but if 50%+ of the worlds web developers simply cut support for x, y z browser (or displayed a limited site with a notice) then I think the old browsers may just go away (90%). eg if google, facebook, msn, ebay, yahoo all cut support for them.. Nathan: In most technical things you are right, but here I have to agree with Paul. The user is king -- you must to design for them regardless of their browser of choice -- even if their choice is a bad one. There are places/companies where they do not want to upgrade because of the problems and cost of upgrading. There are managers who believe Everything works. There's no reason to upgrade. I know a lot of people who are frozen in time with their computer system because it has reached it's technological end. Also, many don't have the money to upgrade and to some, our discarded systems are the only things they can afford. What do we do with them -- discard them as well? According to my stats, IE 6 has a popularity of around 15 percent and that is dropping at around one percent per month. At some point, IE6 will fall to IE5 levels ( 1%) and we won't have to consider it any longer regardless. But until then, any responsible web developer should accommodate IE 6 regardless of it's shortcomings. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 4:05 AM +0100 5/18/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: And by the way, this attitude of My code is fine; your browser sucks; upgrade can be the worst kind of arrogance, and people react to it exactly as though it were arrogance. There used to be the same kind of attitude with regard to screen resolution. 640x480 was just so 80s, and *all* the latest monitors supported 1280x1024 or whatever. So we design for 1280x1024 and screw those Luddite users. I would agree if someone's using Netscape 4; you'd have to kindly break it to them that they really should upgrade. But beyond that, it gets gray. -snip- yeah - major difference being that upgrading your web browser if free, and as we well know you can have multiple browsers installed with no problems. I understand what you are saying, but if 50%+ of the worlds web developers simply cut support for x, y z browser (or displayed a limited site with a notice) then I think the old browsers may just go away (90%). eg if google, facebook, msn, ebay, yahoo all cut support for them.. Nathan: In most technical things you are right, but here I have to agree with Paul. The user is king -- you must to design for them regardless of their browser of choice -- even if their choice is a bad one. There are places/companies where they do not want to upgrade because of the problems and cost of upgrading. There are managers who believe Everything works. There's no reason to upgrade. I know a lot of people who are frozen in time with their computer system because it has reached it's technological end. Also, many don't have the money to upgrade and to some, our discarded systems are the only things they can afford. What do we do with them -- discard them as well? According to my stats, IE 6 has a popularity of around 15 percent and that is dropping at around one percent per month. At some point, IE6 will fall to IE5 levels ( 1%) and we won't have to consider it any longer regardless. But until then, any responsible web developer should accommodate IE 6 regardless of it's shortcomings. Cheers, tedd sadly I agree - and that's what I do as well, because I have to - but I don't want to and loathe every minute of it :p there's nothing that makes me cringe as much as a client mailing me saying my wifes cousin was just on the site and she said the sites doesn't look right, then after 2 days of communication I find its because they're on ie5.5 or something worse; and one feels compelled to do it gratis. I'm not going to rant - but yup you're right ted we have to - just part of me wanted fifteen thousand developers to reply going I agree, I am hither too not supporting anything before ie7 - we can dream! regards! -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 8:52 PM +0100 5/17/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: semantics already are the next big thing and have been for a year or three. google aquired the leading semantic analysis software many years ago and have been using it ever since, likewise with yahoo and all the majors. further we've all had open access to basic scripts like the yahoo term extraction service for years, and more recently (well maybe 2+ years) we've had access to open calais from reuters which will extract some great semantics from any content. if you've never seen then the best starting point is probably http://viewer.opencalais.com/ Nathan: You are always doing this to me -- you're as bad a Rob (but I can usually understand Rob). You guys make my head hurt. It would be nice if I could learn something and that was the end of it. But n -- very time I think I've learned something, you people point out my ignorance and keep dragging me back in to learn more -- when will it end? (rhetorical) /rant. From what I see, the link you provided will create tool-tips for terms and phrases found in text you provide. For example, if you have web-standards in your text, then it will show a tool-tip of Industry Term: web standards, which is kind of redundant and obvious, don't you think? Your text can also contain the terms accessibility, compliance, and even W3C but none of those will be identified. So, what's the big deal? Has this three year old state-of-the-art technology advanced so far that it can identify web standards but fails on accessibility, compliance, and W3C? I don't see the point -- please enlighten me. pretty sure yahoo (and maybe google) have been parsing rdf semantic data embedded inside comments in xhtml documents for a couple of years now, even the adding of tags generated by semantic extraction are common place now and make a big difference to seo. I can understand XML and maybe everyone will agree on a common namespace for these Industry Terms someday, but I do not see the connection between this and SEO. Do you think that because Google *may* be doing this in some fashion that you can duplicate their efforts and gain PR for your site? If so, I think the effort you expend may exceed just attending to content and letting Google do it's thing. But, I'm simple that way -- I would rather walk around the mountain than move it. If however you mean document structure semantics such as using h* tags throughout the document in the correct places, then this is even older and everybody should be doing it - hell that's what an html document is! That's not what I was talking about. I'm not talking about html tags but rather simple semantic divs for things like header, footer, content and such. It would be nice if everyone *was* doing it, but that's not the case. In any event, your semantic thing appears more interesting and I suspect there's more to follow. Jut wait a moment, while I empty my head of useless childhood memories and await the onslaught of new things to consider. :-) Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 8:52 PM +0100 5/17/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: semantics already are the next big thing and have been for a year or three. google aquired the leading semantic analysis software many years ago and have been using it ever since, likewise with yahoo and all the majors. further we've all had open access to basic scripts like the yahoo term extraction service for years, and more recently (well maybe 2+ years) we've had access to open calais from reuters which will extract some great semantics from any content. if you've never seen then the best starting point is probably http://viewer.opencalais.com/ Nathan: You are always doing this to me -- you're as bad a Rob (but I can usually understand Rob). You guys make my head hurt. It would be nice if I could learn something and that was the end of it. But n -- very time I think I've learned something, you people point out my ignorance and keep dragging me back in to learn more -- when will it end? (rhetorical) /rant. From what I see, the link you provided will create tool-tips for terms and phrases found in text you provide. For example, if you have web-standards in your text, then it will show a tool-tip of Industry Term: web standards, which is kind of redundant and obvious, don't you think? Your text can also contain the terms accessibility, compliance, and even W3C but none of those will be identified. So, what's the big deal? Has this three year old state-of-the-art technology advanced so far that it can identify web standards but fails on accessibility, compliance, and W3C? I don't see the point -- please enlighten me. pretty sure yahoo (and maybe google) have been parsing rdf semantic data embedded inside comments in xhtml documents for a couple of years now, even the adding of tags generated by semantic extraction are common place now and make a big difference to seo. I can understand XML and maybe everyone will agree on a common namespace for these Industry Terms someday, but I do not see the connection between this and SEO. Do you think that because Google *may* be doing this in some fashion that you can duplicate their efforts and gain PR for your site? If so, I think the effort you expend may exceed just attending to content and letting Google do it's thing. But, I'm simple that way -- I would rather walk around the mountain than move it. If however you mean document structure semantics such as using h* tags throughout the document in the correct places, then this is even older and everybody should be doing it - hell that's what an html document is! That's not what I was talking about. I'm not talking about html tags but rather simple semantic divs for things like header, footer, content and such. It would be nice if everyone *was* doing it, but that's not the case. In any event, your semantic thing appears more interesting and I suspect there's more to follow. Jut wait a moment, while I empty my head of useless childhood memories and await the onslaught of new things to consider. :-) with open calais you'll find that it is more tailored to extracting business-centric information such as company names, peoples names, places, addresses, telephone numbers, quotes, hot topics, events, commercial products etc, rather than generic terms. The document viewer I linked you to however, did not display the full rdf info returned, it can be pretty impressive - often you can run an article through it and it'll be able to tell you that x person said such and such on date y at place z. then consider yahoo term extraction, which extracts generic and common terms (keywords, keyphrases) from bodies of text. now lets say you created a simple blog without any categories or tags or anything, then you could simply run all your content through open calais and yahoo term extraction and use the returned values to correlate related articles and automatically tag all your blogs. You could also preg_replace X% of the semantic extracts and terms found in your article to other articles on site. Further you can re-inject the terms back in to the content in cunning but useful ways and further optimise your output, couple this with the output of the tags ont he page and the titles of the related articles and well.. you end up with what is effectively a perfectly optimised page and an auto associating context aware website. I built a few versions of some systems to do this in the IM sector a couple of years ago, well spent 2005-2008 doing pretty much exclusively this and seeing how far one could take it and the results were rather astonishing. here are some rough details on implementations I made: related affiliate products one spider crawled affiliate sites such as clickbank, then on tot he landing page of the affiliate offer, extracted the main content, split it in to chunks (anchor text, paragraphs, h* tags, titles, paragraphs etc) then ran it through the analysers.
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 5:14 PM +0100 5/18/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: -- computing ... .. . hows the childhood memories? I had a childhood? Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 5:14 PM +0100 5/18/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: -- computing ... .. . hows the childhood memories? I had a childhood? Cheers, tedd not sure? check the photo album - that's what I do - then look on like a 3rd person -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 14:48 -0400, tedd wrote: At 10:48 AM +0100 5/16/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote: Trust me, semantics are gonna be the next big thing, Semantics? What do you mean by that? And therein lies the problem -- what means something to me, may not to you. For example, if I make my header div id=header (or whatever) what makes it the same as yours? I think the next big thing will be an argument over meaning. :-) Cheers, tedd I don't mean using id attributes that appear to have meaning, but using the proper tags to mark up content. That's things like abbr and acronym tags for abbreviations and acronyms respectively, tables for tabular data and lists for list data, quote tags for quotations, etc. What you mention does have some merit to it though, as microformats are an idea to use the class attribute to classify data in certain ways, like span class=date or span class=author etc, although I'm not sure how well these work! Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 8:15 PM +0100 5/18/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 14:48 -0400, tedd wrote: I think the next big thing will be an argument over meaning. :-) I don't mean using id attributes that appear to have meaning, but using the proper tags to mark up content. That's things like abbr and acronym tags for abbreviations and acronyms respectively, tables for tabular data and lists for list data, quote tags for quotations, etc. Yes, I agree -- one of my pet peeves is people using alt tags for tool-tips when that's best served by the title tag. What you mention does have some merit to it though, as microformats are an idea to use the class attribute to classify data in certain ways, like span class=date or span class=author etc, although I'm not sure how well these work! That's kind of what I was talking about -- but I'm much more simple. It seems to me that things like header, navigation, content, and footer would be pretty standardized. However, in some sites the header called the banner, footer is called copyright, navigation is called side-bar, and content is called wrapper or something even less semantic. When the simpletons can't agree, then there's not much hope for the complexetons. :-) Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 16:13 -0400, tedd wrote: At 8:15 PM +0100 5/18/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 14:48 -0400, tedd wrote: I think the next big thing will be an argument over meaning. :-) I don't mean using id attributes that appear to have meaning, but using the proper tags to mark up content. That's things like abbr and acronym tags for abbreviations and acronyms respectively, tables for tabular data and lists for list data, quote tags for quotations, etc. Yes, I agree -- one of my pet peeves is people using alt tags for tool-tips when that's best served by the title tag. What you mention does have some merit to it though, as microformats are an idea to use the class attribute to classify data in certain ways, like span class=date or span class=author etc, although I'm not sure how well these work! That's kind of what I was talking about -- but I'm much more simple. It seems to me that things like header, navigation, content, and footer would be pretty standardized. However, in some sites the header called the banner, footer is called copyright, navigation is called side-bar, and content is called wrapper or something even less semantic. When the simpletons can't agree, then there's not much hope for the complexetons. :-) Cheers, tedd Well, headers are pretty much dealt with by the hx tags. I'd like to think that as long as a div had a class or id containing the word foot or nav (even as part of a larger word) then it might be interpreted a bit more intelligently by the UA, but I think it may just be a silent dream of mine for now! Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Ashley Sheridan wrote:
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 14:48 -0400, tedd wrote:
At 10:48 AM +0100 5/16/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote:
Trust me, semantics are gonna be the next big thing,
Semantics?
What do you mean by that?
And therein lies the problem -- what means something to me, may not to you.
For example, if I make my header div id=header (or whatever) what
makes it the same as yours?
I think the next big thing will be an argument over meaning. :-)
Cheers,
tedd
I don't mean using id attributes that appear to have meaning, but using
the proper tags to mark up content. That's things like abbr and
acronym tags for abbreviations and acronyms respectively, tables for
tabular data and lists for list data, quote tags for quotations, etc.
What you mention does have some merit to it though, as microformats are
an idea to use the class attribute to classify data in certain ways,
like span class=date or span class=author etc, although I'm not
sure how well these work!
Ash
www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Ok, guy, enough is enough.
I started this thread in the hope of finding some sanity in CSS, but it
looks like that is about as likely to happen as the very logic or non
logic of CSS.
I anyone knows where there is a real source of information about CSS,
how to use it with logical explanations of what is used how, I sure
would like to hear aboutit.
So far, I see the most absurd logic to CSS that I have seen anywhere.
Surely I must be wrong but there must be a logical explanation why such
simple things as a div id=some_thing will show the first of three
imgs as being part of the div tag and the rest not - but rather as
part of body.
If you put a box around the div tag, it includes the first image but not
the next two.
Putting 5 images of 98px width not only shows four in linewitht the
fifth is off by the margin-top height but also displays the images in a
reverse order. How do you explain that? And how do you get it to do what
you want?
And what about all the weird CSS configurations that are not documented
anywhere I could find in a reasonable time - where are the definitions
for form positioning and displaying? What do such definitions signify:
form div fieldset label.labelCheckbox, form div fieldset
label.labelRadio {...
and - form div input.inputText, form div input.inputPassword {...
I thought that form would be subservient to div or is it the opposite?
Where is the information on this, where did these constructs come from?
The clarity of information on CSS is preposterously absurd.
I would like to understand this stuff but what process do you have to go
through to get CSS to place object, text etc. in an understandable
way... I have tried the display, clear, overflow and god -knows-what but
serious layouts seem almost impossible.
And as glorious as people may think this zen garden is, I have always
found it rather banal. I don't see anything particularly difficult in
it... try to place images, with text, graphics and db tables (not html)
and place them accurately --- it is a seemingly impossible task.
I waste more time trying to figure out why things don't work than I do
in creativity/productivity.
And I don't even give 2 hoots for IE... if people find it too difficult
to download and install and use Firefox... then, too bad. Anything that
is non-M$ is better, particularly since it is almost always free.
--
Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme.
-
Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com
http://www.ptahhotep.com
http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php
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Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 16:35 -0400, PJ wrote:
Ashley Sheridan wrote:
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 14:48 -0400, tedd wrote:
At 10:48 AM +0100 5/16/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote:
Trust me, semantics are gonna be the next big thing,
Semantics?
What do you mean by that?
And therein lies the problem -- what means something to me, may not to you.
For example, if I make my header div id=header (or whatever) what
makes it the same as yours?
I think the next big thing will be an argument over meaning. :-)
Cheers,
tedd
I don't mean using id attributes that appear to have meaning, but using
the proper tags to mark up content. That's things like abbr and
acronym tags for abbreviations and acronyms respectively, tables for
tabular data and lists for list data, quote tags for quotations, etc.
What you mention does have some merit to it though, as microformats are
an idea to use the class attribute to classify data in certain ways,
like span class=date or span class=author etc, although I'm not
sure how well these work!
Ash
www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Ok, guy, enough is enough.
I started this thread in the hope of finding some sanity in CSS, but it
looks like that is about as likely to happen as the very logic or non
logic of CSS.
I anyone knows where there is a real source of information about CSS,
how to use it with logical explanations of what is used how, I sure
would like to hear aboutit.
So far, I see the most absurd logic to CSS that I have seen anywhere.
Surely I must be wrong but there must be a logical explanation why such
simple things as a div id=some_thing will show the first of three
imgs as being part of the div tag and the rest not - but rather as
part of body.
If you put a box around the div tag, it includes the first image but not
the next two.
Putting 5 images of 98px width not only shows four in linewitht the
fifth is off by the margin-top height but also displays the images in a
reverse order. How do you explain that? And how do you get it to do what
you want?
And what about all the weird CSS configurations that are not documented
anywhere I could find in a reasonable time - where are the definitions
for form positioning and displaying? What do such definitions signify:
form div fieldset label.labelCheckbox, form div fieldset
label.labelRadio {...
and - form div input.inputText, form div input.inputPassword {...
I thought that form would be subservient to div or is it the opposite?
Where is the information on this, where did these constructs come from?
The clarity of information on CSS is preposterously absurd.
I would like to understand this stuff but what process do you have to go
through to get CSS to place object, text etc. in an understandable
way... I have tried the display, clear, overflow and god -knows-what but
serious layouts seem almost impossible.
And as glorious as people may think this zen garden is, I have always
found it rather banal. I don't see anything particularly difficult in
it... try to place images, with text, graphics and db tables (not html)
and place them accurately --- it is a seemingly impossible task.
I waste more time trying to figure out why things don't work than I do
in creativity/productivity.
And I don't even give 2 hoots for IE... if people find it too difficult
to download and install and use Firefox... then, too bad. Anything that
is non-M$ is better, particularly since it is almost always free.
Firstly this is a PHP list, so CSS questions are more than likely to
deviate like this!
I'm guessing the trouble might be a float issue. Do you have an example
online which we could peruse?
Ash
www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
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RE: [PHP] CSS tables
I would like to add that last time I checked, this is the PHP Mailing List and not CSS or anything else. Can we please get back to regular PHP banter? -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4084 (20090518) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4084 (20090518) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] CSS tables
and so I don't feel like a complete ass http://jeffhowden.com/code/css/forms/ __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4084 (20090518) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 04:13:47PM -0400, tedd wrote: At 8:15 PM +0100 5/18/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 14:48 -0400, tedd wrote: I think the next big thing will be an argument over meaning. :-) I don't mean using id attributes that appear to have meaning, but using the proper tags to mark up content. That's things like abbr and acronym tags for abbreviations and acronyms respectively, tables for tabular data and lists for list data, quote tags for quotations, etc. Yes, I agree -- one of my pet peeves is people using alt tags for tool-tips when that's best served by the title tag. What you mention does have some merit to it though, as microformats are an idea to use the class attribute to classify data in certain ways, like span class=date or span class=author etc, although I'm not sure how well these work! That's kind of what I was talking about -- but I'm much more simple. It seems to me that things like header, navigation, content, and footer would be pretty standardized. However, in some sites the header called the banner, footer is called copyright, navigation is called side-bar, and content is called wrapper or something even less semantic. When the simpletons can't agree, then there's not much hope for the complexetons. :-) That's the same problem XML has. The original idea was that you could, for example, have an invoice, and because it was marked up with the appropriate tags, everyone would be able to understand what it meant. I'm not sure what idiot came up with the original idea, but he was just that. With no standardization, you have all kinds of abbreviated tags that don't mean anything to anyone except the designers. And even if the tags are understandable, they aren't the same for everyone who designs an invoice. For evidence, check out the native XML files used to store KMyMoney transactions. Good luck. XML was the cool thing which was supposed to replace EDI, which was a transaction standard before the internet. The difference was that EDI invoices were standardized (mostly), the files relied on you knowing the standard, had no metadata in them, and were a fraction of the size of XML documents as a result. Oh, and you had to pay ANSI or whoever $90 for the standard on whatever document (purchase order, invoice, bill of lading) you wanted to deal with. A mixed bag, for sure. When they dreamed up XML, I wish they'd also set up a standards body or process for standardizing tags and attributes. You wouldn't *have* to follow the standard, but in the end, most would. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Marc Christopher Hall wrote: and so I don't feel like a complete ass http://jeffhowden.com/code/css/forms/ __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4084 (20090518) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com Funny, you should mention it... been there, done that... actually, that was one of the sites I had in mind... nice examples but there is no explanation of where it comes from and what it means... I have found no clear references to this type of stuff on w3org or any manuals. :-( -- Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme. - Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 05:55:47PM -0400, PJ wrote: Marc Christopher Hall wrote: and so I don't feel like a complete ass http://jeffhowden.com/code/css/forms/ __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4084 (20090518) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com Funny, you should mention it... been there, done that... actually, that was one of the sites I had in mind... nice examples but there is no explanation of where it comes from and what it means... I have found no clear references to this type of stuff on w3org or any manuals. :-( Ahem. The CSS used is at the bottom of the page, and the code (HTML) itself is viewable by View Page Source in your browser. It's all there for you to peruse. Of course, this assumes a fair knowledge of CSS, which you would have to obtain elsewhere. (Although, I have to say, this example goes pretty far in illustrating how CSS works.) Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: However, I cite things like a calendar, and your MUD site, and other such solutions that would be very difficult to accomplish using pure css. I don't know about the MUD site - but again, a calendar is tabular data and therefore belongs in a table. The design sin is using tables for page layout, not logical display of tabular data. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote: When I go and buy a film I don't buy a vhs or a betamax.. because I can't - that industry simply stopped making them and if I want to own a new film I buy the dvd - I don't write to paramount and complain because I only have a betamax. Funny - I'm about to finally buy a BlueRay player because selection of DVD for rent at local blockbuster is really starting to shrink. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 4:05 AM +0100 5/18/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: And by the way, this attitude of My code is fine; your browser sucks; upgrade can be the worst kind of arrogance, and people react to it exactly as though it were arrogance. There used to be the same kind of attitude with regard to screen resolution. 640x480 was just so 80s, and *all* the latest monitors supported 1280x1024 or whatever. So we design for 1280x1024 and screw those Luddite users. I would agree if someone's using Netscape 4; you'd have to kindly break it to them that they really should upgrade. But beyond that, it gets gray. -snip- yeah - major difference being that upgrading your web browser if free, and as we well know you can have multiple browsers installed with no problems. I understand what you are saying, but if 50%+ of the worlds web developers simply cut support for x, y z browser (or displayed a limited site with a notice) then I think the old browsers may just go away (90%). eg if google, facebook, msn, ebay, yahoo all cut support for them.. Nathan: In most technical things you are right, but here I have to agree with Paul. The user is king -- you must to design for them regardless of their browser of choice -- even if their choice is a bad one. No. You must design for a standard that is fairly well supported. At this point in time, html 4.01 and xhtml 1.1 are fairly well supported. At least time, most features of CSS 2.1 are fairly well supported. IE 6 maybe not, but users still using IE 6 are usually either on a government machine or don't have very big wallets and therefore are not a financial loss to ignore. If your content is what they are looking for, they will use an appropriate browser. If your content is easily accessible elsewhere, you need to start looking at a way to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack and make the user want to use your site. That will draw you far more users than coding for archaic buggy browsers will. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: It seems to me that things like header, navigation, content, and footer would be pretty standardized. However, in some sites the header called the banner, footer is called copyright, navigation is called side-bar, and content is called wrapper or something even less semantic. When the simpletons can't agree, then there's not much hope for the complexetons. :-) In case anyone is looking for statistics ... Just looked at my site - as the terms you used looked familiar. Content is in a div with id 'content' Page specific navigation is in a div with id 'pagenav' which is a child of the content div. Sitewide navigation is in a div with id 'navigation' and is below the content div in actual html (makes it work better with text browsers like links) but renders as a side div on the right side of the page. Header is in a div titled 'docheader' I believe I used that opposed to 'header' because 'header' is often used to describe an http header and/or the head section of the (x)html - though true, not in an ID tag. So it felt wrong to use the id header for it. I don't use a document footer div. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Paul M Foster wrote: That's the same problem XML has. The original idea was that you could, for example, have an invoice, and because it was marked up with the appropriate tags, everyone would be able to understand what it meant. xml provides a standard way of pointing the reader to a reference specifying how the document is to be read. I have run into problems before (data from biological databases provided in xml) that do not define the element and attribute semantics. That's a problem with the content generator, not xml, which I believe is just a subset of SGML. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On 18/5/09 21:35, PJ wrote:
I anyone knows where there is a real source of information about CSS,
how to use it with logical explanations of what is used how, I sure
would like to hear aboutit.
Did you try the sources I already linked you to?
Surely I must be wrong but there must be a logical explanation why such
simple things as adiv id=some_thing will show the first of three
imgs as being part of the div tag and the rest not - but rather as
part ofbody.
If you put a box around the div tag, it includes the first image but not
the next two.
Putting 5 images of 98px width not only shows four in linewitht the
fifth is off by the margin-top height but also displays the images in a
reverse order. How do you explain that? And how do you get it to do what
you want?
Your description of these problems is far too vague to make any
suggestions. Try linking to minimal test cases that _show_ your code and
the problems it causes. But best address them to a dedicated CSS
discussion list, rather than a list dedicated to PHP.
http://webkit.org/quality/reduction.html might help you produce such
test cases.
And what about all the weird CSS configurations that are not documented
anywhere I could find in a reasonable time - where are the definitions
for form positioning and displaying?
Strictly, there are no conformance criteria for how CSS 2.1 properties
apply to (X)HTML form widgets, so this is up to user agents. For
discussions of the current state of affairs, please see:
* http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/conform.html#conformance
* http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/
*
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200701/styling_form_controls_with_css_revisited/
* http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/15/formal-weirdness/
For practical advice on styling forms with CSS, please see (for example):
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/34-styling-forms/
What do such definitions signify:
form div fieldset label.labelCheckbox, form div fieldset
label.labelRadio {...
and - form div input.inputText, form div input.inputPassword {...
This is elementary CSS syntax:
* http://penguin.theopalgroup.com/cgi-bin/css3explainer/selectoracle.py
* http://css.maxdesign.com.au/selectutorial/
* http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/selector.html
* http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/
I thought that form would be subservient to div or is it the opposite?
This question suggests you'd benefit from reading an introduction to CSS
selectors such as the maxdesign link above.
Again, I hope that helps.
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
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Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 04:43:20PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: That's the same problem XML has. The original idea was that you could, for example, have an invoice, and because it was marked up with the appropriate tags, everyone would be able to understand what it meant. xml provides a standard way of pointing the reader to a reference specifying how the document is to be read. I have run into problems before (data from biological databases provided in xml) that do not define the element and attribute semantics. That's a problem with the content generator, not xml, which I believe is just a subset of SGML. That's true for web documents, but not for others. That's why I framed the comments the way I did. Things are much more standardized for XML on the web. But in non-web contexts, there is often no reference to a DTD. The developers know what it is, but it's not referenced in the XML file itself. Even then, let's say one company calls the invoice date tag invdate and another calls theirs invoice_dt. How does one reconcile this except by tedious manual examination of the standards at both companies? My point was that, among other deep flaws, XML typically suffers from a lack of standardization (except in the web area). Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Paul M Foster wrote: On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 04:43:20PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: That's the same problem XML has. The original idea was that you could, for example, have an invoice, and because it was marked up with the appropriate tags, everyone would be able to understand what it meant. xml provides a standard way of pointing the reader to a reference specifying how the document is to be read. I have run into problems before (data from biological databases provided in xml) that do not define the element and attribute semantics. That's a problem with the content generator, not xml, which I believe is just a subset of SGML. That's true for web documents, but not for others. That's why I framed the comments the way I did. Things are much more standardized for XML on the web. But in non-web contexts, there is often no reference to a DTD. The developers know what it is, but it's not referenced in the XML file itself. Even then, let's say one company calls the invoice date tag invdate and another calls theirs invoice_dt. How does one reconcile this except by tedious manual examination of the standards at both companies? Companies that want to share docs need to agree upon a standard. Third parties that want to take data from multiple sources need to write translation filters from source xml to whatever standard they choose to use. My point was that, among other deep flaws, XML typically suffers from a lack of standardization (except in the web area). If there is an area with demand for a standard, nothing is stopping those who would benefit from a standard creating a xmlns / dtd / etc. to describe acceptable documents that can even be validated against. Several organizations have already done this for data exchange - from cooking recipe's to GIS to religious texts. It seems that in many cases, where a standard is created is where XML is primarily used as a transport file format between databases, or even used as a database itself (though embedded real databases like bdb and sqlite are usually faster than using xml for the storage). I like xml, but I agree that using it without having a definition standard declared that defines the elements/attributes and can be used to validate a document is rather frustrating to the one trying to figure it out and work with it. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 09:15 -0400, Robert Cummings wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 10:48 +0100, Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 02:25 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms, tables are the preferred solution. I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. Paul -- Paul M. Foster I think the argument of tables vs css can go a little deeper too. These days, sites should not only be developed with good clean code that validates, but semantic markup. If your client doesn't like/know what this is, just give it to them in terms of seo! FWIW, everything I've read indicates that tables don't affect SEO. Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP SEO is not the be and end all. Accessibility is a legal thing in many countries; UK and Australia especially (they are the two most prominent I know) so there's no excuse for shoddy coding. I'm not saying that using tables inevitably leads to that, but more often than not, tables are used in such a way that the reading of a page is wrong because the elements appear in the code in the wrong order, even though they visually appear correct. It's not the responsibility of the speech/Braille browsers to interpret code designed for a seeing user. They should only have to interpret semantics. Rob; sorry, this isn't a pop at you, I just wanted to explain to anyone who got hooked too much onto the SEO line you mentioned. I agree with you in that respect though, I've never seen any evidence for tables having any impact on SEO, and I've done a lot of SEO research! Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk here's what I do.. I open the page in firefox, using chris pederick web developer toolbar I hit ctrl+shift+s (to disable css); and if the page doesn't look and read like a well formatted general document then I consider it to be made incorrectly. ash's site is a good example of it done properly, the only think he's missing is either a space between his navigation elements at the top of the page, or they could be popped in a ul. Really there is no excuse, I've never seen a layout yet that can't be created without tables, and haven't for many years - and the old I don't have the time / resources doesn't really float either, as once you've done it 2 or 3 times you can make table-less layouts at the same speed if not faster, not only this but they are far lighter (as less html). It's the equivalent of somebody coming here with ancient PHP 3 and advocating that they use it because they don't have time to learn or change to a newer version - only difference is that table based layouts are older than php 3 :p nath -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 2:34 PM -0400 5/15/09, Robert Cummings wrote: It is my opinion that browsers do not yet provided the necessary functionality across a large enough user spectrum to facilitate the versatility of layouts used by many sites today. That said, I place most of the blame squarely on Microsoft. Cheers, Rob. Rob: I saw your post and wanted to comment, but there are several reasons why I didn't. Some of them are: 1. I agree that the table issue is not yet resolved. I agree that M$ is the biggest problem that all technologies of the day have to overcome. First you have to solve the problem for the dumbest people on the planet and then you have to solve it so that M$ products will continue to work -- it's one of those dumber-dumbest things. With regard to css, I oscillate between being a css purist to a css pragmatist. On one hand I completely agree with the purist that tables in the past have been abused and the disabled have been hurt by it -- that's more than ample foundation in my book for the purist position. On the other hand, there are the reasons you cite where tables have not been universally accepted and defined by different browser developers (M$ specifically). As such, the practicality of the css purist to provide an alternate solution for all problems goes without foundation. In other words, some things cannot be done without using tables -- or at least not easily done. My statement is not a challenge for some css smart ass to say Oh really, just show me -- because I don't want to get into that debate! However, I cite things like a calendar, and your MUD site, and other such solutions that would be very difficult to accomplish using pure css. So as a stop-gap, I often revert back to the main reason why tables are a no-no in the first place, which almost totally revolves around the disabled. I figure if the disabled have no problems with me using a table for certain things, then the css purist (my alter ego) can go piss up a rope. 2. Debating an issue with you, is like arguing with God -- I seldom want to do it because I usually have my ass handed back to me. However, I usually learn something in the process -- so, it's a bittersweet thing. 3. My quota for learning stuff this week has been met and thus I am reluctant to post a comment as to your use of tables. I hope you understand (as tedd runs to empty his head for the onslaught of things to consider this way comes). Cheers, tedd PS: Apologies in advance for any grammatical errors -- I am writing in stream of thought. -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On 5/15/09 6:28 PM, Nathan Rixham nrix...@gmail.com wrote: so ultimately i guess it's a case of 3 cheers and a round of applause for anybody who's thus far managed to create a website that works and that the client likes! agreed. but lets hope some of the users like it too. i think of all the web sites that i used to find useful, quick and easy that got a make-over one day and wound up fancy, slow and confusing. i'm guessing the client was satisfied with the redesign... -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On 5/16/09 2:25 AM, Paul M Foster pa...@quillandmouse.com wrote: I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. that's a good metaphor. the critic's first job (like the professional op ed writer) is to make sure he or she keeps being read. take anthony lane in the new yorker for example. actually i think he hates watching so many mainstream hollywood releases week after week. he sure sounds like it. and his opinions on which movies to watch aren't worth much. but he keeps my interest by being a great writer -- his snobbery and cleverness is so witty that's quite appealing and it helps me hone the wit of my snobbery and cleverness, or so i perhaps unconsciously hope. an opinion doesn't have to be right to be valuable. an apt metaphor indeed. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 10:48 AM +0100 5/16/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote: Trust me, semantics are gonna be the next big thing, Semantics? What do you mean by that? And therein lies the problem -- what means something to me, may not to you. For example, if I make my header div id=header (or whatever) what makes it the same as yours? I think the next big thing will be an argument over meaning. :-) Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 9:15 AM -0400 5/16/09, Robert Cummings wrote: FWIW, everything I've read indicates that tables don't affect SEO. Cheers, Rob. Same here -- content is different than html. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 7:48 PM -0400 5/16/09, Stephen wrote: PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. CSS 2.1 makes layout easy ans IE8 passes ACID2. I have some javascript that detects the browser and warns users of IE 8 that they need to upgrade. Maybe bleeding edge for commercial sites, but helping the user upgrade is going them a favour. Stephen Stephen: Browser sniffing is a losing battle. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 8:38 PM -0400 5/16/09, Robert Cummings wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 19:48 -0400, Stephen wrote: PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. CSS 2.1 makes layout easy ans IE8 passes ACID2. I have some javascript that detects the browser and warns users of IE 8 that they need to upgrade. Maybe bleeding edge for commercial sites, but helping the user upgrade is going them a favour. Stephen Tell that to government... many, and in some departments most, are still using IE6. I'm quite sure they won't appreciate me telling them it's time to upgrade. On the plus side though, MediaWiki is breaking ground :) Cheers, Rob. -- What's interesting is that the government is behind a bunch of this section 508 and other such disability concerns. I love to point out when their sites fail and tell them that they couldn't receive a government grant if they were in the private sector. Do as I instruct, not as I do. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? hi tedd, didn't have one to hand so quickly knocked up a basic one here: http://programphp.com/Calendar/ all sizes etc are in em so it'll fully resize - you'll see in the source anyways - all css. have to say it's not great but it's just a quick demo to show it's more than possible. many regards, nathan -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 10:48 AM +0100 5/16/09, Ashley Sheridan wrote: Trust me, semantics are gonna be the next big thing, Semantics? What do you mean by that? And therein lies the problem -- what means something to me, may not to you. For example, if I make my header div id=header (or whatever) what makes it the same as yours? I think the next big thing will be an argument over meaning. :-) Cheers, tedd semantics already are the next big thing and have been for a year or three. google aquired the leading semantic analysis software many years ago and have been using it ever since, likewise with yahoo and all the majors. further we've all had open access to basic scripts like the yahoo term extraction service for years, and more recently (well maybe 2+ years) we've had access to open calais from reuters which will extract some great semantics from any content. if you've never seen then the best starting point is probably http://viewer.opencalais.com/ pretty sure yahoo (and maybe google) have been parsing rdf semantic data embedded inside comments in xhtml documents for a couple of years now, even the adding of tags generated by semantic extraction are common place now and make a big difference to seo. If however you mean document structure semantics such as using h* tags throughout the document in the correct places, then this is even older and everybody should be doing it - hell that's what an html document is! :p -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 7:48 PM -0400 5/16/09, Stephen wrote: PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. CSS 2.1 makes layout easy ans IE8 passes ACID2. I have some javascript that detects the browser and warns users of IE 8 that they need to upgrade. Maybe bleeding edge for commercial sites, but helping the user upgrade is going them a favour. Stephen Stephen: Browser sniffing is a losing battle. Cheers, tedd agreed - complete and utter waste of time -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On 15/5/09 18:25, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? (X)HTML is the layer for structured content. CSS - intended to replace presentational features in (X)HTML - is a layer for suggesting a presentational skin for HTML and XML structured content. In (X)HTML, tabular markup is appropriate when you need to indicate data relationships between cells and groups of cells. HTML 4.01 states: Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control layout rather than tables. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/tables.html#h-11.1 Separating content and presentation rather than using the same feature (td) sometimes to imply relationships and sometimes to dictate a rendering makes it easier to radically repurpose content (for example, linearize content for display on a narrow device, extract the data tables from a page, or read a page aloud). Any implementation of the current CSS2 standard should allow you to replicate /any/ table layout using (say) div containers and the tabular values of display in place of td containers, but I'd add two caveats: 1. div elements aren't always the most appropriate containers, but you can't use tabular values of display to (say) arrange li elements into a grid (because a single list can occupy multiple rows on the screen, but there are no elements to style with display: table-row;). Having said that, generic div elements are still preferable to td elements used for the same purpose, since at least they can't be confused with data table cells. CSS3 should offer more sophisticated layout features that will make it easier to achieve whatever design you want with the most appropriate markup, rather than root through the interwebs for hacks. 2. More crucially, while current versions of all popular browsers, including IE8, support virtually all of CSS 2.1, many users are still using older browsers especially IE6 or IE7 that are not only very buggy but are missing support for key CSS2 features including the tabular values for the display property. Web publishers who want to produce grid layouts in legacy browsers must resort to float or negative margin-based hackery even where using such features would be more appropriate. Also email client support for CSS layout features still sucks (http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/); so if you're creating HTML newsletters (shudder) you're probably going to have to stick to tabular markup for layout for those. Isolani offers an interesting corrective to CSS triumphalism: http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/standards/TheShallownessOfCssEvangelism I'd always push for a change to the visual design rather than resort to using tabular markup for layout. But whether you apply a limited presentational subset of tabular markup for layout (using only the table, tr, and td elements, perhaps adding role='presentation' from WAI-ARIA, and trying to avoid nested tables) is significantly less important than whether you use the expected semantic markup to indicate relationships that user agents will extract and present to users. For example: 1. The relationship between a data table cell and its headers (th, td, tr elements, scope, headers, id attributes). 2. The relationship between a table and its title (caption element). 3. The relationship between a form field and its text label (label element, for, id attributes). 4. The relationship between a group of form fields and their label (fieldset and legend elements). 5. The sequence of sections in the document (h1 to h6 elements). Sometimes people argue that certain forms involve tabular relationships. This can be a defensible position. But at least until other ways of indicating field label associations are specified and supported, you should keep using the label element even if you are also grouping labels and fields with the tr element. But stepping beyond the undying tables-versus-CSS debate towards an actual solution for your immediate problem, you might it find it productive to share: 1. A description of your goals - the content you have, the layout you want, and the minimum set of web clients you expect it to work for (IE7? IE6? What if it can be
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: At 7:48 PM -0400 5/16/09, Stephen wrote: PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. CSS 2.1 makes layout easy ans IE8 passes ACID2. I have some javascript that detects the browser and warns users of IE 8 that they need to upgrade. Maybe bleeding edge for commercial sites, but helping the user upgrade is going them a favour. Stephen Stephen: Browser sniffing is a losing battle. Cheers, tedd agreed - complete and utter waste of time If someone wants to mask their browser, so be it. They will see a false warning, or miss a useful one. Standards exist for a reason. Web designers have wasted eons of man years accommodating Microsoft's incompetence. Finally getting things right takes some people to start, and it is those of us without a commercial need to be friendly to IE 8. Stephen -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 08:40:33PM +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? hi tedd, didn't have one to hand so quickly knocked up a basic one here: http://programphp.com/Calendar/ all sizes etc are in em so it'll fully resize - you'll see in the source anyways - all css. have to say it's not great but it's just a quick demo to show it's more than possible. It's very pretty, Nathan. *Except* in IE6, which is what probably most of the world is using. In IE6, the day labels are lined up one on top of each other, and there are no date cells at all. No numbers, no nothing. And therein lies the reason why people use tables. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On 17/5/09 22:43, Paul M Foster wrote: *Except* in IE6, which is what probably most of the world is using. Probably a lot rather than most. http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm --- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Paul M Foster wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 08:40:33PM +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? hi tedd, didn't have one to hand so quickly knocked up a basic one here: http://programphp.com/Calendar/ all sizes etc are in em so it'll fully resize - you'll see in the source anyways - all css. have to say it's not great but it's just a quick demo to show it's more than possible. It's very pretty, Nathan. *Except* in IE6, which is what probably most of the world is using. In IE6, the day labels are lined up one on top of each other, and there are no date cells at all. No numbers, no nothing. And therein lies the reason why people use tables. Paul and if every site a user visited was screwed in IE6 because the developers had made it without tables, maybe they'd all upgrade to something newer. you never know we might be bringing it on ourselves by still coding sites to be compatible with old browsers. When I go and buy a film I don't buy a vhs or a betamax.. because I can't - that industry simply stopped making them and if I want to own a new film I buy the dvd - I don't write to paramount and complain because I only have a betamax. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] CSS tables
-Original Message- From: Paul M Foster [mailto:pa...@quillandmouse.com] Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 5:44 PM To: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP] CSS tables On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 08:40:33PM +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? hi tedd, didn't have one to hand so quickly knocked up a basic one here: http://programphp.com/Calendar/ all sizes etc are in em so it'll fully resize - you'll see in the source anyways - all css. have to say it's not great but it's just a quick demo to show it's more than possible. Seems that CSS calendar script is only working in IE8 and the latest Firefox (didn't check it on earlier versions of FF) everything else showed layout issues. Not bad for a quick throw together though. As far as Semantics et al. The next 2 years the web will be shifting into newer directions, become much more robust and intelligent. Obviously it isn't a true intelligence yet. Things like Wolfram Alpha are still to be seen. I hear a lot of hype regarding this new Google killer yet until I see it... Web 3.0 (or the true 2.0 depending on who you ask) will change how many of use view and develop for the WWW. I hope there are some serious back room discussions on the laws of robotics. :) -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4081 (20090517) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:20:19PM +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 08:40:33PM +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? hi tedd, didn't have one to hand so quickly knocked up a basic one here: http://programphp.com/Calendar/ all sizes etc are in em so it'll fully resize - you'll see in the source anyways - all css. have to say it's not great but it's just a quick demo to show it's more than possible. It's very pretty, Nathan. *Except* in IE6, which is what probably most of the world is using. In IE6, the day labels are lined up one on top of each other, and there are no date cells at all. No numbers, no nothing. And therein lies the reason why people use tables. Paul and if every site a user visited was screwed in IE6 because the developers had made it without tables, maybe they'd all upgrade to something newer. No, they'd simply go elsewhere for their product/service/information. Moreover, they don't know that the site is goofy because of their browsers' lack of support for CSS. In fact, the vast majority of them wouldn't even know something called CSS exists. And by the way, this attitude of My code is fine; your browser sucks; upgrade can be the worst kind of arrogance, and people react to it exactly as though it were arrogance. There used to be the same kind of attitude with regard to screen resolution. 640x480 was just so 80s, and *all* the latest monitors supported 1280x1024 or whatever. So we design for 1280x1024 and screw those Luddite users. I would agree if someone's using Netscape 4; you'd have to kindly break it to them that they really should upgrade. But beyond that, it gets gray. Telling a user to upgrade his browser because it won't display your way kewl website properly is like telling someone it's time to trade in their car. The car still runs fine, and gets them from point A to point B without a lot of maintenance issues. Why should they trade it in? And they'll react with resentment. The analogy isn't perfect. Computer/web technology moves a lot faster than car technology. But there are probably still sites out there which will sell them the doodad they want without them having to upgrade their browser. Why stay with you? To be honest, I think the reason the site didn't paint properly is because you put the content of the cells (the outline numbering) in the CSS. If you had inserted content for each cell into the actual HTML, it might have painted fine. Nonetheless... Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Paul M Foster wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:20:19PM +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 08:40:33PM +0100, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: At 11:28 PM +0100 5/15/09, Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. Okay -- so you find them easier to use for this purpose. This is my little php calendar (not all the code is mine): http://php1.net/my-php-calendar/ and I use tables. I would not want to redo this script using pure css, but I probably will do it at some point. We all have investments into our code. Do you have a css calendar to show? hi tedd, didn't have one to hand so quickly knocked up a basic one here: http://programphp.com/Calendar/ all sizes etc are in em so it'll fully resize - you'll see in the source anyways - all css. have to say it's not great but it's just a quick demo to show it's more than possible. It's very pretty, Nathan. *Except* in IE6, which is what probably most of the world is using. In IE6, the day labels are lined up one on top of each other, and there are no date cells at all. No numbers, no nothing. And therein lies the reason why people use tables. Paul and if every site a user visited was screwed in IE6 because the developers had made it without tables, maybe they'd all upgrade to something newer. No, they'd simply go elsewhere for their product/service/information. Moreover, they don't know that the site is goofy because of their browsers' lack of support for CSS. In fact, the vast majority of them wouldn't even know something called CSS exists. And by the way, this attitude of My code is fine; your browser sucks; upgrade can be the worst kind of arrogance, and people react to it exactly as though it were arrogance. There used to be the same kind of attitude with regard to screen resolution. 640x480 was just so 80s, and *all* the latest monitors supported 1280x1024 or whatever. So we design for 1280x1024 and screw those Luddite users. I would agree if someone's using Netscape 4; you'd have to kindly break it to them that they really should upgrade. But beyond that, it gets gray. Telling a user to upgrade his browser because it won't display your way kewl website properly is like telling someone it's time to trade in their car. The car still runs fine, and gets them from point A to point B without a lot of maintenance issues. Why should they trade it in? And they'll react with resentment. The analogy isn't perfect. Computer/web technology moves a lot faster than car technology. But there are probably still sites out there which will sell them the doodad they want without them having to upgrade their browser. Why stay with you? yeah - major difference being that upgrading your web browser if free, and as we well know you can have multiple browsers installed with no problems. I understand what you are saying, but if 50%+ of the worlds web developers simply cut support for x, y z browser (or displayed a limited site with a notice) then I think the old browsers may just go away (90%). eg if google, facebook, msn, ebay, yahoo all cut support for them.. To be honest, I think the reason the site didn't paint properly is because you put the content of the cells (the outline numbering) in the CSS. If you had inserted content for each cell into the actual HTML, it might have painted fine. Nonetheless... yup, and its css3 with selectors that are unsupported by ie6 + even with content it'll hit a few bugs - infact it just won't work in ie6 full stop. regards! -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 03:12:06PM -0400, HallMarc Websites wrote: Um... sorry to jump in as a late arrival yet there you go What limitations? You could provide a layered layout using CSS and png graphic format. As for setting up columns check out float and clear and you're all set. TABLE, TR, TD, TBODY, etc were never intended to be used in the manner we see today. If you are blind and you hit a site with a mess of nested tables then.. well you might leave because of the garbage you have to listen to when the page loads. Speaking of which, correct me if I am wrong and my info is out of date but TABLEs are loaded one at a time by browsers and cause longer load times than necessary. Tables do take longer to load. The browser has to do a lot of math to determine how wide to make cells, etc. I don't know how this compares with CSS divs and such, speed wise. All in CSS is the way to go. CSS3 will make our lives easier and will contain so many new features that it will be released in batches (modules) No doubt. But if history is any guide, it will be quite some time before browsers support a new standard. In fact, browsers typically fail to support existing standards fully. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms, tables are the preferred solution. I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 02:25 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms, tables are the preferred solution. I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. Paul -- Paul M. Foster I think the argument of tables vs css can go a little deeper too. These days, sites should not only be developed with good clean code that validates, but semantic markup. If your client doesn't like/know what this is, just give it to them in terms of seo! Tabular data should be kept in tables, layout shouldn't be done with tables if you can avoid it, but if you must use them, at least check the site after in a text browser or screen reader to get an impression of how others 'see' it. Same goes for other aspects of a site too. So many times I've seen people (DreamWeaver users for the most part) litter an entire page with span tags, most of which do nothing more than bolden or italicise text, which is not all that semantic. Codes lists are another one too. That code should be in a list, as it makes more sense semantically. Trust me, semantics are gonna be the next big thing, especially if browsers start to delve into what M$ has dubbed 'slices' in IE8. Sites are forever sharing content and scraping small content areas from other sites, so wouldn't it be good to make it easier in some respects and give a bit more context and meaning to content? Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote I've been using div's with in css float and only setting width of elements, that way your div grow dynamically pending on data size. it takes some time figuring it out but you should be able to find examples on the net. Bas I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms, tables are the preferred solution. I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. Paul -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 10:48 +0100, Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 02:25 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms, tables are the preferred solution. I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. Paul -- Paul M. Foster I think the argument of tables vs css can go a little deeper too. These days, sites should not only be developed with good clean code that validates, but semantic markup. If your client doesn't like/know what this is, just give it to them in terms of seo! FWIW, everything I've read indicates that tables don't affect SEO. Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. CSS 2.1 makes layout easy ans IE8 passes ACID2. I have some javascript that detects the browser and warns users of IE 8 that they need to upgrade. Maybe bleeding edge for commercial sites, but helping the user upgrade is going them a favour. Stephen -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 19:48 -0400, Stephen wrote: PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. CSS 2.1 makes layout easy ans IE8 passes ACID2. I have some javascript that detects the browser and warns users of IE 8 that they need to upgrade. Maybe bleeding edge for commercial sites, but helping the user upgrade is going them a favour. Stephen Tell that to government... many, and in some departments most, are still using IE6. I'm quite sure they won't appreciate me telling them it's time to upgrade. On the plus side though, MediaWiki is breaking ground :) Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 09:15 -0400, Robert Cummings wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 10:48 +0100, Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 02:25 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms, tables are the preferred solution. I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. Paul -- Paul M. Foster I think the argument of tables vs css can go a little deeper too. These days, sites should not only be developed with good clean code that validates, but semantic markup. If your client doesn't like/know what this is, just give it to them in terms of seo! FWIW, everything I've read indicates that tables don't affect SEO. Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP SEO is not the be and end all. Accessibility is a legal thing in many countries; UK and Australia especially (they are the two most prominent I know) so there's no excuse for shoddy coding. I'm not saying that using tables inevitably leads to that, but more often than not, tables are used in such a way that the reading of a page is wrong because the elements appear in the code in the wrong order, even though they visually appear correct. It's not the responsibility of the speech/Braille browsers to interpret code designed for a seeing user. They should only have to interpret semantics. Rob; sorry, this isn't a pop at you, I just wanted to explain to anyone who got hooked too much onto the SEO line you mentioned. I agree with you in that respect though, I've never seen any evidence for tables having any impact on SEO, and I've done a lot of SEO research! Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 01:52 +0100, Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 09:15 -0400, Robert Cummings wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 10:48 +0100, Ashley Sheridan wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 02:25 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms, tables are the preferred solution. I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. Paul -- Paul M. Foster I think the argument of tables vs css can go a little deeper too. These days, sites should not only be developed with good clean code that validates, but semantic markup. If your client doesn't like/know what this is, just give it to them in terms of seo! FWIW, everything I've read indicates that tables don't affect SEO. Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP SEO is not the be and end all. Accessibility is a legal thing in many countries; UK and Australia especially (they are the two most prominent I know) so there's no excuse for shoddy coding. I'm not saying that using tables inevitably leads to that, but more often than not, tables are used in such a way that the reading of a page is wrong because the elements appear in the code in the wrong order, even though they visually appear correct. It's not the responsibility of the speech/Braille browsers to interpret code designed for a seeing user. They should only have to interpret semantics. Rob; sorry, this isn't a pop at you, I just wanted to explain to anyone who got hooked too much onto the SEO line you mentioned. I agree with you in that respect though, I've never seen any evidence for tables having any impact on SEO, and I've done a lot of SEO research! You know, I'm not advocating tables in general, I'm just saying there are edge cases, that I certainly don't have the resources to flesh out into pure table-less designs. In general I advocate clean validating markup, with proper use of semantic tagging. I am very aware of accessibility guidelines, and have had to follow the Canadian Government's CLF2 guidelines often enough. However, the W3C guidelines say not to use tables when appropriate CSS exist, unfortunately the appropriate CSS is not widespread enough in some environments due to a certain monopolostic company dragging it's feet. As such, the W3C makes allowances for tables but tempers that with the expectation that they linearize properly so that accessibility is still retained. In my use of tables for the occasional layout, actually my MUD website was the first time in a long time, I did ensure that linearization was maintained. This being a hobby site, I'm sure many wouldn't even care :) Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Robert Cummings wrote: On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 19:48 -0400, Stephen wrote: PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. CSS 2.1 makes layout easy ans IE8 passes ACID2. I have some javascript that detects the browser and warns users of IE 8 that they need to upgrade. Maybe bleeding edge for commercial sites, but helping the user upgrade is going them a favour. Stephen Tell that to government... many, and in some departments most, are still using IE6. I'm quite sure they won't appreciate me telling them it's time to upgrade. On the plus side though, MediaWiki is breaking ground :) Cheers, Rob. My sites are still viewable, and can be navigated. They just look strange. Government workers are used to strange :) Stephen -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Stephen wrote: My sites are still viewable, and can be navigated. They just look strange. Government workers are used to strange :) Stephen My experience is that government web sites are often the worst, frequently designed in MS word using brutally illegal html that only works in IE. They have fixed most of it, but one awful example was certain parts of the Shasta County website - MS word produced an html document involving really weird namespaces (illegal in html) that looked OK in IE - but in any other browser, you were presented with images of the text - images that then were scaled so you couldn't even read the text was written unless you clicked on an image and chose view image to see the image at it's native resolution. That's why government sites need regulation about web design. Often they would rather let their secretary do the site in word than use some of their budget to hire someone who actually knows what they are doing. Laws that force them to meet certain standards forces them to hire someone who knows what they are doing. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 08:12:29PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote: Stephen wrote: My sites are still viewable, and can be navigated. They just look strange. Government workers are used to strange :) Stephen My experience is that government web sites are often the worst, frequently designed in MS word using brutally illegal html that only works in IE. They have fixed most of it, but one awful example was certain parts of the Shasta County website - MS word produced an html document involving really weird namespaces (illegal in html) that looked OK in IE - but in any other browser, you were presented with images of the text - images that then were scaled so you couldn't even read the text was written unless you clicked on an image and chose view image to see the image at it's native resolution. That's why government sites need regulation about web design. Often they would rather let their secretary do the site in word than use some of their budget to hire someone who actually knows what they are doing. Laws that force them to meet certain standards forces them to hire someone who knows what they are doing. Are you the same guy who was lobbying for the licensing of PHP/HTML programmers? Argh. Paul -- Paul M. Foster -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Paul M Foster wrote: On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 08:12:29PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote: Stephen wrote: My sites are still viewable, and can be navigated. They just look strange. Government workers are used to strange :) Stephen My experience is that government web sites are often the worst, frequently designed in MS word using brutally illegal html that only works in IE. They have fixed most of it, but one awful example was certain parts of the Shasta County website - MS word produced an html document involving really weird namespaces (illegal in html) that looked OK in IE - but in any other browser, you were presented with images of the text - images that then were scaled so you couldn't even read the text was written unless you clicked on an image and chose view image to see the image at it's native resolution. That's why government sites need regulation about web design. Often they would rather let their secretary do the site in word than use some of their budget to hire someone who actually knows what they are doing. Laws that force them to meet certain standards forces them to hire someone who knows what they are doing. Are you the same guy who was lobbying for the licensing of PHP/HTML programmers? Argh. No - not me. I do like w3c compliant code in most cases (I could care less if, say, a custom attribute that means nothing to display is used w/o defining a custom DTD), but I don't want any kind of licensing program. Such a program even if it had good intentions would be impossible to enforce given the international nature of the web. I do however feel that government sites need to work in any reasonably modern browser. Commercial sites - those with poor design will often ultimately lose business. Government sites though provide information that I as a citizen and tax payer have a right to access regardless of what operating system and browser I use. The information needs to accessible whether I'm using the latest browser or lynx. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
[PHP] CSS tables
I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? -- Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme. - Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 13:25 -0400, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? Ask the guy paying you if he wants you to waste his money :) CSS is nice and all, but there are so many issues with getting layouts going that are so easy with tables. If only Microsoft would fully support the CSS rules for table layouts without tables then this would be a moot issue. But that hasn't happened yet (or has it in IE 8?). Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? Whatever works best for you IMHO. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On 5/15/09 1:25 PM, PJ af.gour...@videotron.ca wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? there's a strong and vocal online faction advocating that tables should be avoided, especially for layout. it can get pretty extreme. there are influential voices that will denounce any div that's used for other than semantic structure and then gets styled. it took me ages to realize that this isn't really very practical (at least not since ie5 became obsolete) and stop feeling that i was using bad practices. for one thing, a table is a great way of representing relations (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Relation.html). data tables are the canonical example but very often a form's structure is a relation, e.g. between labels and input fields, or between multiple input fields. some of the best designed and behaving web sites i know use tables in ways that a list apart would consider heathen. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 1:25 PM -0400 5/15/09, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? PJ: You have a choice: 1. Learn css and do it right; 2. Use tables. If you are in a time pinch, number 2 will suffice enough to get it past a client (besides, what do they know anyway). But number 1 is really the best way to go. Never use tables to hold a layout together. I know, I have clients who *require* me to use tables for their layout and I must bite my lip and comply. But, more and more clients are listening to reason as they discover it really is better way to go. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
At 2:06 PM -0400 5/15/09, Tom Worster wrote: for one thing, a table is a great way of representing relations (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Relation.html). data tables are the canonical example but very often a form's structure is a relation, e.g. between labels and input fields, or between multiple input fields. some of the best designed and behaving web sites i know use tables in ways that a list apart would consider heathen. Heresy! :-) However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I have, and continue to use, tables for forms. The main reason given for not using tables is because they are not considered accessible by those with disabilities. However, people with disabilities generally don't have any problems with forms if the forms are properly labeled. So, I think that's acceptable, but am sure heathen in css terms. But whenever/wherever I can, I try to avoid using tables -- especially in layouts. Cheers, tedd -- --- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 14:11 -0400, tedd wrote: At 1:25 PM -0400 5/15/09, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? PJ: You have a choice: 1. Learn css and do it right; 2. Use tables. If you are in a time pinch, number 2 will suffice enough to get it past a client (besides, what do they know anyway). But number 1 is really the best way to go. Never use tables to hold a layout together. I know, I have clients who *require* me to use tables for their layout and I must bite my lip and comply. But, more and more clients are listening to reason as they discover it really is better way to go. Hi tedd, I made a post a week or so ago where I asked a question about a better way to do a layout... specifically I wrote the following... I thought I'd dredge up this old, old topic to add some comments about some recent stuff I did since this thread (or many similar to it) were in the back of mind. Specifically I was creating a new look and feel for my MUD hobby website and I wanted to make use of lots of PNG images with alpha transparency. Additionally I wanted variable width. I felt tables were the best approach for this because div based sliding door techniques and multi-level div containers don't work when the alpha transparency will reveal the underlying sliding or container background. I just don't think I could accomplish the same results using divs and floats. http://www.wocmud.org/welcome.php Comments? I didn't get any feedback... maybe you have thoughts on it. I'm well versed in HTML and CSS and I felt the need to drop back to tables on that one (though I did use CSS appropriately). The WCAG have this to say on the matter: Checkpoints: 5.1 For data tables, identify row and column headers. [Priority 1] For example, in HTML, use TD to identify data cells and TH to identify headers. Techniques for checkpoint 5.1 5.2 For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells. [Priority 1] For example, in HTML, use THEAD, TFOOT, and TBODY to group rows, COL and COLGROUP to group columns, and the axis, scope, and headers attributes, to describe more complex relationships among data. Techniques for checkpoint 5.2 5.3 Do not use tables for layout unless the table makes sense when linearized. Otherwise, if the table does not make sense, provide an alternative equivalent (which may be a linearized version). [Priority 2] Note. Once user agents support style sheet positioning, tables should not be used for layout. Refer also to checkpoint 3.3. Techniques for checkpoint 5.3 5.4 If a table is used for layout, do not use any structural markup for the purpose of visual formatting. [Priority 2] For example, in HTML do not use the TH element to cause the content of a (non-table header) cell to be displayed centered and in bold. Techniques for checkpoint 5.4 5.5 Provide summaries for tables. [Priority 3] For example, in HTML, use the summary attribute of the TABLE element. Techniques for checkpoint 5.5 5.6 Provide abbreviations for header labels. [Priority 3] For example, in HTML, use the abbr attribute on the TH element. Techniques for checkpoint 5.6 It is my opinion that browsers do not yet provided the necessary functionality across a large enough user spectrum to facilitate the versatility of layouts used by many sites today. That said, I place most of the blame squarely on Microsoft. Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 1:25 PM -0400 5/15/09, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? PJ: You have a choice: 1. Learn css and do it right; 2. Use tables. If you are in a time pinch, number 2 will suffice enough to get it past a client (besides, what do they know anyway). But number 1 is really the best way to go. Never use tables to hold a layout together. I know, I have clients who *require* me to use tables for their layout and I must bite my lip and comply. But, more and more clients are listening to reason as they discover it really is better way to go. Cheers, tedd Thanks Tedd et al., for your input. I see that may limited experience was sufficient to understand what you are all saying: CSS is fine for graphical layouts even with some of the image limitations, but input/form and more than 1 column formatting is hell in CSS. So While I was awaiting your input, I set up my tables, had lunch and whistled Dixie. 8-) Oh, yes... the client was going up the wall with the time I was wasting with CSS... the client being myself. ;-) -- Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme. - Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] CSS tables
Um... sorry to jump in as a late arrival yet there you go What limitations? You could provide a layered layout using CSS and png graphic format. As for setting up columns check out float and clear and you're all set. TABLE, TR, TD, TBODY, etc were never intended to be used in the manner we see today. If you are blind and you hit a site with a mess of nested tables then.. well you might leave because of the garbage you have to listen to when the page loads. Speaking of which, correct me if I am wrong and my info is out of date but TABLEs are loaded one at a time by browsers and cause longer load times than necessary. All in CSS is the way to go. CSS3 will make our lives easier and will contain so many new features that it will be released in batches (modules) Sorry, I just couldn't read that statement about CSS being limited without speaking up. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php __ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4080 (20090515) __ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 14:59 -0400, PJ wrote: tedd wrote: At 1:25 PM -0400 5/15/09, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? PJ: You have a choice: 1. Learn css and do it right; 2. Use tables. If you are in a time pinch, number 2 will suffice enough to get it past a client (besides, what do they know anyway). But number 1 is really the best way to go. Never use tables to hold a layout together. I know, I have clients who *require* me to use tables for their layout and I must bite my lip and comply. But, more and more clients are listening to reason as they discover it really is better way to go. Cheers, tedd Thanks Tedd et al., for your input. I see that may limited experience was sufficient to understand what you are all saying: CSS is fine for graphical layouts even with some of the image limitations, but input/form and more than 1 column formatting is hell in CSS. So While I was awaiting your input, I set up my tables, had lunch and whistled Dixie. 8-) Oh, yes... the client was going up the wall with the time I was wasting with CSS... the client being myself. ;-) There's a time for purism (such as in debate or mental exercise) and there's a time for pragmatism (such as when you're about to be fired for taking too long ;) Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] CSS tables
On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 15:12 -0400, HallMarc Websites wrote: Um... sorry to jump in as a late arrival yet there you go What limitations? You could provide a layered layout using CSS and png graphic format. As for setting up columns check out float and clear and you're all set. TABLE, TR, TD, TBODY, etc were never intended to be used in the manner we see today. If you are blind and you hit a site with a mess of nested tables then.. well you might leave because of the garbage you have to listen to when the page loads. Speaking of which, correct me if I am wrong and my info is out of date but TABLEs are loaded one at a time by browsers and cause longer load times than necessary. All in CSS is the way to go. CSS3 will make our lives easier and will contain so many new features that it will be released in batches (modules) Sorry, I just couldn't read that statement about CSS being limited without speaking up. You must have missed the part about flexible width. Tell me how I prevent floated divs with alpha png backgrounds from revealing the underlying fill background alpha transparency PNG? I'd love to know. CSS3 will make our lives easier once it's fully supported by all major browser vendors... are you going to hit MS with a stick to get them going? Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] CSS tables
On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 15:12 -0400, HallMarc Websites wrote: Um... sorry to jump in as a late arrival yet there you go What limitations? You could provide a layered layout using CSS and png graphic format. As for setting up columns check out float and clear and you're all set. TABLE, TR, TD, TBODY, etc were never intended to be used in the manner we see today. If you are blind and you hit a site with a mess of nested tables then.. well you might leave because of the garbage you have to listen to when the page loads. Speaking of which, correct me if I am wrong and my info is out of date but TABLEs are loaded one at a time by browsers and cause longer load times than necessary. All in CSS is the way to go. CSS3 will make our lives easier and will contain so many new features that it will be released in batches (modules) Sorry, I just couldn't read that statement about CSS being limited without speaking up. I should have commented on your other comments too... A table layout will generally not degrade the readability of the content for blind people if the content organized within is such that it will linearize. Similarly, this is true of nested tables. Browsers today are so fast and good at rendering HTML that you would need some very serious nesting to cause problems for the load time. I'm all for CSS, but I definitely think there are some deficiencies in the browser support currently. I've gone through all kinds of float hell for table-less layouts for government website HTML, that's fine, but by no means is it a walk in the park for all cases, especially where older browser compatibility is necessary. BTW, Google's homepage still uses a table layout. I'm sure there's a reason for it. Cheers, Rob. -- http://www.interjinn.com Application and Templating Framework for PHP -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Robert Cummings wrote: On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 14:59 -0400, PJ wrote: tedd wrote: At 1:25 PM -0400 5/15/09, PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? PJ: You have a choice: 1. Learn css and do it right; 2. Use tables. If you are in a time pinch, number 2 will suffice enough to get it past a client (besides, what do they know anyway). But number 1 is really the best way to go. Never use tables to hold a layout together. I know, I have clients who *require* me to use tables for their layout and I must bite my lip and comply. But, more and more clients are listening to reason as they discover it really is better way to go. Cheers, tedd Thanks Tedd et al., for your input. I see that may limited experience was sufficient to understand what you are all saying: CSS is fine for graphical layouts even with some of the image limitations, but input/form and more than 1 column formatting is hell in CSS. So While I was awaiting your input, I set up my tables, had lunch and whistled Dixie. 8-) Oh, yes... the client was going up the wall with the time I was wasting with CSS... the client being myself. ;-) There's a time for purism (such as in debate or mental exercise) and there's a time for pragmatism (such as when you're about to be fired for taking too long ;) Cheers, Rob. Yeah, I was about to fire myself. It's rather difficult to explain the contortions one has to go through to get what one wants with CSS. Sometimes you have to make so many exceptions (or variations on a theme) that the css file would become humungous. For instance, to align some 17 input rows to be aligned on the right for the prompt text and the input fields on the left with an imaginary line beween them... and then add separation lines between section of the inputs... You can force that in a small environment, but when you're getting into a complex (only in the backend) page; the output is rather simple but demanding. Tables got it done in no time at all; CSS you could play for a week and then... :-P -- Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme. - Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 2:06 PM -0400 5/15/09, Tom Worster wrote: for one thing, a table is a great way of representing relations (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Relation.html). data tables are the canonical example but very often a form's structure is a relation, e.g. between labels and input fields, or between multiple input fields. some of the best designed and behaving web sites i know use tables in ways that a list apart would consider heathen. Heresy! :-) However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. I have, and continue to use, tables for forms. The main reason given for not using tables is because they are not considered accessible by those with disabilities. However, people with disabilities generally don't have any problems with forms if the forms are properly labeled. So, I think that's acceptable, but am sure heathen in css terms. But whenever/wherever I can, I try to avoid using tables -- especially in layouts. IMHO the whole css vs table based layouts is a bit pointless, fact is that as web developers and designers we're struggling to fulfil clients needs, designers aesthetic demands and end user functionality using languages that really aren't cut out for the job. Sure we can manage to do and hack through things, but the second you move away from a conventional style document with some hyper links you've moved outside of the scope of html. So regardless of how we do it, we're fitting square technologies in to round holes. In fact the most fitting use of (x)HTML and CSS I've ever seen are the RFCs and Specifications on w3c.org - styled usable documents - not what many term as a website, and certainly not a flashy zippy glossy ecommerce store with a tonne of effects and even more functionality. It's a bit like creating a full glossy magazine in ms paint I guess. so ultimately i guess it's a case of 3 cheers and a round of applause for anybody who's thus far managed to create a website that works and that the client likes! regards :) -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Robert Cummings wrote: On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 15:12 -0400, HallMarc Websites wrote: Um... sorry to jump in as a late arrival yet there you go What limitations? You could provide a layered layout using CSS and png graphic format. As for setting up columns check out float and clear and you're all set. TABLE, TR, TD, TBODY, etc were never intended to be used in the manner we see today. If you are blind and you hit a site with a mess of nested tables then.. well you might leave because of the garbage you have to listen to when the page loads. Speaking of which, correct me if I am wrong and my info is out of date but TABLEs are loaded one at a time by browsers and cause longer load times than necessary. All in CSS is the way to go. CSS3 will make our lives easier and will contain so many new features that it will be released in batches (modules) Sorry, I just couldn't read that statement about CSS being limited without speaking up. I should have commented on your other comments too... A table layout will generally not degrade the readability of the content for blind people if the content organized within is such that it will linearize. Similarly, this is true of nested tables. Browsers today are so fast and good at rendering HTML that you would need some very serious nesting to cause problems for the load time. I'm all for CSS, but I definitely think there are some deficiencies in the browser support currently. I've gone through all kinds of float hell for table-less layouts for government website HTML, that's fine, but by no means is it a walk in the park for all cases, especially where older browser compatibility is necessary. BTW, Google's homepage still uses a table layout. I'm sure there's a reason for it. Cheers, Rob. Oh, yes, I had forgotten about the compatibility... I made a nice, very simple index.php which blew away a client... but on IE it looks like, well... see my attachment.sheisse -- Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme. - Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: At 2:06 PM -0400 5/15/09, Tom Worster wrote: for one thing, a table is a great way of representing relations (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Relation.html). data tables are the canonical example but very often a form's structure is a relation, e.g. between labels and input fields, or between multiple input fields. some of the best designed and behaving web sites i know use tables in ways that a list apart would consider heathen. Heresy! :-) However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. I have, and continue to use, tables for forms. The main reason given for not using tables is because they are not considered accessible by those with disabilities. However, people with disabilities generally don't have any problems with forms if the forms are properly labeled. So, I think that's acceptable, but am sure heathen in css terms. But whenever/wherever I can, I try to avoid using tables -- especially in layouts. IMHO the whole css vs table based layouts is a bit pointless, fact is that as web developers and designers we're struggling to fulfil clients needs, designers aesthetic demands and end user functionality using languages that really aren't cut out for the job. Sure we can manage to do and hack through things, but the second you move away from a conventional style document with some hyper links you've moved outside of the scope of html. So regardless of how we do it, we're fitting square technologies in to round holes. In fact the most fitting use of (x)HTML and CSS I've ever seen are the RFCs and Specifications on w3c.org - styled usable documents - not what many term as a website, and certainly not a flashy zippy glossy ecommerce store with a tonne of effects and even more functionality. It's a bit like creating a full glossy magazine in ms paint I guess. so ultimately i guess it's a case of 3 cheers and a round of applause for anybody who's thus far managed to create a website that works and that the client likes! regards :) Hear! Hear! ;-) :-) -- Hervé Kempf: Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme. - Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
PJ wrote: I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, but... I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself in the foot or somewhere... Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is ridiculously fast. Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? If it is tabular data use tables. Otherwise use css. I have some rather complex forms done in CSS - for the most part, I use fieldset for for the different types of fields - and within a fieldset, just use a div with float: left; for individual stuff in the fieldset - with an occasional dummy div that is just clear: both; to force the next div down to the left. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
tedd wrote: At 2:06 PM -0400 5/15/09, Tom Worster wrote: for one thing, a table is a great way of representing relations (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Relation.html). data tables are the canonical example but very often a form's structure is a relation, e.g. between labels and input fields, or between multiple input fields. some of the best designed and behaving web sites i know use tables in ways that a list apart would consider heathen. Heresy! :-) However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. Calendars are tabular data and thus a table is right way to do it. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] CSS tables
Nathan Rixham wrote: tedd wrote: At 2:06 PM -0400 5/15/09, Tom Worster wrote: for one thing, a table is a great way of representing relations (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Relation.html). data tables are the canonical example but very often a form's structure is a relation, e.g. between labels and input fields, or between multiple input fields. some of the best designed and behaving web sites i know use tables in ways that a list apart would consider heathen. Heresy! :-) However, there are occasions such as in a calendar where not using a table would be more than difficult. I haven't received a decree yet as to IF that would be considered column data or not. I'm gonna differ on this one, when you simply float each calender item to the left you're pretty much done, in many cases i find it easier than tables. But with tables, you can use th and td elements to describe the tabular data, and non visual browsers will know what to do with those tags to better describe the data in the table. Also, by using a table, you don't end up with funny display should the calendar be displayed in a small browser window. Yes, you'll end up with the dreaded horizontal scroll bar in a small window, but in the case of tabular data, that's what should happen. The only way to accomplish a div/css solution is with absolute position. Positioning tabular data with divs also goes completely to hell if the user turns of css. Tables still render the tabular data correctly with CSS turned off. That's why tabular data should be done with the table tag. Tables aren't themselves evil, using them for layout it. Example of the proper use of tables: http://www.shastaherps.org/SearchRecords?horder=3page=1 The layout (and I confess, I'm no artistic design guru) is fairly basic div/css based layout. Haven't even tested in IE or Safari (fricken MS and Apple won't port their browsers to Linux) - there may be some CSS issues. The tabular data however (search results) is done the way tabular data should be done - via table. I could have done it with divs but table was the proper tag. All the tables are evil tripe needs to be noted that the tripe is within the scope of layout design, not the scope of tabular data. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
