Kelly Duffy wrote:
Sorry,
I should have specified a bit more. My real issue at the moment is
monitor size only. I'm by no means a web programmer, my clients have
very basic sites, and CSS isn't really an option. I am currently
playing around with it, and I love the examples at
www.csszengarden.com however I'm not the only person in the company
and the main other designer doesn't know CSS and has no desire to
learn it so I'm not able to make use of it except for on a personal
level.
I'm not worried about mobile phones and PDAs for most of the people
who'd be accessing our sites, they're just made for an average home
user, some specifically targeting the elderly and not particularly
technologically knowledgable, or for specific clients to access form
work.
Browser compatibility isn't an issue wither, we use very basic things,
we don't go into Flash, secure sites for online payments, or anything
else other than pretty basic HTML. I check them on the basic browsers
for PC and Mac, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Safari, Mozilla and a
couple of others. Because our sites are so basic connection speed
isn't an issue anyway, I am on dial-up at home, it's slow, but it
means I can check them, and if I'm not happy with it the site's not
suitable for a good portion of our users.
Overall I agree with you, which is why I'm playing around with CSS at
the moment, it's definately the way to go with most web development,
but it's not really an option for us at the moment.
Thanks for the other link though, it will be really helpful for me, I
hate code myself but since it's something I need to get used to an
explanation of how it works will make it all a lot easier to
understand. There's also a lot of other info there I could really use.
It's unfortunate that making things look pretty just isn't enough for
me to do my job properly anymore!
Uhm, your message displays a warped view of what is required or what is
hard to complete. The concept that has been completely buried in the
style-sheet - HTML - make it look pretty rubbish that has been going
since tables were invented more than 10 years ago.
My point is this:
Precisely because it is so simple to use style-sheets and because it
gives you all the great things in terms of compatibility,
scalability, and interoperation, it makes no sense at all to use
anything else.
I don't want to turn this into a training session on how to do this, but
your argument against style-sheets just don't stack up in my opinion. I
don't know if you were around when the web was invented, but at the time
we had HTML documents that used <h1> tags, <ul> and a few <hr> to make
the text readable.
Today, you can use that *same* HTML and make it look "pretty", by
attaching a style-sheet to it and *you get all the rest for free*, just
by doing it that way.
Ok, I give in, because I suspect it is fear of the unknown that leads
you down the wrong path. Let us consider the following simple web-page:
[which to the observant isn't entirely complete]
<html>
<head>
<title>My Story</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="table_of_content">
<ul>
<li><a href="#chap1">Chapter 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#chap2">Chapter 2</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="chapter">
<a name="chap1"></a>
<div class="title">This is Chapter 1 of my Story</div>
<div class="story_text">
<p>This is a little story with some text in it.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="chapter">
<a name="chap2"></a>
<div class="title">This is Chapter 2 of my Story</div>
<div class="story_text">
<p>This is a another little story with some different text in it.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
When you stick this in a text file and save it as story.html, then open
it up in a web-browser it looks pretty un-appealing:
* Chapter 1
* Chapter 2
This is Chapter 1 of my Story
This is a little story with some text in it.
This is Chapter 2 of my Story
This is a another little story with some different text in it.
The point of this is that you now have a structured piece of information
that you can now format and make pretty. For example, you could make the
chapter headings look like a heading by adding the following style in
between the <head> tags:
<style type="text/css"><!--
.title {
font-weight:bold;
color:red;
}
--></style>
You could indent the body of each chapter with this:
.story_text {
margin: 0 10em;
}
And you could make the layout use two columns with this:
.chapter {
float:left ;
}
What I'm saying is that while you can get all excited about using your
favourite HTML editor, most of the time they generate crap that is good
for nothing and gets in the way of actually presenting the information.
The concept that you're alone in your company and that you cannot change
your environment also doesn't wash with me, because the above loads
faster, is simpler to create, runs on more devices and is simpler to
maintain, all of which makes your company's bottom-line look better.
And to top it off, if you want to create a new look site, you change one
style-sheet and the new look is rolled out. You can decide how much you
want to charge your customer for the new look.
So, pardon me for not buying your argument.
Finally, I completely understand your reluctance. The Internet is full
of information about style-sheets that is incomplete and out of date.
While you're learning this stuff, much of it hinders your progress,
rather than helps it.
If there is any interest, I'd be happy to entertain the idea of setting
up some training to cover the above, but understand that I do this for a
living and while I'm happy to show the way in a forum such as this, it's
an entirely different thing to expect me to become a central web-site
developer help desk without some form of remuneration, seeing that I
still have to pay the bills and helping around here isn't doing that in
any way.
Kind regards,
--
Onno Benschop
Connected via Optus B3 at S25°34'41" - E152°35'34" (Graham's Creek, QLD)
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