On 4/22/05, Stevio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > One of the first points on that web site is: > "Sites built with web standards take less time to develop" > > I have to disagree. Trying to lay a site out with CSS can be very > complicated and time consuming, given all that hacks that you have to > research and use in order to get things to look right and work right across > multiple browsers.
Depends on skills. For me, handcoder CSS is extremely more efficient way to develop. > > Table layout, on the other hand, is straightforward and simple. > With the help of Dremweaver, I guess. I don't mind table based layouts that much, but I must admit - I came across tableless layouts more often than I see good table based layout. Frankly, I cannot give you any example of such. By "Good table based layout" I mean one using no more tables than necessary, that is 1 or to in most cases. What I see in reality is dozens, often hundred or more tables - in one page. Now go ahead, code http://www.socmin.lt/ by hand. 191 table and still look crap in Firefox. Not table layout is simple, but the fact that it can be done with WYSIWYG easily makes table layout so attractive. > It might be > more complicated to maintain when you come back to it a while later and have > to work out the nested table colspan'ed layout and make an adjustment to it. > > However, would a CSS layout be any easier to come back and maintain? (I > don't know, I'll find out in a while I suppose.) In table based world presentational markup gets too much into content, so it makes _content_ difficult to maintain (and maintenance cost may exceed those of development many many times, depending of the lifespan of the site). In the case of CSS layout you rarely have to maintain CSS - only in the case of changes in design, not content. > > Here is something that annoys me too - people dismiss table layout because > basically, using tables for layout is not what tables are intended for. > Therefore using tables for layout is a 'hack'. However, whenever you try > to use CSS for layout, you find out you have to use various 'hacks' to get > it all to work right. Therefore, you negate on of the main reasons for using > CSS layout in the first place. Wrong. Intent is not the main reason. Main reason for CSS layout is separation of content from presentation. And that gives benefits in development, maintenance and accessibility. <...> > Here's another thought - is using floats to design things like 3 column > layouts a hack in itself? Shouldn't relative positioning be the proper way > to do it? Maybe not I just ask :-) <...> It does not matter. It may be paradox but the best way to see benefits of CSS layout is to switch off the CSS (given that structural markup is well executed). And that is the point. I rarely use any hacks in CSS, theres is much more talk about them than real nead for them. Walking around the browser bugs is another story. But once again - even if you use hacks they are "less" hacks because they are removed from your content and document structure. They live isolated, and can be squashed easily when needed. This topic is very flamable, so I won't go on it any more (at least in this thread ;), Regards, Rimantas -- http://rimantas.com/ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
