On Tue, 2003-12-30 at 17:26, Chris Wagner wrote: > Cascading Style Sheets. Deprecated. I have seen so many bad uses of style > sheets it makes me want to cry out in anger. So just don't use them unless > there's no other way to do it. They are almost guaranteed to cause > compatibility problems. The problem is that some bonehead writes a style > sheet that makes a webpage look good on *their* computer. To hell with > everybody else who doesn't have the same monitor, resolution, fonts, > browser, etc. The one thing they are "good" for is making themes but be > careful that it's still ledgible on other machines. I have them turned off > in my browser.
This is probably going to end up as a flamewar, but I'll throw in my two cents anyways. CSS is the next step for web-design, and definitively a step in the right direction. They are in no way "deprecated". True, there are many badly written CSS-based websites out there, but misuse of the technology is in no way indicative of its merits. The major problem with css right now is that IE (as usual) has unbelievably bad support for the standard. Most other browsers handle them well, and altough it's a pain in the ass, you can always get around the horrible ie bugs. Some of the major benefits of css are: - Complete separation of content structure and presentation. HTML was originally intended for content structure, not design, which has resulted in hacks such as transparent gifs and nested tables. - Media-independent presentation. Well-written XHTML/CSS pages can be viewed nicely in graphical and text-based browsers, cell phones, pdas, on paper, blind-terminals, as audio through a speech synthesizer etc. - User-supplied style sheets can override author-provided ones, for example letting people with poor sight use larger fonts and colors with better contrast. - Much easier to maintain - just change your css file, and the design of your entire site is updated. It is also much easier to read and understand the code. - Less bandwidth use and faster load times (better responsiveness) - I have myself reduced a ~1000 line HTML document to around 100 lines of XHTML/CSS. - It also provides many, many features which would be completely impossible to do with standard html, such as block-justifying text in a column or having content flow around a document element. For an example of the truly amazing things you can accomplish with css, check out http://www.csszengarden.com/ The best way to learn css is probably by reading the book HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS: http://www.sitepoint.com/books/css1/ w3c has an extensive list of resources for learing css at http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/learning You can also check out http://www.w3schools.com/ for many nice introductory articles on xhtml and css, or read the spec at http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/ - I always keep it open when developing websites. -- Erik Grinaker http://erikg.wired-networks.net This signature has been rot13-encrypted twice, reading it is illegal under the terms of the DMCA. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
