A student of CSS writes.........

[Richard Wayne Garganta]

Readers of this forum know I have opined regarding CSS. I have been
studying it intensely recently. I am more convinced than ever that, at
this point, it is NOT superior in ANY way to building a site in NOF or
any other html program.
God forbid IE 7 or for that matter other browsers make any major change
and sites all over the net will be broken with all the workaround code
that has been implemented. The snafu's you encounter with CSS and
standards programming would render any other language not fit for public
release. Studying CSS and standards programming is a confusing array
of, "in IE do this, in Safari, do this and for now write it this way
even though this isn't the way it is supposed to be." It is enough to
make anyone dizzy.
The problem is not so much the standards, but the implementation of the
standards by browsers. There is a lot of CSS2 still not implemented and
they are coming out with CSS3.
I believe everyone should be learning it as it progresses and
implementing it in REALISTIC ways, but to say it is superior to plain
old tables at this point is just ridiculous. I mean, to insure proper
display at this point you either have to be VERY CAREFUL what and how
you code or have 3 different style sheets, one for Netscape, one for IE
and one for the others and even then you may have a problem.
And did I mention, even the declaration for style sheets has to be
written a certain way to avoid certain browsers from seeing the style
sheets?
If ANY computer language tried to become mainstream with this many
gotcha's and snafu's, they would be laughed out of the business. Like I
said, it is browser implementation that is the biggest obstacle. But
the snobbery regarding the supposed superiority of CSS and standards
programming is, at this stage, TOTALLY unwarranted.
Keep your eyes on it, learn it, but don't feel you are in any way in the
dust doing things the "old" way. At least you can be certain of what
you will see.

[Nancy O]

Richard,
Misused Doc Type declarations cause more page rendering problems than CSS
does. For info on various doc types and resulting browser behaviors, visit
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/. HINT: scroll down to middle of page for
overview and summary. Use the doc type that best fits your abilities and
page building methods. Don't use strict XHTML unless you're an expert
coder. The books I read when I began my CSS journey proclaimed XHTML strict
was the only way to code web pages. Wrong. It may be the preferred method
but it isn't required. In fact, CSS layouts in HTML 4.0 transitional docs
tend to be very forgiving and are not that hard to work with. I do not use
multiple hacks or different style sheets for different browsers, either.
Just keep it simple and eventually you'll see the light, Richard.

cheers,
--Nancy


"Richard Wayne Garganta" <richinri@cox.net> wrote in message
news:f2r5l7$ilk4@flsun90netnews01.netobjects.com.. .
> Readers of this forum know I have opined regarding CSS. I have been
> studying it intensely recently. I am more convinced than ever that, at
> this point, it is NOT superior in ANY way to building a site in NOF or
> any other html program.
> God forbid IE 7 or for that matter other browsers make any major change
> and sites all over the net will be broken with all the workaround code
> that has been implemented. The snafu's you encounter with CSS and
> standards programming would render any other language not fit for public
> release. Studying CSS and standards programming is a confusing array
> of, "in IE do this, in Safari, do this and for now write it this way
> even though this isn't the way it is supposed to be." It is enough to
> make anyone dizzy.
> The problem is not so much the standards, but the implementation of the
> standards by browsers. There is a lot of CSS2 still not implemented and
> they are coming out with CSS3.
> I believe everyone should be learning it as it progresses and
> implementing it in REALISTIC ways, but to say it is superior to plain
> old tables at this point is just ridiculous. I mean, to insure proper
> display at this point you either have to be VERY CAREFUL what and how
> you code or have 3 different style sheets, one for Netscape, one for IE
> and one for the others and even then you may have a problem.
> And did I mention, even the declaration for style sheets has to be
> written a certain way to avoid certain browsers from seeing the style
> sheets?
> If ANY computer language tried to become mainstream with this many
> gotcha's and snafu's, they would be laughed out of the business. Like I
> said, it is browser implementation that is the biggest obstacle. But
> the snobbery regarding the supposed superiority of CSS and standards
> programming is, at this stage, TOTALLY unwarranted.
> Keep your eyes on it, learn it, but don't feel you are in any way in the
> dust doing things the "old" way. At least you can be certain of what
> you will see.

[William Patterson]

Interesting...I worked at a project for the EPA where we converted the pages
from table based to full on css and 508 compliant. They insisted on using
XHTML strict so nothing would be missed. Used Dreamweaver and set it up so
any tag missing a closer or anything else would get flagged. Once you got
used to it the results where some nice clean pages.

"Nancy O" <nancyoshea1@NOSPAMverizon.net> wrote in message
news:f2sjvq$p3f1@flsun90netnews01.netobjects.com.. .
> Richard,
> Misused Doc Type declarations cause more page rendering problems than CSS
> does. For info on various doc types and resulting browser behaviors,
> visit
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/. HINT: scroll down to middle of page for
> overview and summary. Use the doc type that best fits your abilities and
> page building methods. Don't use strict XHTML unless you're an expert
> coder. The books I read when I began my CSS journey proclaimed XHTML
> strict
> was the only way to code web pages. Wrong. It may be the preferred method
> but it isn't required. In fact, CSS layouts in HTML 4.0 transitional docs
> tend to be very forgiving and are not that hard to work with. I do not
> use
> multiple hacks or different style sheets for different browsers, either.
> Just keep it simple and eventually you'll see the light, Richard.
>
> cheers,
> --Nancy
>
>
> "Richard Wayne Garganta" <richinri@cox.net> wrote in message
> news:f2r5l7$ilk4@flsun90netnews01.netobjects.com.. .
>> Readers of this forum know I have opined regarding CSS. I have been
>> studying it intensely recently. I am more convinced than ever that, at
>> this point, it is NOT superior in ANY way to building a site in NOF or
>> any other html program.
>> God forbid IE 7 or for that matter other browsers make any major change
>> and sites all over the net will be broken with all the workaround code
>> that has been implemented. The snafu's you encounter with CSS and
>> standards programming would render any other language not fit for public
>> release. Studying CSS and standards programming is a confusing array
>> of, "in IE do this, in Safari, do this and for now write it this way
>> even though this isn't the way it is supposed to be." It is enough to
>> make anyone dizzy.
>> The problem is not so much the standards, but the implementation of the
>> standards by browsers. There is a lot of CSS2 still not implemented and
>> they are coming out with CSS3.
>> I believe everyone should be learning it as it progresses and
>> implementing it in REALISTIC ways, but to say it is superior to plain
>> old tables at this point is just ridiculous. I mean, to insure proper
>> display at this point you either have to be VERY CAREFUL what and how
>> you code or have 3 different style sheets, one for Netscape, one for IE
>> and one for the others and even then you may have a problem.
>> And did I mention, even the declaration for style sheets has to be
>> written a certain way to avoid certain browsers from seeing the style
>> sheets?
>> If ANY computer language tried to become mainstream with this many
>> gotcha's and snafu's, they would be laughed out of the business. Like I
>> said, it is browser implementation that is the biggest obstacle. But
>> the snobbery regarding the supposed superiority of CSS and standards
>> programming is, at this stage, TOTALLY unwarranted.
>> Keep your eyes on it, learn it, but don't feel you are in any way in the
>> dust doing things the "old" way. At least you can be certain of what
>> you will see.
>
>