----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Darrell King" <darrell(at)webctr.com>
To: "David Jones" <dvjones(at)ksbe.edu>; <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 4:11 PM
Subject: Re: CSS footers: impossible?


>
> Does anyone remember the days when tables were first used for layout?
> Pre-WYSIWYG days, when they had to be coded by hand?  Seems to me I can
> remember floods of table-related questions passing through this list as
> little as 2-3 years ago Perhaps the current surge in CSS questions is just
> us designers struggling to learn something new...:).
>

Ugh.  Never would go to a WYSIWYG application if you paid me to.  I've spent
more time correcting people's WYSIWYG pages than I have creating new ones,
it seems.

For me, it's not so much learning something "new", because CSS has been
around for over six years.  I'm sure to some degree or other, we've all
spiced up our pages with it.  Through the years, however, I've used it
primarily as a means to complement an existing design, NOT as a means of
controlling the foundations of the design.  So at least in that regard, it
has been a new experience.

The past year or so, I've read more and more articles denouncing the use of
tables as a means of layout in favor of CSS.   I read the pros, the cons and
thought some of the arguments on boths sides were compelling.  Then when it
came time to do our latest site redesign, I had an opportunity to attempt
one of these "Holy Grail" type of "tableless" websites.  Not just one or two
tableless pages, I have done in the past, but the whole shabang.

For me, the learning and application of tables as a means of structure
seemed clearer and faster than the process was for applying CSS as a layout
device. CSS as a means of site layout seems filled with many needless
ambiguities, especially when I've got a hierarchy of many nested layers of
elements on a page and a CSS file that's 500+ lines long.

Yes, I do remember that tables had their own set of problems between
browsers.  But tables were never thrust into the world of HTML with people
claiming it'd solve design problems like the founders of CSS have.  CSS was
touted as being the "end all be all" of site layout.  But what I've seen
instead are a lot of hacks and "cheating" to get things to look right in
even the latest browsers.  In CSS, I picked up what I thought was the "Holy
Grail," but as the knight said in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,"  "I
choose......poorly."

I guess it's just going to be a matter of me "tricking" CSS settings to get
things to work, just like we have for everything else that has been thrown
out there.

Mike

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