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Posted by Ben C on 11/09/07 17:49
On 2007-11-09, Ed Jensen <ejensen@visi.com> wrote:
> dorayme <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>> Now one more question. What would you imagine about the
>> appropriateness and quality of the tools if IE could be taken out
>> of the picture?
>
> I'm not really qualified to answer that question for several reasons.
[...]
> Yes, I committed the unforgivable sin of using tables for layout, but
> at least it renders correctly in IE6/7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and
> handles text resizing correctly. It even passes W3C validation (both
> HTML and CSS). As an added bonus, it even renders correctly in lynx
> and links!
[...]
> The "tool" that I think should probably be considered broken is CSS
> (for layout).
I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion. The elephant in the room is
that IE is broken (and I also wish Firefox would support inline-block).
That's why your job was easier using tables. It's not because tables are
actually easier or better than other parts of CSS.
> Good tools should make it as easy (as is realistic) to do the "right
> thing" and hard to do the "wrong thing".
I agree.
What we're actually comparing here is two subsets of CSS: tables on the
one hand (yes they are part of CSS) and CSS minus tables minus
inline-block on the other hand.
I don't think the former subset achieves the goal of making it easier to
do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing any better than the
latter subset.
But whether CSS could be better than it is at achieving that goal is
another question. It very likely could be.
Then there is the further problem that many users of it are really quite
determined to try to do the wrong thing. While the design of a tool
should encourage the right thing, you still can't really expect it to do
that without the user on its side.
[...]
> Some day, a new technology will take the world by storm and replace
> HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and then (and only then) will the problem be
> solved, in my opinion.
There are already other tools. The authors who are fighting HTML/CSS the
most would probably be better off with Flash. But many users don't like
Flash. The smarter authors presumably put two and two together and stop
wanting the wrong thing.
[...]
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