Posted by Chris F.A. Johnson on 11/06/07 19:50

On 2007-11-05, Ed Jensen wrote:
>
>
> In alt.html Red E. Kilowatt <redkilowattREMOVE@aww-faq.org> wrote:
>> Simple for you, maybe. I find CSS incomprehensible for anything beyond
>> specifying fonts and backgrounds, like trying to position boxes within
>> an overall layout.
>>
>> And honestly, I don't want to learn, because as far as I'm concerned
>> tables work fine. Granted, improving the text to mark-up ratio on my
>> sites would probably help their search engine ranking slightly, but I'd
>> rather send my time figuring out new ways to make money.
>
> Speaking from the viewpoint of a USER of the web rather than from the
> viewpoint of a DEVELOPER of web sites:
>
> I prefer web sites built with table-based layouts. I have trouble
> reading the tiny, tiny fonts that are all the rage on the web these
> days. I almost always increase the font size a step or two.

The tiny font problem has nothing to do with CSS; it is the fault
of the developer who specified ridiculously small fonts. The
problem predates CSS, when it was common to see <font size=-1> (or
even -2) to use smaller fonts.

Small fonts are just as often used with table layouts as with CSS.

> Table-based layouts seem to handle my font size increases without any
> problems (for the most part).

So can CSS layouts.

> CSS-based layouts seem to have trouble handling my font size
> increases. This usually results in sections overlapping other
> sections and, in many cases, some sections being completely obscured.
> Sometimes, sections even vanish entirely, apparently being rendered
> into some kind of void.

That is a fault of the developer, not of CSS.

> Right about now, I'm sure Ivory Tower types are blaming this on web
> developers writing bad CSS or something.

That certainly IS the problem.

> But the fact of the matter is, if a tool makes it hard to do things
> right, then the tool should probably be considered fundamentally
> broken.

It is not hard to do the right thing with CSS. It is, perhaps, too
easy to do the wrong thing. What is worse, is that there are too
many people who want to do the wrong thing, or who do not know that
it is the wrong thing. But they can (and do) do that just as easily
with tables as with CSS.

> As a result, I tend to consider CSS fundamentally broken for the task
> of layout.

Do you have a problem with these sites which are laid out with CSS:
<http://cfaj.freeshell.org> <http://woodbine-gerrard.com>?

--
Chris F.A. Johnson, webmaster <http://Woodbine-Gerrard.com>
===================================================================
Author:
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)

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