Posted by Ed Jensen on 11/07/07 15:26

Beauregard T. Shagnasty <a.nony.mous@example.invalid> wrote:
> In the first post in this thread that I see from you on my newsserver,
> and the one I responded to, you said:

[snip]

> ..as have I, since the 70s, so how was I to know that didn't include web
> development? It does for me.

Here is a copy of my first post on the subject:

**** BEGIN COPY ****

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.

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

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.

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

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

**** END COPY ****

As you can see, I *clearly* stated that I formed my viewpoint based on
being a *user* of the web, not a *developer* of the web.

I'm sorry your news server failed you, but that's not my problem.

Perhaps, next time, you'll be a little more careful about throwing
insults around.

> It is still simply a matter of knowledge/training/ability/mindset of the
> developer, and not the fault of the tool. As already mentioned, there
> are just as many bad table-layout sites as there are CSS-layout sites.

I call this the "Bjarne Stroustrup Excuse". He always argued that
it's not C++ that's too complex, but instead, developers not being
properly educated.

We all know how that turned out: C++ has little going for it these
days, except simple inertia (i.e., it's not worth rewriting large
bases of code in less complex/better languages). Developers continue
to increasingly choose simpler/better languages these days, such as
Java and C#.

Your claim is similar. All we need to do is replace "C++" with "CSS
based layouts".

While there's some truth to that argument, at some point you need to
be pragmatic. If 99% of the web developers out there are getting it
wrong, maybe the tool needs to be more user friendly.

You can argue they're all dummies, or you can argue that the tool just
doesn't work that well, or you can argue that the problem is somewhere
in between those two extremes.

It's my opinion that the underlying problem is somewhere closer to the
tool being too complex. You may have a different opinion, and that's
fine.

[Back to original message]