Posted by Chris F.A. Johnson on 11/08/07 00:10

On 2007-11-07, dorayme wrote:
> In article <f5o905-156.ln1@xword.teksavvy.com>,
> "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohnson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2007-11-07, dorayme wrote:
>> > In article <654905-753.ln1@xword.teksavvy.com>,
>> > "Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohnson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> On 2007-11-07, Ed Jensen wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > I'm not trying to start a "table based layouts" vs. "CSS based
>> >> > layouts" war here, I'm just sharing my personal experience: Web sites
>> >> > designed with table based layouts seem to handle it reasonably well
>> >> > when I increase the text size. Web sites designed with CSS based
>> >> > layouts seem to rarely handle it gracefully. YMMV.
>> >>
>> >> That is not a function of tables versus CSS; it's a matter of good
>> >> coding versus bad coding.
>> >
>> > Perhaps so. But Ed Jensen has another complaint that has been
>> > partly dealt with but is probably interesting enough to deserve
>> > more. Namely, that the tools used to do the good and bad coding
>> > are unnecessarily as poor as they are.
>>
>> They are no worse than, for example, a car, which one can use for
>> speeding and ignoring rules of the road just as easily as for
>> driving sensibly.
>
> If this analogy was even remotely apt,

You can substitute any tool you like; the analogy still applies.

> there would be far more accidents on the road than there are.

If web developers had to qualify to put up a web site (not that I'm
recommending it), there would be a similar reduction in bad
'drivers' on the web.

> In fact, what strikes one, in so many countries, is that things are
> as orderly as they are, that drivers are, by and large as
> predictable and sensible as they are. There are reasons for this and
> none of them apply to the world wild west of websites.

If as many web developers knew the 'rules of the road' for HTML and
CSS as know it for driving cars, the WWW would be a much better
place.

> The truth is that it is not easy to make really good websites and
> if you think it is, you are talking from the advantage of having
> mastered sufficient skills to achieve simplicity and competence
> in design.

We've had this discussion before, and I disagree that it is hard
to make a good web site.

> The problem of why there are so many bad websites is a
> complicated problem. It is not because the tools are so poorly
> designed,

That's what I was saying.

> nor because it is so unregulated nor a lot of other
> things. It is a combination of many things.



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

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