Posted by Jose on 01/10/06 02:20

Ok, so out of the list of resources I pick:
> http://www.html-faq.com/csspositioning/?csslayout

Interestingly, it's taken from here.

My (netscape 7.2) browser is set to about 400 pixels wide. Not very
generous, but not very stingy on a laptop where I'm also working on
something else at the same time (why don't webmasters realize this??)

The search window is on top of the title "alt.html", blocking it. (at
least it has priority). There is a blue top and a black bottom
(background) to the header, which is broken up, putting the list of
"recommended resources" and such (blue links) mostly on top of the black
background. On the left is the primary content. It goes as follows:
Very
Simple,
tables
are
for
structuring
tabular
data
..... and so on for about sixteen screens. One word per line, the rest
of the window (on the right) is white space. I can widen the window
some, and get (sometimes) two or three words per line, but I have to
allocate 600 pixels of width first. By the time I allocate 1200 pixels
of width I get reasonable column width, but easily a third of the
remainder is blank space on the right. At least it's not blank space on
the left. But even at 1200 pixels, if I increase the font size (thank
you for allowing the font size to be increased!) I'm back to a five or
six word column, and the entire right half of my window wasted (below
the recommended resources list).

This is not a good reccomendation of CSS.

What I would have done (with tables) is put in a table with two columns,
100% width. The right column would contain the reomended resources.
The left column would contain the first two paragraphs of "why I should
sometimes use tables even though CSS is the in thing". It would end
with "continued below", and would be continued below the table, allowing
the full width of the browser to be used for the rest of the long article.

Using a column of the browser for something that doesn't extend down to
forever is poor form. The fix is for browsers to support something like
"flow" but since the webmaster has no control over the user's browsers,
workarounds will always be needed. Tables make a good workaround in
some cases, and should -not- be deprecated. They should not be used
indiscrimenently, but they have their place, so long as the web is
imperfect.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

[Back to original message]