Thread

I’ve always had major CSS problems with multiple columns beyond three. It’s easy in Tables, not so much in CSS.

That i have been wondering cos i want to make bottom columns for main links, info and resources…damn that i dont have books yet…=)

Ahhh, got my book! Time for a coffee and…CSS =)

That’s good to hear! Read the first two chapters slowly, and let all of that info sink in. Chapter 2 is the craziest one to digest - but pay SPECIAL attention to the difference between absolute and relative positioning. They can be easy to confuse at first, so look at the diagrams and work hard to understand the natural flow. Once you get that - it’s pretty much all downhill from there. Make sure you also understand the box model and the behavior of floats and clears. Man - The first two chapters rock.

Thanks for that info. I’ll try to :focus =)
I’ve read 15pages now and just had to write down those links that there is and surf to see what i found behind them. This might be my fist book (i ordered 2, but i think this first that came is the same than the other, but this is in finnish and the second is the original CSS Mastery) that i read properly. Think, just read those 15 pages and got ideas already on “how to simplify my css” =) Omg!

...and yes, sun is shining and im inside reading(does that tell something..)

Edit: i found something called ExpressionEngine.com also from that book, whats that?  😜

In a lot of ways, I think CSS is really borked. Besides the utterly horrid incompatibilities between browsers that make it excruciating to get right, CSS and CSS zealotry is just annoying. Have you every tried to play with a color palette in CSS? What do people have against #define? Why do I have to repeat my color elements over and over again when I want to play around with stuff?

At least with EE, I can run my CSS through the template engine when I’m playing with stuff, and let it do the variable replacement for me.

At the end of the day, when I converted our site over to 3-column, fluid-center layout, I finally wound up doing it with CSS. Not for CSS religious reasons, but for SEO reasons. Search engines place more emphasis on content that comes earlier on a page. With a table layout, all the left-column stuff would be before the actual page content when search engines spider the page. With CSS “holy grail”, the column content comes after the main content.

I don’t get into the whole religious thing. I see no reason to write a couple hundred lines of CSS to do what can be done with a couple lines of HTML. I have the same issue with, for example, XHTML removing ‘target=“_blank”’. A very simple behavior has been removed, and needs to be replaced with chunks of javascript, for the sake of “correctness”. Feh.

I don’t understand why you make so many references to religion. I don’t view CSS as a religion, merely as a much better way of doing things with greater flexibility. A point you proved yourself when you weren’t able to achieve what you wanted with your original “no compromises” table layout and had to switch.

Of course it’s not perfect, and there are many hair pulling moments due to browser inconsistencies. But that’s not the fault of CSS, that’s the fault of browsers that haven’t implemented it properly.

It’s a religion because there are so many zealots out there who insist that CSS is “right” and tables are “wrong”, for example, out of some vision of purity of content/layout separation.

Foo on that. Use whatever is simplest. I could have gotten my site done in 15 minutes with a table, but decided to take on the pain of trying to deal with CSS “holy grail” for SEO purposes, not out of some vision of purity.

Layout in CSS is, in general, excruciating, even for “fully compliant” browsers. There’s a reason the 3-column, fluid-center thing is called “holy grail”. Try to get that working with column backgrounds of different colors, that extend all the way to the bottom of the page regardless of how much content is in each column. You need a fair number of extraneous divs or other bizarre stuff (negative margins, anyone?) just to do something that is trivially simple with a table.

Now try getting that working for IE6 (which, like it or not, is still used by a quarter of the InterWeb). It’s doable, but not fun.

Look into the color palette issue, for example. You will find an astonishing amount of religion about why CSS should NOT have variables or macro substitution, all based on this bizarre concept of purity over actual usability.

As I said “feh”.

Bah. Goofyness. It really doesn’t matter who likes what method. If you work better with tables, cool. If CSS is better for you, cool. I use CSS because it works well for me. Honestly, with CSS becoming much more consistent across standards compliant browsers, it’d be a shame to overlook adding this skill to your repertoire. In the end it’ll reflect in your work.

My last word on all of this is the reason why I use CSS to lay out sites is not only because in my mind it is faster and easier but for the simple fact that I like to be a nice guy and make things easy for people who need the accessibility to a site such as people with disabilities.

If there is something I can do to help a person out then I will and if that means using CSS then I will.

That’s my story anyhow 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

Tables? What are those?

I usually put my meal in top of them and sit down and eat! Someone uses them to build part of webpages also like those 2 in your sig?

Ouch.. This conversation has quickly gone south. I meant nothing by my comment and if I hurt you by it I apologize.

The truth is that tables can be used in certain situations to make life easier. Like for forms. I do not know of any of the Heads of State for CSS that would recommend tableless layout for forms. It can be done (and I have done it) but it is a headache for sure.

And then there are those other times where you just know that it will make your life easier and so you add a quick table here or there.

But the truth is CSS is quite difficult at first but gets easier the longer you stick with it. I can code up an xHTML strict layout using only divs and CSS in a couple of hours usually (of course depends on the complexity of the site). And normally there are very few if any changes needed for IE^ or IE7. And I for one cannot wait to get IE8 out into the wild as I do not want to support IE6 any longer…

One thing that I can say… I was a long time supporter of Windows. And I know there are some real PC and Mac fans on these forums. But for me using CSSEdit was worth the 4k price tag on a Mac and the assorted software. I live in that application. It makes my life soooo much easier. YMMV….

Tables for forms?

Marcus I am disappointed. What about fieldsets? 😉

Oops I said above that was my last post, sorry 😊

Actually I would never ever condone the use of one technology over another and I will use a table when I see it as fitting to be used but I do believe that there are times when using tables is akin to using a wrench to open an envelope. It can be done but there is just a better and easier way for all involved.

That’s just me though, always trying to take the easy way out 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

And I know there are some real PC and Mac fans on these forums. But for me using CSSEdit was worth the 4k price tag on a Mac and the assorted software. I live in that application. It makes my life soooo much easier. YMMV….

Now I tried CSS Edit as a lot of people rave about it, but went back to using TextMate after an hour or so - which suggests to me that I’m missing something! Do you use a single stylesheet per project or multiples?

But for me using CSSEdit was worth the 4k price tag on a Mac and the assorted software. I live in that application. It makes my life soooo much easier. YMMV….

For me using a Mac is worth any price tag anyway 😉

I personally use Coda to code (no pun intended there - I can’t help the programmes name now can I? 😉 ) everything when creating templates but code everything by hand anyway and don’t rely on any of the CSS style-sheet help that it can give as I prefer to do it myself.

I usually use just one style-sheet per site but it really depends on the complexity of the site and I may use more than one if required for things like Javascript effects and the like just so that I don’t end up with massive CSS files that even I don’t know where things are when I need to get to them easily 😊

I always make sure though that I don’t make the same mistake I made once though in that I always make sure my CSS files are over 4Kb as I know that certain versions of (yep you guessed it!) IE have a problem with small style-sheets and don’t always render the page correctly.

I had this on a site going back about a year or so ago now and for the life of me couldn’t figure out why the client was having problems. They were sending me screen-shots and I just couldn’t put a finger on it until I trawled around the internet for quite a while and happened across a CSS forum and they pointed out the bug to me.

That one was just plain weird.

Best wishes,

Mark

Tables? What are those?

I usually put my meal in top of them and sit down and eat! Someone uses them to build part of webpages also like those 2 in your sig?

Ouch.. This conversation has quickly gone south. I meant nothing by my comment and if I hurt you by it I apologize.

No need, i use tables in future with websites also =)

Andy, some of my latest creations have had as many as 4-6 stylesheets. I prefer to keep things separate. Like the reset stylesheet. Then I know I can just drop that in the CSS folder and link to it. I also tend to keep separate stylesheets for IE6, IE7, the menu, and another for the main stylesheet and depending on whether there is any javascript effects involved I may have a lightroom or mootabs stylesheet as well….

M.