At 10:26 AM 1/17/2009 -0800, Erika Meyer wrote: >Here's a short response: if you have not yet drank the w3c web-standards >kool-aid, now's the time.
Well, it's been a long, long (and I do mean long) time since I dropped any acid, but if you think that's the way to go... ;) >Just do it. The Web Accessibility Initiative >(WAI) http://www.w3.org/WAI/ should explain why you should avoid use >tables for layout purposes. Actually, the W3C site has been, in fact, one of the deterrents which have kept me from getting up to speed! It's kind-of like... well, say I wanted to learn psychology, and basically was told that the way to do so was to read -- and memorize -- all 900+ pages of the "standard" Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), only to discover in the end that although it might well be the "standard", it's hardly complete, extremely biased, and often entirely incorrect and unworkable in practice. ;) >Here's a longer response: I empathize. I too was *very* comfortable >using tables for layout. In retrospect, I think this made it harder for >me to acclimate to using CSS for positioning. I suppose that's also been one of my problems -- I've had these sites up for years and years now (well over a decade in some cases), which have all worked just fine, "no problem", and yet still I'm being told and urged (by "them") that I should effectively just throw everything I've done out the window, not only *totally* re-doing them from scratch, but in order to accomplish that I also have *totally* re-learn practically everything I learned in the past. And it's not that my past learning won't still be useful in the future, of course, but even for something as simple as, say, a left-side nav bar, the whole concept of how to do that, all the coding and everything, is completely different. Basically, I'm just starting all the way back at the beginning again -- and what I look forward to learning is WAY more complicated, with WAY more bugs, etc. to take into consideration. :/ >Can you imagine, especially a few years ago, what a *pain* to try and >learn CSS for positioning? For me, I never knew what I was doing right >or wrong, I was just pushing/pulling to make things work. I'm a >right-brained person who just wants to make it work, and doesn't fancy >keeping a detailed list of what browser support what. On top of that, >you're training your brain to stop thinking in a grid and think in the >CSS box + visual formatting model. It's very different. And this, too, is one of my difficulties -- designing with CSS seems to be (or, at least, be becoming) more like learning a hard-core programming language than visual design. It's like having to learn advanced physics and algebra just in order to hang a painting on the wall, and I just don't seem to have the "brain" (left or right) for programming-type stuff. >But like everything else, it gets easier the more you do it. There are >tricks and techniques to make it all work. There are also a lot of good >precoded-layout simple layouts out there that can help with an initial >build. That's reassuring, and that last thing is most certainly helpful, but I would still aspire to actually *understanding* what exactly I'm doing, and need to do, and not just copy/paste other peoples' templates. >PS: the CSS overlords are teeny-tiny people living in your browser who's >job is make your page render. And here, all along, I just thought those were "bugs". Ron ;) ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
