On 07.10.2010 11:02, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
"Stephan Soller"<stephan.sol...@helionweb.de> wrote in message
news:i8jvip$1ed...@digitalmars.com...
On 07.10.2010 04:26, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
"Stephan Soller"<stephan.sol...@helionweb.de> wrote in message
news:i8i10k$2a8...@digitalmars.com...
On 06.10.2010 02:08, Arlo White wrote:
That's because HTML/CSS is a pretty terrible language for anything
beyond simple layouts. It shares more with Word/PDF/PostScript in terms
of its purpose and history than it does with real gui layout engines
(GTK, QT, etc).
HTML/CSS is primary made for documents not applications.
So true. That, combined with HTTP's stateless nature (and the
exploit-prone
nature of trying to build state on top of it), is why I view "web as a
platform" as being little different from using PDF as an application
platform. Heck, the PDF spec is so open-ended it could certainly be done.
Never read the PDF spec, but I don't believe that it includes a world wide
network of web servers, does it?
Not explicitly as far as I'm aware, but then neither does HTML aside from
URLs. And the PDF format does have provisions for files/data of arbitrary
types to be embedded into it. So that could be used to embed HTTP URLs, or
any other form of network-oriented links, or any other application-related
information/instructions/data you want. Then you could build CSS/JS/CGI-like
stuff on top of all that. And all of a sudden "PDF-readers" become a really
shitty application platform just like what happened with HTML and web
browsers.
Interesting point of view. So PDF basically equals to HTML in that
regard. Never thought about it that way but you're probably right. :)
To be honest I use fixed with designs a lot. Usually I just don't have so
much content that I have to use every part of the screen. ;)
I've been tempted to do that as well just because controlling resize-flow is
such a pain with HTML/CSS as they currently are.
For instance, try to make a resizable box with bit-mapped borders that
behaves reliably (I've needed to do a lot of that for a client recently).
Easy as pie with tables and CSS background images. But with anything else
in
CSS, I've become convinced it's just not possible.
Actually is pretty easy in CSS. I also had to do it a lot in the past. You
just nest as many elements (usually divs) inside each other as you need
background images. Then you use one of those divs to create the border for
one side: just assign a background image to this side and a proper padding
that makes sure only this side is visible. Corners are a bit tricky to do
no problem if you make the main container "position: relative" and then
position the corner divs with "position: aboslute". However for most of my
layouts I found that I didn't need a variable height and therefore 4 divs
where sufficient. This method had it's troubles for IE 5 but in IE 6 you
shouldn't have much of a problem (maybe one bug, don't remember exactly).
Interesting.
On modern browsers you can simply user border images (as many as you
want). This also eliminates the need for semantically stupid HTML
elements. However thanks to box-shadow, border-radius and colors with
alpha transparency I hardly use graphics programs to design any more. I
just do it directly in HTML/CSS with is usually quite a bit comfortable
(and faster!).
I usually like to minimize bitmapped stuff on pages too, just because it's
simpler, it can still get acceptable results, and I'm no artist ;) But then
when the client has a design they want it to look like and it includes
things that can only be done as images, well, then I just don't have the
energy or patience to try to talk them out of it - I'll just toss in
whatever I need to to make it work, even if that means tables, and be done
with it.
If I get a design from a client I do that to. I don't use tables but
most often a combination of floats and relative/absolute positioning but
usually with quite a lot of images in it. Even if they don't have a
finished design arguing about it often is a lost cause anyway. However
for my own personal project (or in case I have to do the design myself)
these new CSS techniques come in quite handy (if the environment allows
it...).
I used it for my [personal website][1] and it was quite handy. The only
images are the header image, icons and the background gradient. The
gradient only because I was to lazy to look up the proper properties and
do some cross browser testing (not sure if Opera support gradient yet
though).
[1]: http://arkanis.de/
Happy programming
Stephan
