No offense taken. Two classes (pun intended) of response. First is that a table is inappropriate here. Where's the relationship in the data? The table headers have nothing to do with the cells (unless Stephen has made significant changes since Friday night). The table is entirely for visual effect. (Sorry, Stephen but you know that is the case.)
The second class of response has to do with classitis. Is this elegant highly cascaded code? Nope and it isn't intended to be. The coding style is intended to accommodate highly flexible, constantly changing sites. I don't mean sites which use a CMS to change the "content area" in a template. I mean sites which literally demand a series of new pages which often don't even include the omnipresent logo and nav bar. A heavily cascaded style sheet is hinderance in that situation. I work in both and intra- and internet environments where the likelihood is about 50% that the next page I work on won't use the template. I haven't got the time, or interest, to keep reworking complicated cascades. What is needed, at least as far as my experience with it goes, is a flexible style sheet argely based on isolated presentational elements. Cascading is minimal because things change too much from page to page to count on having the same 3, 4, or 5 nested levels required for a complicated cascade. You'd cringe at a sheet which includes rules for "dual", "tri" , "cent", "txtright", and "ital". You'd cringe, but you'd know what they mean intuitively and what they portend when you see them in the markup. And you'd have palpitations at multiple classes; not to mention the inclusion of what are essentially disposable rules written just for one thing on that one page. But it makes page construction far quicker than reinventing the wheel on each page and having head tag and site crammed with alternative style sheets. There isn't a lot on these kinds of pages which gets recycled except the basic presentational rules and those for making sets of 2 or 3 or 4 floated boxes. And this style does another thing: it increases cross-browser and cross-platform reliability. This happens because the need for hacks is pretty much eliminated. In particular, this clunky style addresses IE failings. Clearing with an addition to markup works reliably in IE as long as you stay out of quirks mode. More elegant solutions typically require a hack, or two, or three. Since I work in a place where IE is the only browser, I'd just as soon not have to hack and hack. And I want code which will work with browsers that aren't IE so I clunk along but it works properly and trouble free. It's complex code, but it is adapatable without the fragility inherent in complicated cascades. Lastly, just to add to the appoplexy (or amusement), I think this style of coding will works well in a future with RDF and truples. I'm used to writting rules for the content not working around the content. And I think that as it comes online, xhtml2.0 will encourage this style. The 2.0 spec contains an increased number of elements which move markup beyond parapgraph and list. Elements like 'separator', 'nl', and 'sup' specifiy a useful and necessaray structural meaning for what are essentially visual cues. That's an exciting advancement. Similarly if we actually start to use id as an anchor, "mapletrees" will work a lot easier for end users than "#main.contentright.subnav2". So all things considered, no, I'm not offended. drew ____ • The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM • ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] or use the web interface http://e-newsletters.internet.com/discussionlists.html/ Send Your Posts To: wdvltalk@lists.wdvl.com To change subscription settings, add a password or view the web interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/read/?forum=wdvltalk ________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________ You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with.
