Re: 'style' attribute

> The biggest problem I have with CSS is that the designers assumed that all
> pages should not be fixed in size and that the layout of the page would be a
> simple text-document like flow. This limited designers because there are times
> where pages are not really documents but just pages containing lots of
> pictures, etc, that the authors do not want scaled. 

They are using the wrong tool.  HTML was designed for text based 
reflowable documents.  PDF already existed for fixed layout documents,
even if was slow to take on web hyperlinks and didn't offer a cost free
authoring tool.  HTML was commercialised for a market that was
traditionally a PDF market, not for the information dissemination
market for which HTML was designed.

Nowadays, the W3C solution for fixed layout is SVG (which uses CSS but
not for layout), although, personally, I think tagged PDF is a better
compromise between accessibility and layout control.  No, IE doesn't
have native support; their solution is MS Office or .NET.

Received on Sunday, 22 February 2004 15:32:45 UTC