Re: General Comment re Guidelines/Discussion

As someone who claims that the use of tables to control layout is
incompatible with stylesheets, I agree with Charles that it does not conflict
in presentational control. But the use of tables for layout control is
incompatible with the use of stylesheets for layout control, as recommended
in the CSS specification. I also agree that it is possible to use the 11.1
checkpoint to argue that use of stylesheets for layout control is not
currently an option. Pesonally I would therefore use less layout control.

Charles McCN

(Welcome back to the list)

On Wed, 21 Jul 1999, Charles F. Munat wrote:
[among other things]
  
  Also, several comments seemed to imply that this was an either/or
  proposition (either tables or a stylesheet). Why? Stylesheets are very
  useful for controlling font size, color, style, weight, text-decoration,
  line length, etc. Tables are currently a necessary evil on most sites
  because stylesheet positioning is not well implemented yet. I use
  stylesheets for everything but positioning (and even for some types of
  positioning, like indentation) and a big, simple table for layout. It
  linearizes just fine. It's not ideal, but as far as I'm concerned, it meets
  the Guidelines. And it degrades gracefully when the stylesheet is not
  utilized.
  
  Finally, Priority 11.1 clearly covers the above situations. It says to use
  W3C technologies when they are "available and appropriate for a task." So if
  I'm designing an intranet site for Netscape 3 only, I'm certainly not going
  to waste my time with a stylesheet. Similarly, if I'm designing for the web,
  but stylesheet positioning is not implemented well enough to use, then it is
  neither "available" nor "appropriate for the task" yet. When it becomes so,
  I will upgrade my sites accordingly.

Received on Friday, 23 July 1999 10:45:35 UTC