Re: Stylesheet columnisation

Kynn:

I noticed that, although you are proficient at CSS layout, you are still
reluctant to use CSS for positioning. For example, the HTML Writers Guild is
built on table layouts and the Aware page (http://aware.hwg.org/) avoids
layouts that would require either tables or CSS positioning. I have also
used CSS to format pages, but mostly in experimentation. It is discouraging
to see how Netscape 3.0 displays those pages and how Netscape 4.0+ forgets
to reformat the page according to style sheets when the window is resized. I
know that there are javascripts that force Netscape to reload on window
resize. Maybe I'll make more use of that in the future.

My question, however, is how reasonable or advantageous is it to use CSS for
layout purposes? (DIV, SPAN, etc--not just font color and less consequential
attributes)? Does the disability community really benefit enough from it to
justify poor rendering in browsers with less-than-prefect CSS support? Does
the non-disability community benefit from it?

Even though I really like the concept of CSS, I have my doubts about its
usefulness until browsers give it better support.


----- Original Message -----
From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-hwg@idyllmtn.com>
To: GARETH P PARKINSON <298gpp@tay.ac.uk>
Cc: <W3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, November 01, 1999 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: Stylesheet columnisation


> At 09:22 AM 11/1/1999 , GARETH P PARKINSON wrote:
> >Does anyone know if stylesheets can be used to format text into columns,
or is it only possible when using tables for layout?
>
> Yes, you can use stylesheets for columnar layout.  It's not
> particularly easy to get something that's supported by the
> major browsers and still degrades easily, but once you have
> it worked out, it's not too hard to do.
>
> I have an old version of my homepage that still exists chiefly
> because it's a good stylesheets-columns layout example, although I
> haven't updated the content for a long time.  It _looks_ as if it's
> done with tables, but there's nary a table to be found in the
> entire page, just CSS:
>
>       http://www.kynn.com/homepage.shm
>
> It generally looks best in Internet Explorer 5.0, then Opera 3.6
> (although the icons don't lay out nicely) and finally in Netscape
> 4.5.
>
> Warning:  The page isn't maintained, and many of the d-links don't
> work, although I'm quite proud of the CSS-P (positioning) that
> places the little Ds _on_ the graphics in some cases. :)
>
> --
> Kynn Bartlett                                    mailto:kynn@hwg.org
> President, HTML Writers Guild                    http://www.hwg.org/
> AWARE Center Director                          http://aware.hwg.org/
>

Received on Monday, 1 November 1999 13:57:52 UTC