RE: css layout should be symmetrical

 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Manos Batsis [mailto:m.batsis@bsnet.gr]
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 11:14 am
To: Benjamin D. Gray; www-style@w3.org
Subject: RE: css layout should be symmetrical
If you are not concerned about markup semantics, but instead only care
for rendering issues, current css properties (such as those related to
text direction, positioning and grids) are more than enough.

Still, markup is called markup for a reason; it's the semantics that
hold the real value not rendering. Rendering should, where possible,
come from document structure and flow; not hacks that do not reflect
document structure (which, after all these years of CSS development, is
a web authors most powerfull weapon if he takes advantage of it's
behavior).


I am concerned about markup semantics and I agree that document
structure and flow should be where rendering comes from.
Document structure should also be allowed to be left in an ordered
manner that would make sense as plain text, while allowing parts of the
document to be placed at the left, right, or centered and still make as
much if not more sense than the plain text version.

Your example of {align: top center;} can easily be achieved by using
text-align and vertical-align on the parentNode (if it's a td for
example), or even positioning (better yet, a mixture of the above).


So what happens if you would like to position something like this (which
I think would be nice):
-----------
|~~~~~oo~~|
|~~~~~oo~~|
|   ~~~   |
-----------
 
div.mainbody {
  text-align: center;
}
 
div.image { /* o’s are the image */
  float: 55% 33%;
}
 
The current way of accomplishing this is throwing it in a table, or
using positioning (which requires using scripting to find exact width
and height of client’s screen, then calculating where to position the
div containing the image).  The text-align property does not make sense
for an image, or even for a block of text (centering an unordered list
with the items left aligned).  The vertical-align property does not work
for a partial alignment (1/4th down from edge of client’s screen).
 
I think tables would stop being used for layout if there were more
powerful ways to control layout with CSS.
 
 
Benjamin D. Gray
WIND Web Developer
 <http://wind.uwyo.edu/> http://wind.uwyo.edu/