RE: css layout should be symmetrical

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.

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/

Received on Monday, 18 February 2002 15:35:03 UTC