Re: Center DIV

HTML may be designed for authoring documents, but it is not used this 
way and the W3C risks irrelevancy if it fails to engage with the people 
who actually make and use the web. Don't get me wrong, for the most 
part they do this very well, but the dogma that says only documents can 
exist on the web is false and counterproductive.

Having a very simple design, easy in HTML 4, that can not be achieved 
with CSS is, to my mind, not a small inconvience, it is a problem. A 
bigger problem than adding a couple of bytes to the code, which is all 
that is the case in this situation. I will only discourage the use of 
these hacks when the effect can be achieved as easily without them. 
Block centering is not the only problematic area.

Zen Garden is pretty, but it misses the point. It is bottom up design. 
Designers will always want top down design (please don't flame me about 
how designers want everything) and so they should. Zen Garden is 
nothing compared to the really pretty sites on the web, nor will it 
ever be.

But this just reinforces my point. I've written pretty much exactly the 
same message to this list 10 or more times. Is the list a place to 
discuss the future of CSS with a view to actual future modifications or 
is it just the discussion part?

Ben


On Thursday, Jul 3, 2003, at 17:55 Europe/London, Simon Jessey wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Afternoon" <afternoon@uk2.net>
> Subject: Re: Center DIV
>
>
>> Despite all the good ideas that have come from HTML as a
>> document language, it is used as a document language, an interface
>> language, a general purpose XML grammar and several other things.
>> Advances would be made more quickly if they were aimed at the current
>> situation, rather than a theoretical one.
>
>
> Cascading Style Sheets is a tool for presenting an HTML/XHTML/XML 
> document.
> HTML/XHTML/XML are tools for describing the structure of a document. 
> The
> goal of the W3C is to develop these tools so that they are better at 
> doing
> these jobs. You cannot expect them to create new mechanisms that 
> undermine
> (or even break) this goal.
>
> It is wrong to recommend that presentational HTML hacks should be used 
> to
> overcome any failings in the current CSS specification. I am not 
> saying it
> is wrong to USE such hacks - I am saying their use should be 
> discouraged. A
> properly structured HTML document with presentation controlled 
> exclusively
> by CSS will have a significantly smaller bandwidth footprint, as well 
> as
> being easier to alter later on down the line. These savings outweigh 
> the
> small inconveniences presented in the existing CSS specs.
>
> And the situation you describe is NOT theoretical. As has been 
> demonstrated
> in the wonderful CSS Zen Garden*, what can be achieved by doing it The 
> Right
> Way is beautiful, functional and adaptable.
>
> * http://www.csszengarden.com/
>
>
> Simon Jessey
>
> w: http://jessey.net/blog/
> e: simon@jessey.net
>
>

(q)	Ben Godfrey?
(a)	Web Developer and Designer
	See http://aftnn.org/ for details

Received on Thursday, 3 July 2003 13:22:03 UTC