Re: flowing around both sides of a float

On Jan 3, 2008, at 2:14 PM, David Woolley wrote:

> James Elmore wrote:
>> Not exactly unpredictable. Some people (a very small percentage  
>> that I am aware of) have !important styles which override the  
>> browser and the
>
> Noting that most accessibility options in IE effectively introduce ! 
> important rules, the reasons that people don't use such rules very  
> often are much more to do with:
>
> - ignorance (exacerbated by browsers being designed for commercial
>   author wants, not consumer needs);

You draw an artificial distinction. Commercial authors exist to  
satisfy consumer needs. Some do so better than others (the better  
they are at it, the more financially successful they can be, all  
other things being equal), but they are not at opposing ends of a  
spectrum.

> - the bad design of important sites that means they can become  
> unusable,
>   if you try to override style sheets (and often if you turn them off
>   entirely).

Yep. And the good design of important sites can aid in usability, if  
the author/designer took a lot of care to craft it that way, and  
knows what they are doing. Many people may not want to monkey with  
those designs too much. Of course you can if you want. I would never  
seek to take that power away from you.

> Although this is only anecdotal, my experience of talking to people  
> is that quite a significant proportion of web users find web pages  
> difficult to use for reasons that could be avoided by a combination  
> of proper use of HTML and  selective or complete disabling of CSS.

And there we have it. Thank you for clearing up any lingering doubts  
some of us might have had regarding your anti-CSS stance. You think  
people would be better off without it. This really makes me question  
why you joined the list. Was it just to obstruct the progress of  
those who seek to advance CSS and make it better at actually styling  
things?

You may wish to consider involvement in the HTML WG, if you are not  
already, in order to help define the proper use of HTML and making  
sure it evolves to satisfy your semantic ideals even in the absence  
of the CSS.

> Since designers started using 7 x 5 fonts, I have font sizes more  
> or less permanently disabled, except when accessing sites that are  
> too broken (overlaps, normally) with the browser default font  
> sizes.  In the past I have had to disable colours as well, because  
> a designer has thought it cool to use very low colour contrasts  
> (bt.com was once a problem site in this respect).

<sarcasm>Yes, clearly giving designers the choice of using color or  
specifying fonts was a big mistake.</sarcasm>

> -- 
> David Woolley
> Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
> RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
> that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.
>

Received on Friday, 4 January 2008 06:57:31 UTC