Re: flowing around both sides of a float

On Jan 4, 2008, at 4:09 AM, David Woolley wrote:

>
> Brad Kemper wrote:
>> You draw an artificial distinction. Commercial authors exist to  
>> satisfy consumer needs. Some do so better than others (the better  
>> they are at
>
> Commercial authors are there to influence people to buy products and  
> services.  That usually means that they do their best not to create  
> an informed consumer base (this is as old as modern advertising,  
> i.e. about a century).  Typically the aim is to make people buy  
> their mediocre implementation of a product, rather than the  
> competitor's mediocre implementation, because they have the prettier  
> (or otherwise appropriate emotional connotation - fear may be  
> appropriate for some products) web site, even though the prettiness  
> of the web site bears no relationship to the quality of the product.
>
>> 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.
>
> Unfortunately most sites are badly designed from a usability point  
> of view, often through being over designed. People who know how to  
> compensate compensate for those sites, with the result that sites  
> that are properly designed for the medium may also suffer, and the  
> expectations of those who don't compensate are set by the bad sites.
>
>> 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 misinterpret my position.  Used with a light touch, and the  
> understanding that it is only providing hints, CSS is good.  If  
> people styled web pages well, as someone with reasonable vision for  
> my age, I would have no particular desire to override CSS.

I do not mean to extend in duration what might turn into a flame war,  
but are you saying that CSS is now feature complete, and it only  
remains to polish the rough edges?

CSS should be a long length of rope, more than enough to hang yourself  
with, in my own opinion. If the advanced features of it turn it into a  
page description language, so be it. It'd still be superior to PDF in  
several ways. Html is many things, and documentation is only one of  
them.

If there are real examples in typography of centered floats, then it  
seems only reasonable that CSS might allow the same. If it were  
impossible or difficult to implement, this would be a valid reason for  
keeping it out of the spec. But if that (or some other pragmatic  
reason) is not the case, then it would be a mistake to keep it out.


John O.
>

Received on Friday, 4 January 2008 14:37:36 UTC