Re: flowing around both sides of a float

On Jan 4, 2008, at 1:09 AM, David Woolley wrote:

> 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 [...] Typically the aim is to make  
> people buy their mediocre implementation of a product [...] fear  
> may be appropriate for some products [...] most sites are badly  
> designed

Got it. All businesses and the people working for them are evil and  
incompetent. Quite a broad brush you paint with, there. If only we  
had some sort of government system that could do away with their  
terrible capitalistic influence, then we could return to the  
wonderful world of pre-CSS HTML.

And here I was wondering why more professional Web designers weren't  
more involved with this list.

> I do believe that the CSS model is wrong if style is more important  
> than content,

This list is for discussing Cascading STYLE Sheets. No one ever said  
it was more important than content. But styling Web pages is why  
authors use CSS, so trying to do so in powerful, predictable ways is  
central to the discussion and raison d'tere of this list. If content  
is more important to you, then there are probably other discussion  
lists where your comments can be more constructive, rather than just  
trying to tear down all the work of those who would like to use a  
styling language to apply style and design.

> This is more and education than a language design problem.  You  
> have to convince authors to think about content rather than form,  
> and you have make the public aware that something better is  
> possible; people's expectations of the web are dictated by how they  
> see it used.

Good luck with that. But that's advocacy, and is out of place on this  
list. "This mailing list is for technical discussion on Web Style  
Sheets." [1]

> [...] CSS must be done with a light touch.

No it mustn't. It is a tool that can be used however the author  
decides to use it, within its technical limitations. When you own the  
Web site, you can determine if you are going to use a light touch, or  
style the hell out of it, or something in between. There may be laws  
requiring me to consider accessibility for the visually impaired and  
such, but there is no law saying I have to use a light touch. If  
anything, your attitude makes me want to do the opposite of what you  
want, such as using tiny little font sizes in light gray against a  
somewhat lighter gray background. But I won't, because it is self  
defeating.

> My main problem in joining working groups, though, is that I have  
> to do all this in my spare time, and I don't even really have time  
> to do this list justice.

I'm not telling you how to spend your time, just suggesting there may  
be a better choice for you, where your contributions are more  
appreciated, if your goal is advocate the elimination of most of  
what's been done with CSS.

>> <sarcasm>Yes, clearly giving designers the choice of using color  
>> or specifying fonts was a big mistake.</sarcasm>
>
> It appears to have been :-(.

Wow. OK, I now have no basis for continued conversation with you. You  
are not only anti-CSS, you are anti-design. We have no common ground.  
I will spare the rest of the group from further responses to your  
baiting.


[1] http://www.w3.org/Mail/Lists.html#www-style