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Re: [LUG] CSS reference extended, as requested



On Wednesday 25 Jun 2003 1:06 pm, Jonathan Melhuish wrote:
> > > I'm not so sure about this replacing-tables-with-CSS malarkey.  What's
> > > so wrong with tables?
> >
> > They are for tabulated data.
> > http://www.pixy.cz/dogmaw41/en/details-08.html
>
> Okay, so it's "forbidden" to use tables for page layout, but what *real*
> reasons are there for doing everything in CSS?

1. CSS allows you to do things that HTML simply cannot hope to do.
2. CSS allows you to make a consistent feel to many millions of pages by using 
one single external stylesheet. Changes to the style sheet update all pages 
simultaneously. You can see this in operation at the DCLUG website - click on 
the Easy Print link on the pages that display it and all that happens is that 
the stylesheet is swapped over - to change to a lower contrast page suitable 
for printing. This can be done with CSS2 without a link but until browser 
support for media attributes is more widespread, I'll stick with making it 
obvious.
3. Basically, your pages will break without CSS. Browser support for 
deprecated tags will cease.
4. As far as tables go, CSS is the only way of ACCURATELY predicting how the 
page will look. Each browser implements tables in different ways.
5. Most importantly, I care about whether EVERYONE can benefit from the site - 
including text-to-speech and other specialist browsers. The new <TABLE> 
specification includes lots of specialist tags that most common users of 
tables will ignore (like caption and <th>) but which are essential to making 
the page visible to specialist browsers.


-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk
http://www.dclug.org.uk

http://www.wewantbroadband.co.uk/

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