Out-of-date CSS person needs up-to-date CSS advice!!

[Alan Silver]

Hello,

I shamefully admit to be an old web designer, from before the days of
CSS. In those heady days, tables were king and were used for every
possible kind of alignment. When CSS came along, it was useful for
specifying colours and fonts for a site in one central location, but
useless for any real kind of design work due to the poor browser
support. I got well in to using CSS for colours and fonts, but carried
on using tables for layout.

I recently came across www.csszengarden.com and was totally amazed that
you could do such things with CSS alone. I am completely rethinking my
approach to page layout, but need some help. I have looked at the CSS
there, and at a fair few other sites I have found since, but haven't yet
got the picture completely clear.

So, any suggestions for some background material that will bring me up
to date? I have trawled around Amazon and found three books that look
interesting, the CSS Zen Garden one, "More Eric Meyer on CSS" and
"Cascading Style Sheets the Definitive Guide" (also by Eric Meyer).

Any comments on this choice of books? Remember, I do have a good
understanding of basic CSS, so I don't need anything for a complete
beginner, but I am obviously missing quite a lot of the picture, so I
need something for, erm, a complete beginner!!

Also, are there any on-line resources that I can use? I prefer books as
it's easier to read on paper, but I would also like to see some on-line
material.

Finally, how good is modern browser support for CSS? I only looked at
those sites in IE6, I don't bother in other browsers (although I'm sure
they were fine). Is CSS still a major challenge of working your way
around browser deficiencies?

Thanks for any comments.

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[Alan Silver]

>>Any comments on this choice of books?

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/css.html

Thanks, that's an interesting page, although why it's under Java is
beyond me!! I never knew that CSS was a part of Java - shows how little
I know<g>

Ta ra

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[Alan Silver]

>>>> I recently came across www.csszengarden.com and was totally amazed

that you could do such things with CSS alone.
Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote: Yes, it's a spectacular demonstration of what can be achieved, indeed;
but under no circumstances to be used as an actual model of how to
design normal web pages.

Alan Silver <[e-mail] x> wrote:

Why not?

For one thing, many of the designs are brittle, and fail in browsing
environments that differ from what the CSS author expected. For example,
try enforcing a minimum font size, using a narrow browser window, enforcing
a narrow browser window, or turning off image-loading when CSS is enabled.

Ah, I didn't check any of those, I was so busy "wow"ing the design and
the fact that it was all done in CSS.
For another, many of the techniques common to the CSS Zen Garden designs
(e.g., replacing text with images of text) are used not because they are
good techniques for real-world projects, but because the CSS Zen Garden
imposes artificial constraints.

Not sure what you mean by that. From what I could see, he (and others)
used techniques like that because they provided a good answer to a
common problem, namely how to balance having pure text in the HTML, but
using a visually rich replacement when rendered. Why is this not a good
technique for real-world projects? Also, what artificial constraints
does ZG apply that require this?

Thanks for the reply, any further elucidation would be appreciated.

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[dingbat]

Alan Silver wrote:

I never knew that CSS was a part of Java

A gazillion years ago, a long-forgotten browser named Netscape invented
some stylesheet technology based on setting lots of JavaScript
properties. As it's traditional for tutorials to confuse Java and
JavaScript on all possible occasions, so the confusion begins.

[Alan Silver]

>> I never knew that CSS was a part of Java

A gazillion years ago, a long-forgotten browser named Netscape invented
some stylesheet technology based on setting lots of JavaScript
properties. As it's traditional for tutorials to confuse Java and
JavaScript on all possible occasions, so the confusion begins.

I actually remember that. It was in the days when Netscape was
considered a decent browser. They lost the plot quite seriously since
then...

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Alan Silver wrote:

I actually remember that. It was in the days when Netscape was
considered a decent browser. They lost the plot quite seriously
since then...

IMHO your criticism is ill-founded: after NN4.* "they" handed over the
"plot" to a new organisation which has proved eminently capable of
producing web-compatible browsers. I think "they" deserve to be
congratulated for that.

[Alan Silver]

>> I actually remember that. It was in the days when Netscape was

considered a decent browser. They lost the plot quite seriously
since then...

IMHO your criticism is ill-founded: after NN4.* "they" handed over the
"plot" to a new organisation which has proved eminently capable of
producing web-compatible browsers. I think "they" deserve to be
congratulate d for that.

I was referring to a stage in between. At the stage of NN3 and IE3, the
former was a superior browser (according to popular opinion at the
time). MS, for better or for worse, went to on to develop IE
aggressively, releasing new versions regularly. Netscape appeared to do
very little to improve their browser after the first version of NN4 came
out. There were minor releases, but none seemed significantly different
from previous ones. That's what I mean by "they lost the plot", they
just didn't appear to be making any attempt to keep up with MS.

At some point later, when the browser war was effectively lost, Netscape
handed over the browser to open source and they did with it what
Netscape themselves should have done years before. It was only then that
we saw any advances in the browser. As long as Netscape had it, nothing
worthwhile was done.

I'm commenting here from a clear memory of what I saw as a web designer
and browser user at the time. You may have a different view.

It's also worth noting that the end user judges a piece of software by
its overall features, and good CSS support (for example) is unlikely to
be an issue. IE was judged favourably by the general public as it
offered them useful features, like being able to see cached pages
offline in their entirety, instead of the plain HTML option that NN
offered. Technically IE may not be such a great browser, but as with
many MS offerings, it gave people what they wanted. NN didn't (then, I'm
not commenting on the more recent morphs).

Ta ra

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[dingbat]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

I think "they" deserve to be congratulated for that.

It also improved the LA club scene no end.

[Gus Richter]

Alan Silver wrote:

I actually remember that. It was in the days when Netscape was
considered a decent browser. They lost the plot quite seriously
since then...

IMHO your criticism is ill-founded: after NN4.* "they" handed over the
"plot" to a new organisation which has proved eminently capable of
producing web-compatible browsers. I think "they" deserve to be
congratulated for that.

I was referring to a stage in between. At the stage of NN3 and IE3, the
former was a superior browser (according to popular opinion at the
time). MS, for better or for worse, went to on to develop IE
aggressively, releasing new versions regularly. Netscape appeared to do
very little to improve their browser after the first version of NN4 came
out. There were minor releases, but none seemed significantly different
from previous ones. That's what I mean by "they lost the plot", they
just didn't appear to be making any attempt to keep up with MS.

At some point later, when the browser war was effectively lost, Netscape
handed over the browser to open source and they did with it what
Netscape themselves should have done years before. It was only then that
we saw any advances in the browser. As long as Netscape had it, nothing
worthwhile was done.

I'm commenting here from a clear memory of what I saw as a web designer
and browser user at the time. You may have a different view.

It's also worth noting that the end user judges a piece of software by
its overall features, and good CSS support (for example) is unlikely to
be an issue. IE was judged favourably by the general public as it
offered them useful features, like being able to see cached pages
offline in their entirety, instead of the plain HTML option that NN
offered. Technically IE may not be such a great browser, but as with
many MS offerings, it gave people what they wanted. NN didn't (then, I'm
not commenting on the more recent morphs).

Your memory is certainly different from mine. Mine is just the reverse.

Netscape was superior to IE and IE was trying to keep up to Netscape.
Netscape realised after a while that they had taken a wrong turn with
their Javascript based CSS (JCSS) and decided to forget about the NS 4
series, to not spend resources to correct bugs (after an attempt with a
NS 5 which was never released), but to start a complete re-write for the
NS 6 series; Mozilla Open Source (started by Netscape!), fully standards
compliant. They never "lost the plot" but lost to MS's monopoly game,
resulting in $700 million or so in restitution, but irreversable damage
was done - Netscape had already been aquired by AOL. Under the AOL
umbrella they released NS 6, continued on to the NS 7 series and were
finally set free on their own as Mozilla Foundation of today under which
umbrella they have continued on with the Mozilla 1 series and onward to
the (Phoenix/Firebird/) Firefox 1 series.

What MS did was to present the IE 5 series to be 'compatible' with NS 4.
IE 5.5 was the first decent thing released and superior to NS 4 only
because Netscape no longer supported the NS 4 series by then. Later on,
IE 6 was released, which really should have only been a full point IE 5
release, nothing more. With all of MS's resources, nothing was done for
years to improve IE since they had the mass market wrapped up already
and concentrated on wrapping up other markets. If anyone "lost the plot"
regarding browser improvement, it was MS with its IE, but then it was
never on their radar. Their radar was directed differently, had a
different "plot" which succeeded and is still succeeding, by placing IE
only in front of Windows users. It's not providing, as you say, 'what
people wanted', but provides 'something good enough' - the masses don't
really know what they want or need; IE is put in front of them, it does
basically what they want, they get used to it and stick to it just
because they don't know any better.

My memory is that Netscape, and as the Mozilla successor, continued
unhaltingly to improve whereas IE did not, but came to a stand still.

--
Gus

[Darin McGrew]

Re: CSS Zen Garden
I wrote:

For another, many of the techniques common to the CSS Zen Garden designs
(e.g., replacing text with images of text) are used not because they are
good techniques for real-world projects, but because the CSS Zen Garden
imposes artificial constraints.

Alan Silver <[e-mail] x> wrote: Not sure what you mean by that. From what I could see, he (and others)
used techniques like that because they provided a good answer to a
common problem, namely how to balance having pure text in the HTML, but
using a visually rich replacement when rendered. Why is this not a good
technique for real-world projects?
The common pictures-of-text techniques embed the content within the style
sheet, or at least, within the images the style sheet uses to replace the
text content.

IMHO, the style sheet (and its associated resources) should be unaffected
if someone makes a small change to the text content (e.g., changing the
first H3 element from "The Road to Enlightenment" to "The Path to
Enlightenment") .
Also, what artificial constraints does ZG apply that require this?

"Thou shalt not change the HTML for any reason whatsoever."

In the real world, content images should use the IMG element. Content
images that are pictures of text should provide the text in the ALT
attribute.
--
Darin McGrew, mc****@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da***@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"If at first you don't succeed, then plug it in and try again."

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Darin McGrew wrote (along with much that
didn't seem contentious):

In the real world, content images should use the IMG element.
Content images that are pictures of text should provide the text in
the ALT attribute.

Well, yes; but, on the other hand, there's a body of informed advice
which says that making images that are nothing more than images of
text is poor practice. Better would be to include the text itself in
the HTML with appropriate markup (and if you don't like the visual
result, to propose something via the stylesheet to modify the visual
result in appropriate presentation situation/s).

best regards