Afternoon Report

[gothwalk]

I'm spending a lot of time here on small fixes on the site. It's nothing short of amazing how much time they take. I'm also trying to catch up on my web-development lists, and I'm seeing that people using tables in their sites are being told more and more to use CSS instead. Now, while I'm all in favour of CSS, and the separation of content and presentation, it seems that it's not quite time to switch to pure CSS layout. What do y'all out there do with your sites - pure CSS, and leave the old browsers out in the cold, or table layouts, and include everyone at the expense of "proper" standards?

Speaking of web development, I have an article on Evolt now: On Time, Every Time: Timing Material in CF. I'm pleased it's up there, and even more pleased that I've had a request from that for articles for another site.

Comments

[niallm.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

The beginning of a wonderful career of a web pundit...

[salith.livejournal.com]

I work with the maxim "Maximum Compatibility".
It may just be my RP site, but I don't want anyone who shows an interest to have a problem accessing my site (http://www.tieflingslament.co.uk) just because they use a palm-top, IE3, or Konqueror. Using CSS and DIV/LAYER tags for absolute placement always tends to mess up in different resolutions than what the site was designed for (I, for instance, am still stuck on 640×480 due to a rather crappy monitor, so I keep things like that in consideration when figuring the layout) and this happens more than the designers would care to admit.
Feel free to take a look and if you want any PHP source code I've slapped together, feel free to ask :)

[bastun-ie.livejournal.com]

The only site I built and still maintain is AdoptionIreland and its associated Contact Register, both done using plain old-fashioned html tables.

Partly it's so we can be more inclusive; partly it's because I no longer have the time to keep up with web development trends and training - wouldn't know where to start with CSS and I don't have the time to learn, but I can update or create a new page layout/template in short order with just tables.

I occasionally do simple sites as favours for ppl/organisations and again it's old-fashioned tables all the way - especially if they're unfamiliar with HTML and will be using Front Page or Dreamweaver to update it themselves afterwards.

[loupblanc.livejournal.com]

I don't use CSS to position blocks of text, I only use it to format generic tags like body or anchor. I still use tables, they haven't been depreciated and a lot of academics in the matter will still speak in favour of their use.

Apparently no two browsers interpret absolute positioning with CSS the same way so what's the point really?

[socmot.livejournal.com]

For my weblog I use CSS and div tags, I might do a photoblog soon and will adopt the same philosphy perhaps - although it seems to work much better with tables at the moment.

I will probably experiment with CSS and div tags again for an upcoming non commercial site that I'm taking over this year.

I wouldn't do it for any of the sites I've built for commercial purposes, as I don't want to leave anyone out in terms of their browser.

I think if you can afford to switch over to CSS and tables, you should do so for the sake of convenience - the time it takes to change styles is tiny and you don't have to poke around in HTML all that much either.

[phantom_wolfboy]

Honestly? Fuck "proper standards". Work to the lowest possible denominator so that as many people as possible are included.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I use tables, and am of the "include everyone" school - don't like the sites that insist everyone has the latest version of IE and make you go and download extra plug-ins and the rest, I just don't bother with whatever site it is when that happens, which defeats the object.
I'm still using Opera 5 as my main browser, which is pretty fussy about what it will and won't display, its quite handy for checking code though as if javascript or even basic html is done sloppily, Opera won't display it, whereas IE these days seems to take some of the slack and show any old crap to be helpful...
Having said that, if you're designing/maintaining large commercial sites, there's a limit to how basic you can be if you want to be able to update huge chunks in a hurry.

[kehoea.livejournal.com]

If you use CSS for your layout, the page will look like arse in NS4, but it will still work. So, people can still use your site, but they will get negative feedback for using Netscape Navigator 4.X, which may encourage them to use another browser. Which is as it should be.

(Christ, even IE3 has more passable CSS support than did NS4.)