Come come, Tephlon, CSS is a noble art by which you may finally, if your heart is pure and your coffee strong, reach the final enlightenment of the Holy W3C Standards compliancy !

Stay away from evil table layouts and don't forget to validate.

Yarrr, table layouts !!! **shudder of disgust** All hail the almighty box model and the floating div ! :supz:

Divs tend to fuck up markup aswell. True, there are some cases when a div is necessary, but truly beautiful markup has no tags related to design, where every tag makes conceptual sense.

Compare:

[code:1]
<div class="menuheading">Menu</div>
<div class="menu">
<div class="menuitem">
<a href="bathroom.htm">Bathroom</a>
</div>
<div class="menuitem">
<a href="kitchen.htm">Kitchen</a>
</div>
<div class="menuitem">
<a href="bedroom.htm">Bedroom</a>
</div>
</div>
[/code:1]

With:

[code:1]
<h1 id="menuheading">Menu</h1>
<ul id="menu">
<li class="menuitem">
<a href="cat.htm">Cat</a>
</li>
<li class="menuitem">
<a href="dog.htm">Dog</a>
</li>
<li class="menuitem">
<a href="platypus.htm">Platypus</a>
</li>
</ul>
[/code:1]

Far too often I see markup similar to the first example. CSS will let you style both markups in exactly the same way, there is nothing you can do with the first example that you can't do with the second example.

So why do we prefer the second example to the first example? Because browsers not supporting CSS would be able to render the lists and headings so that they actually make sense to the reader, instead of confusing blocks of text, all styled the same way.

I built our company website with this in mind (I admit I used two or three divs in places where it was necessary), and one of the advantages is that it will degrade beautifully to mobile devices (as long as they support xhtml, of course), where heavy graphical designs are not as important as quick access to the true content.


Edit: fixed broken markup in the code examples.

That is of course true, but then anything used too much or in the wrong place is a pain in the back side... I have seen people use h3 titles for most of their text with the thing redesigned in the CSS and then use a span to define the titles, which structurally is dead stupid.
If you don't know it, there's a great site for CSS design here, I found it quite inspiring...

But let us return to the thread at hand...

In fact, just for that, I'll be Thread-Hijacking Swedish Pirates today

Hehe. :-D Yes, CSS Zen Garden is a great site. I consider myself an unofficial prophet of the zen preachings.

This morning, I was wet-snow-in-the-middle-of-April-when-it's-been-10-degrees-for-weeks-and-you-thought-the-winter-was-finally-over.

But now, I'm locksmiths-who-can't-bloody-copy-a-key-right-when-you-need-to-travel-20-km-to-test-if-the-key-works.

I think i'll be.... *thinks* .... Resteraunts-Who-Sell-Flat-Coca-Cola-Yet-Still-Charge-Full-Price, I hate it when that happenes...

Woah... That's bad...

Hmmm.. should I be that or
People-Who-Add-Me-On-YIM-Or-AIM-And-Ask-For-Help-On-The-Various-Games-I-Go-On
*thinks about time taken to type each one*
nah, first one is shorter and faster to type

i have just thought of a new one for me 9 more school days untill the start of my exams help me

Today I will be

Tele sales agent

Nothing more Evil in this world

Im turning my phone off :(

I will be "plastics" (I believe the French equivalent is les Barbies,Kkatcal, if you need translating :tonqe: )

I think I will be:

pen running out three questions into an exam without having a spare

Today, I shall be Idiotic Swedish Collegues. Actually, that's a running character name at the moment...

I guess the reason why you're working with them Kat is because we didn't want them around anymore.

Also, in defence of my compatriots, at least we know how to spell "colleague'.