In message <cA2Sf.36701$wl.29571@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>, d
<d@example.com> writes
for some value of "viewed" (which includes "viewing" the in a text-only
browser, an aural browser, on a tiny screen, with a search engine
spider...)

This has been done to death here, many times...
--
Andy Mabbett

Say "NO!" to compulsory ID Cards: <http://www.no2id.net/>

"Andy Mabbett" <usenet200309@pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote in message
news:1W+A1rYGJgGEFw8+@pigsonthewing.org.uk...
Most sites developed by most people don't cater for such browsers. As I
said before, ensuring all the HTML around a flash movie renders correctly on
a textual browser is pointless

"Stevie D" <stevie@sjd117.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:flnj121a2usajvm92flfdag7mlskguqun8@4ax.com...
With CSS, if the stylesheet is loaded after the HTML, and rendered, you get
a brief flash of the page without styles, which is quickly updated when the
stylesheet is finally loaded. That looks even worse :-P

I've not noticed any slowdown in table-based pages as compared to cssp-based
ones. I don't think the speed is an issue on modern computers.

Of course - but being a PHP contractor, I go where the cash is

You don't have to make it work in non-mainstream browsers, as chances are
they're not the desired audience for most sites. Mainstream people buy
mainstream products, and mainstream people use mainstream browsers

That's a different question

Templates to the rescue!

I looked at that site - it's just a bunch of really simple designs that
change slightly, with different graphics. There isn't a massive difference
between any of the styles if you look beyond the fact that the font is
different :-P

I use templates, so I do that already. One template, which is more
intelligent than CSS, for the entire site.

It seems your audience is very different to the ones I work with. Just as
companies want clean-looking office buildings, they want their websites to
be as equally polished. It's all about presentation. Making excuses for
your site because "it's the way it should be done" is counter-productive.
And I wouldn't say it's style-over-substance - it's style and substance in
equal amounts. These sites wouldn't be needed if they didn't do anything

They are not mainstream browsers. Far, far, far from it.

Well, that means in about a year when it's the most popular browser, that
CSS will be one step closer to being ready.

Table-based HTML doesn't need hacks. That's the beauty. The same elements
do the same things in every single browser. No underscore hacks, weird
comments that IE likes, or browser-specific directives. No javascript,
nothin'

Thanks for taking the time to answer my obsute questions - as you might have
guessed, I need to be sold CSS positioning before I start to use it

dave

d wrote:

To start with there's the obvious hack - that you're having to use
several tables nested in horrible ways and for a purpose that was never
intended.

Message-ID: <dve689$l1j$1@news.freedom2surf.net> from Richard Watson
contained the following:

Horrible is a subjective term. Really the only thing you can say about
table based layout is that it may not linearise. If it does linearise
sensibly then I see no reason not to go with something which, as d
points out, just works.

--
Geoff Berrow 0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011

"Richard Watson" <tinnedmeat@doilywood.org.uk> wrote in message
news:dve689$l1j$1@news.freedom2surf.net...
That's not entirely true. It's not a hack, as I'm not coding tables in
certain ways to get certain browsers to accept certain parameters and others
not - every byte of code is intended for every browser. And secondly, I
don't nest umpteen tables. Usually, just one table will suffice for an
entire page.

"Stevie D" <stevie@sjd117.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:flnj121a2usajvm92flfdag7mlskguqun8@4ax.com...

I just coded a CSS version of the template I'm using on an advertising
agency's client extranet, and I came across a massive problem that CSS has:
100% high divs. I wanted a div, which has a 60px-high div above it, to be
100% of the remaining height. Getting the bottom div to stretch to take up
the rest of the space was impossible. I'd have to use javascript. That's
unacceptable. I got round the problem by editing the page's background
image to follow the design (having to work to a design means I can't just
say "sod it" and let it slide). leaves me feeling dirty :-P Tables, no
matter how hated and uncool they are, can deal with that with ridiculous
ease.

The template is a lot lighter, but as I was gzipping the content before
sending it, the transmitted size is about the same. I'm not sold about
changing the look of the entire site just by changing the .css - it looks
like I'd have to make everything position:absolute and start monkeying
around with top:s and left:s.

phew!

Geoff Berrow <blthecat@ckdog.co.uk> writes:
Download w3m or links2, and use them in a 80-character terminal for a
bit, and you'll find that they very definitely do not "just
work".

In links2 or w3m, a three-column table layout can sometimes end up with:
+------------+
|aaaa bbbbbbb|bbbbbb cccc
|aaaa bbbbbbb|bbbbbb cccc
|aaaa bbbbbbb|bbbbbb cccc
+------------+
That's even without nested tables and it's difficult to use. More common is
+------------+
|aaaa bbbbbbb| cccc
|aaaa bbbbbbb| cccc
|aaaa bbbbbbb| cccc
+------------+
which is more subtly wrong (you may not even realise there *is* a third column)

The same problem, only even pronounced, occurs with some mobile phone
browsers, where a table layout ends up with the table cells being 1
character wide, and 500 characters deep, because it forces no
horizontal scrolling and has quite a narrow display.

--
Chris

"Chris Morris" <c.i.morris@durham.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:87psklp7db.fsf@dinopsis.dur.ac.uk...
If you have to develop a site for a textual browser, then of course they
won't just work. But then as only a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of people
use it, it's not an issue.

If we want to get pedantic, I could point out that even CSS doesn't work if
you don't have a computer

And if I was developing a site for mobile phones, that would be important.


dave

On Fri, 17 Mar 2006, d wrote:

If you're developing a site for the WWW, then text-mode browsers come
with the territory.

Sez you. The WWW still does what it does, irrespective of your
exclusionist intentions.

CSS is optional, by design.