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10 Best Resources for CSS

victorialever writes "Since one could have noticed an increasing number of websites that are employing CSS and an increasing number of resources talking about how great CSS is, it seems to become impossible not to jump on the CSS bandwagon as well. The 10 Best Resources for CSS provides an impressive list of the CSS resources which have recently become essential for web-developers. Among them - CSSZenGarden, The Web Developer's Handbook, Stylegala, PositionIsEverything etc."

4 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No CSS on that site. by iBod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's still easier to do certain things with table-based layouts than it is with CSS alone. Control of vertical positioning/height being the obvious one. That and fluid layouts.

    If you're a busy designer, sometimes you just have to take the pragmatic route rather that waste hours or days trying to make a pure CSS layout work across all the common browsers (none of which implement CSS 100% correctly anyway).

    Either that or (worse) you compromise the design to make it fit the limitations of a pure CSS layout.

    I think the latter approach accounts for the huge number of 'identikit', bloggish-looking sites out there (all proudly displaying their little W3c validation logos of course).

    It's still perfectly possible to create valid, semantic XHTML/CSS markup that uses the odd table for layout (no, I don't mean a heap of nested ones with spacer gifs!).

    While I'm all for standards and separating content from presentation, at this stage of the game, we just need to choose the solution that works best.

    I know it's probably heresy to say this, but IMO tables work in an intuitive way that you can easily visualize whereas a mass of floated DIVs often do not!

  2. CSS tables by Richard+W.M.+Jones · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Yes, a few sites are now using CSS. But often, they still don't "get it" - they've just replaced with to arrive at a mess of divs, instead of a mess of tables. We call this "CSS tables".

    Structural markup is the essential differentiating factor, not just that you have found out how to replace tables with divs ...

    </rant> over.

    Rich.

  3. Re:No CSS on that site. by schon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    there's some serious advantages - like the fact that all major and most minor browsers will render them identically, that they're far more intuitive, and that they allow re-flowing in a way that you can only do with CSS attributes that are explicitly designed to mimic the layout algorithms of "traditional" tables

    If you really believe all of this, then I don't think theres hope for you... unless you define "major and minor" browsers as "IE". Tables get rendered differently by different browsers, just like CSS gets rendered differently.. the only thing is that it's easier to work around CSS bugs

    CSS is *WAY* more intuitive than tables ever were (and there's a reason - because it's designed that way.) You use DIVs to define blocks of code, then use CSS to say how you want them positioned. With tables, you have to screw around with row and column spans *in the HTML itself*.

    It's pretty obvious that you prefer tables because you've spent a lot of time learning their quirks - don't slam CSS just because you don't know how to use it properly.

    try using the correct tools for the right job

    If you really believed this, you'd be using CSS.

  4. Re:No CSS on that site. by arkanes · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Table layout algorithms have been essentially identical in all major browsers for at least 4 years. CSS layout, on the other hand, has at least 4 years to go before it's anywhere close.

    I've been using CSS for many years. I've been using tables for many years, too, but don't mistake the fact that I'm aware of deficencies both in the CSS stndard and in it's imlpementations for a lack of knowledge. And the fact that you're telling me I need to use blocks of DIVs to layout my stuff is telling me that you're just another blind herd following CSS monkey, rather than anyone who can actually evaluate the usefullness and appropriateness of claims like "semantic markup". There's no excuse for telling someone to replace thier tables with divs "just because".

    And just because you managed to find some stylesheet on a CSS site that you use blindly to work around certain CSS bugs (no doubt without realizing that the stylesheet itself relies on other bugs to work correctly, and the widespread reliance on these bugs is a major obstacle to the uptake of correct CSS implemetations in IE), doesn't mean that CSS incompatibilities are easier to work around than the practically non-existant table ones.