Comments on: Floating Points

By: ubsersquid

ubsersquid — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 05:23:12 +0000

a test, hopefully it won’t appear, sorry if it does

By: Mitchell

Mitchell — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 01:46:23 +0000

On the question above about alligning form elements, I believe the standard is asking us to move to using “labels” with forms, and though Ive always used tables, my first early experiences with labels is fairly good. You have to pack in some margins and padding in your style sheet to make your text sit properly to the side or above your forms, but yes, its less markup and better design than tables, and can be done.

Second, Eric, thanks for all the hard work helping the world move in this direction. After allot of blood, sweat and tears, Im finally moving our web shop (www.aztecsystems.com) to the standard, though with Microsoft’s messy Visual Studio, ASP.NET, and developers locked into old-fashioned table design, its a bit hard to make the argument (and thus the move) that the added effort and hours learning this technology is worth it, especially with all the bugs in the browsers.

But on the issue of positioning versus floats, sorry, but the fact that absolute elements are taken out of the document flow, AND with the issues with IE, I have been forced me to abandon positioning in all my web layouts. No matter how illogical floats may be, they still give us the power to place things on the page without tables, and with some hope that it will work in all browsers. In order to pull off that magic trick in 99% of the agents out there, I have been forced to apply quite a few hacks in my code….dont know about you. Thats not good and my chief worry. But positioning, as wonderful as it seems and so easy a concept to grasp as it seems to be, is still a huge huge mess, with LOTS of limitations in what it can do. I picture a world in about ten years from now, where the newest gui’s and web building tools allow you to open a page and drag and drop designs and content blocks onto an artboard and boom, they are positioned pixel by pixel along grids using CSS and positioning…..that world I believe will come eventually. I think positioning is the future …but not today. The w3c spec is lacking and the browsers will be lacking for some time. So, my vote, if you are taking one, is go with the floats! You content is all contained relative to each other, and its a very fluid and flexible solution with allot of potential. Go with that!

Here are sample of that thought in action:
http://www.stormdetector.com/layout1.html
http://www.stormdetector.com/layout2.html

Mitchell

By: eric marden

eric marden — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:19:13 +0000

i’ve long been using css for text and dhtml menus. but a few months ago started delving into more and more css based designs, as it seemed like it had gained enough support by the browsers to warrant being able to do it. but it’s post like yours that help cut thru the signal:noise ratio about CSS and Standards-based web design. i’ve been looking for a CSS ‘way’ to layout my forms – so that the text and form elements line up and look neat, orderly and easy-to-read. i’ve tried tricks like right aligning elements in the form tag and what not, but have not been having the kind of results that i expected (especially between mozilla and ie for instance)… now i konw it’s ‘safe’ to go back and use tables in these instances. thanks.

By: tswan

tswan — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 18:14:34 +0000

As far as I know, “display:table” doesn’t work properly in IE.

By: Eugene T.S. Wong

Eugene T.S. Wong — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 21:55:28 +0000

I don't understand why you don't see "display:table;" as an option. Could you elaborate?

By: beto

beto — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 16:59:28 +0000

I second your statement on tables - Not so long ago, so-called CSS purists went berzerk over a post on Dave Shea's site just by suggesting that there are times when it may still be better to use tables to hold pieces of layout instead of pure CSS-based positioning. You know, it's always exciting when you can pull out a page that can look gorgeous on a browser and practical on a PDA, and validates at the same time, but for better or worse, it is often more important to get the site on time and be paid by the client ASAP - specially when there's no room for experimentation. Testing time for browser bugs due to uneven CSS support often takes longer than we think, and few if any development timeline/budget projections ever take this into consideration. However efforts and research like that of Shaun's definitely are on the way to make these burdens less of an issue, and that can only be a good thing.

By: Commentary

Commentary — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 17:26:01 +0000

Absolute Clearance
If you’re looking for context for this entry please see my previous post and its comments Everything must go Man, the internet is a tough crowd. Seriously, who uses the back button? Hehe, a broken back button was not one…

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