css is useless

[justsomeone]

I guess it just means that it's a powerful tool which you need to know how to use. I chose to spend my time on learning the business and the back-end of systems. Both of these require a certain level of genius too.

Someone who chose to spend the time getting CSS working properly once saved me the time which would be required to develop different reports to show the same information on different media. Pretty darned useful I'd've thought. It's a very useful tool from my point of view.

You could draw a parallel with the the genius (geniuses? geniii?) who designed PHP and built the interpreter for it. I wouldn't fancy writing something like that from scratch. But that doesn't make it useless. It's just another tool I use.

[fisicx]

You need to also be aware that future browsers will only provide limited support for many of the HTML tags currently used to style webpages. This will mean that none of your HTML font styles will work.

The W3C advocate the use of CSS for all styles. All you should have in the (X)HTML is the page content.

And using CSS instead of tables for page structure assists screen readers, provides for a more flexible layout and makes it simpler to edit a page.

It also makes more sense to use CSS from a SEO point of view. The less code you have on the page the easier it becomes for the robots to index a site.

And the big adavntage is that if you want to twaek the colours you only need to edit the CSS file. Don't even need to touch the page files.

And lastly, using CSS can reduce your bandwidth by a huge percentage.

[Anthony Ravenscroft]

You need to also be aware that future browsers will only provide limited support for many of the HTML tags currently used to style webpages. This will mean that none of your HTML font styles will work.

While your heart is inarguably in the right place, the fact is that this has been true since at least 1999, when HTML 4 was imminently due for replacement.

Since then, we've had a whole raft of "improvements," from XML to CSS to XSHTML to gods know what, & the fact remains that it's difficult to go far wrong with simply following HTML 4 protocols.

Few sites support code deprecated at the time, such as the ghastly "blink" & "scroll" features, but I can't say as I miss them.

CSS has much power, but I've seen my share of screens that can't do a simple pine-level text page without 200 lines of CSS. Though potentially powerful, any fool can readily muck it all up with superfluous "just in case" code.

[Simon Wyndham]

I think that CSS is very useful due to the major changes that can be made to a website with only a small change to a basic text file.

I'm no expert on web design, and I will be outsourcing such things to a web design company when it becomes viable. However if I had one gripe about CSS it is Microsofts implementation of it!

I much prefer Firefox etc, and I am sick to death of acheiving a perfect layout in other browsers, but then having to dumb it down or mess up the code in order to make things work in Internet Explorer. What I usually end up with is a compromise, and some aspects of the website that I feel do not function or look exactly as they should.

As I say though, I am no website design guru so...

[Cratima]

I wanted to say that, related to this topic, I liked this article a lot:

http://hotdesign.com/seybold/everything.html


It's on NOT using tables as a method of design, but rather alternative
methods. Some include CSS.

Very interesting article.

[JustOneUK]

"Tables existed in HTML for one reason: To display tabular data."

Just because something was started to perform a single function doesn't mean it cannot be applied to other areas.

Since starting the thread I am certaily more open to the use off CSS however generally in conjunction with the use of tables. It's main plus side remains in controlling multiple styles of hyperlinks on a single page, and the ability to change fonts and colours sitewide. For layout it still sucks.

I totally agree that designers should stay well clear of a stack of nested tables wherever possible, but a nice balance between the two is fine, it's not that "code expensive" and anyway the argument about bandwidth is obsolete now, (what with it being so cheap now) and yet it always seems to crop up on places advocating the use of CSS.

James.

[A.N.Onym]

First of all, separating presentation and content makes it easy to edit websites.
Using tables for layout and fiddling with rows, columns and cells for page structure is counder-productive. Simply using CSS make sthe site much more easier to edit.

CSS can and is used to position elements on websites. Have you checked http://www.ESPN.com? They are on CSS, and have been for three years.

As for bandwidth.

True, bandwidth may not be the issue today. But page size may be viewed from another side of the fence - your visitors.
A site on CSS is twice as smaller than a site on tables. Of course, the amount of images may delute the advantage, but on a site with 140kb of images, total page size decreased by 10% after just redesigning with CSS. More (20-30%) could be achieved with optimizing the images, too.

Think of it this way: CSS is another tool to increase site download speed and to make the site easy to edit. And it is proven.

[earner]

CSS is marvellous. Don't blame a bad job on the tools. It is the workman that was at fault if something didn't work how you wanted/expected it to or what they said it did on the tin.

[mags1111]

I think CSS would be great if I would learn to use it and I planned my design in advance. I am working on a website just now, its in the design stages. For me, that means I will create probably about 6 to 10 home pages before I find the one I go ahead with. I suppose that is the point where I should write my css but I never do, somehow I feel it would stunt my flow of ideas.
My brother has a commercial site up which he built himself (without css) and it is quite big. So large, he says he cannot change the design because it would take too long. He has since learned about css and his newer sites are all css based - so that he can change things easier.

[fisicx]

You are doomed from the start.

You are concentrating on how the page will look rather than the content. Decide what you want to put on the site, write the words and optimise the images, add the links and publish. Google will find and index the site (which can take months). In the meantime you can use the CSS to style the page.