Geekazoid wars
Ahh, a potentially heated discussion at the WP forums — again (it’s like should you or shouldn’t you target external links to _blank). Table layouts and the importance of CSS.
Well, you know I think people who can’t write HTML by hand are not supposed to make homepages either, but they do (I don’t know about electronics so I don’t go fixing my TV! I know borking your code doesn’t kill you, though). They get into something like WP which, to satisfy their grandiose ideas, requires some knowledge of PHP, CSS, and HTML. If they don’t know about those and are scared to get elbow-deep in them (I think I hadn’t seen any PHP before WP, but because I know a few programming languages, the syntax came naturally), they flock the forums with lots of things they want to achieve and need help to achieve them (“Help!!!!1 this is very important! I need it done today!”).
But I do understand people who are just starting in the wonderful world of web design, who maybe know the basics but not the more “advanced” stuff like CSS. It maybe be too much to them to get an all-CSS layout, especially if it needs to be a bit on the complex side. Layouts with tables are easy! You aren’t supposed to make them, but boy do they scale nicely and you can do all kinds of cool images for the layout and just slice them up and whack ’em in a table. I know I’m maybe just trying to justify my own table layouts which I have been too lazy to change, but CSS gets frustrating at times. Maybe I should just get a few recipes up my 3/4-length sleeve that I can happily type around without going through the trial and error from scratch every time.
CSS can get really frustrating, but not because it is “difficult” or something. It’s @#%^$ IE that never renders right (where “right” is defined as “the way other browsers do, especialy Gecko-based ones).
As an example, when I quickly fixed my own layout to fill the whole browser, it took me about 5 minutes to do it in CSS. The results I saw in Firefox were perfect.
Then I spent 3 hours fixing the way it looked on IE. Granted, I also moved all my IE tweaks from JavaScript to CSS at the same time. (I added comments, too, so I can remember what to look at next time.)
Well, I was a whiz at html, and css is no prob for me, but the php… that’s something totally different. Not something I can get easily, even though I’ve bought 4 books on the subject.
I feel like you do, that people with no knowledge shouldn’t be creating websites and then expecting someone else to do their work for them, but then I relent and remember how I screwed my first website totally cuz I didn’t know html at the time.
I always hate the discussions about _blank though cuz it’s what I always use – I hate having to use a back button or always choose the right-click, open in new window crap.
But I do know that those people who think that they’re the big be-all’s and end-all’s always argue about this issue. I wish they’d shut the f*** up and leave it to choice.
Jafer — I couldn’t help but laugh (kind-heartedly, mind you) when I read your comment. It sounds like you are using my #1 reason for not using _blank to argue for using it.
When a link has a _blank target, I can’t easily choose to have it open in the same window, which always makes me feel I’ve been robbed of that choice.
But with a tabbed browser I don’t care anymore. Most times it really just a preference more than anything anyway.
Kimmo, somehow your comments get stuck in moderation… sorry about that (well, not like I have a vote).
I’m 50-50 on the _blank issue. I recently removed targets from all my links (on this blog, I’ve been to lazy to change my other sites). I really don’t mind when external links go to _blank but when pages that clearly are a part of a site pop up, that I don’t get.
In the forum thread, I just snapped (in my mild way) at the person who compares tables and CSS. As if they were some kind of alternatives. Sheeeeeesh.
I asked the anti-CSS person if they use
<font>to style their site and I’m expecting an answer along the lines of “no, I use the attributestylein the tags”. Oh the irony if that really was the case.There’s this forum person (or actually a few) who often complains about different habits and web manners people have. Like stressing their text with stars (*) or doing that _blank thing, and I always get guilty conscious although I know I shouldn’t care a toss what they think. But then I think about it and decide it’s actually a good argument.
As far as the stars are concerned, I changed all my stressing stars to <strong> but left the ones describing actions intact. I think that’s a good compromise.
Your blog, does not validate.
I know. Have I said it does?
Layouts with tables are easy!
Editing a table layout (so to speak) in a vanilla text editor is anything but easy, if you choose web standards and use semantic markup, documents become at lot easier to understand. Even for beginners.
Your CSS gets frustrating, probably because of differences between browsers and inconsistencies.
Validate your code, why risk yet another inconsistency?
The Zen of CSS Design is an excellent book. If you don’t fancy ordering it then perhaps its kicking around a library near you, it really is worth reading.
My code is fine, thank you very much. I’m not going to start tweaking WP or adding an extra newline at the end of each of my 312 posts (or how many have this unclosed paragraph problem) for my site to validate. I’m not accusing WP for breaking the validation, I just haven’t taken the time to get familiar with the logic in post formatting (e.g. how to do blockquotes properly). Besides, my CSS validates.
I’m sorry it bothers you a great deal (you must be losing sleep too, wondering and pondering why I had to say this and that in my not-so-serious hobby blog with cutesy purple background), but I’ll be as inconsistent as I please in my spare time.
If you’re respecting web standards and semantics, you shouldn’t be making a table layout to begin with.
Minna, I know exactly what you mean. My site used to validate – until I started adding all the WP plugins. Now there are so many errors I wouldn’t know where to start since, once you validate, it just shows all the posts mixed in with the header/main/sidebar coding as well – just try to figure out where the hell to go for fixing – I can’t.