Forum Moderators: not2easy
We've all met the guy wearing the Iron Maiden T-Shirt and the leather jacket in the pub right?
You know the one: Bald patch, about 35yrs, stuck in a 1989 time warp. (incidently the last time he bought a record)
Why are so many web designers reminicent of this real ale drinking billy no mates?
Personally I can find absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the continued use of the <font> tag. Even version 3 and 4 browsers understand the CSS rules for font declarations so why do the old guard web designers continue to use them?
Is it fear of the unknown or is it something more unstoppably human? Is it actually caused by the same bizzare force that makes people stop buying new music because it's all just noise and hanging out at theme bars/clubs for the 70's/80's?
As we approach the V7 browsers, NN4 gives it's final death rattle and V3 browsers move from legend to myth, what possible reason is there not to embrace a technology that makes everyones lives so much simpler?
Your thoughts both for and against and most importantly the reasoning behind them would be most appreciated.
Disclaimer
I've never been an Iron Maiden fan but I shudder to admit that once saw Def leopard (age 16) and I quite like real ale. Not aimed at any one individual dispite recent off board conversations. It's just a bit of fun! ;-)
Nick
But seriously, from an old man ( and I know anyone over 30 years of age knows nothing) ...
I believe what is happening is that CSS is one more thing to learn. The common herd uses WYSIWYG editors (and often very poorly at that), knows little or no server side scripting, and in reality knows very little about how to really do HTML markup. You cannot expect them to learn how to implement CSS.
[edited by: TheWebographer at 9:01 pm (utc) on May 7, 2003]
Nick
I'm sure Brett has his reasons, but that would make him an Iron Maiden fan nonetheless :)
Quite ironic to see the source code of the CSS forum using font tags, although I'm sure it involves a lot of time to convert to CSS from an existing working structure.
On the other hand, there's absolutely no reasons when you do start a new project.
One exception would be reusing badly written modules where business logic is integrated with presentation and you end up with html code all over the place, which make it a pain to convert efficiently.
mavherick
Can you remember what a total mess those first version 4 browsers made of almost everything CSS? I think that many long-time developers may have tried out CSS back then and had a similar experience. Now it's like being asked to re-marry your first wife after a messy divorce.
Hey Nick, I think a majority of the problem lies within the WYSIWYG environment. Once you click on that button to make text a different color than black, or to change the size of the font, the ole' <font> tag finds its place in the html. Even the newer WYSIWYG editors still do this.
Unfortunately I think we are going to see the <font> tag for years to come. As WYSIWYG becomes more mainstream, which they do everyday, <font> tags are going to maintain their visibility.
I'd say give it another couple of years before we start to see a real push towards elminating the tag altogether. It will probably take a browser saying that it does not support the <font> tag anymore before any of the programmers of WYSIWYG get the message.
From my perspective, there should be absolutely no presentational markup in the html code.
P.S. Iron Maiden, Zep, Aerosmith. Hey, I grew up in that era and I stopped using <font> tags years ago!
The long and the short of it seems to be "because IE sucks" but there is hope!
Standards Case Studies [devedge.netscape.com]
heheh, very funny!
>iron maiden
Sorry tedster, nothing personal! hehehe
>1998
Yep, first web page I ever tried to write was with CSS. Flipped over 2 nn4 (had only discovered it that day!) and just cried. - Didn't give up though. I just seriously dumbed down my pretty page ;-)
>WebmasterWorld
[webmasterworld.com...]
Good stuff there from Brett, remember WebmasterWorld is 4yrs old!
Nick
Going further, I find it hard to believe people using (dare I say it) 'W*rd' to make very simple sites that end up very bloated. I think the comment 'one more thing to learn' possibly sums it up.
I started learning JS and got a little into Flash, thought about perl and then just decided that I probably didn't need that stuff, that is, it was, for me, superfluous (¿) as far as functions in my web designing.
>>>Now it's like being asked to re-marry your first wife after a messy divorce.
Woah now, hang on a minute Tedster, nothing could be that serious (or even the second, come to think about it).... ;+)
[edited by: CritterNYC at 10:54 pm (utc) on May 7, 2003]
By the way - I am the guy in the bar with the PINK FLOYD t-shirt, baldy patch and leather jacket - still hallucinating from the 70's. But even us "old fogeys" can spot a good thing when we see one!
Quite ironic to see the source code of the CSS forum using font tags, although I'm sure it involves a lot of time to convert to CSS from an existing working structure.
True enough, it took me the best part of an afternoon to convert this forum to CSS :)
True enough, it took me the best part of an afternoon to convert this forum to CSS :)
It just took me a whole 2 seconds to strip the page of all presentational markup. Opened the page in my Editor (Brett will probably see the request), applied the remove formatting command and viola, all tags were gone!
I tend to make all new sites now with a CSS and if I have any old sites I just renovate them when I get bored and convert them. Takes all of about 2 minutes to convert a site.
True enough, it took me the best part of an afternoon to convert this forum to CSS :)
Hey graham, didn't mean for that to sound like it took you too long. What you did and what I did are two totally different things. All I did was strip the formatting. You actually rebuilt the forum pages and applied the css. Sorry about that. After reading my response, I can see maybe a slight misinterpretation. ;)
I still think part of the reason is fear of the unkown and the relative safty of the known. It's amazing what you can convince yourself of if you really try ;-)
Nick
Not everyone over 30 is scared to change, they just need a push in the right direction. Sometimes you have to push them with an oil-soaked two-by-four...
The writer in you is showing DG! - I've no idea what 'oil soaked' does to a 2x4 but it sounds EVIL ;-)
Nick
What I produced was really just a 'proof of concept' - it worked fine on the 3 browsers I had to hand at the time, but not so well on some older browsers. Also I just did the styling directly on the HTML, Brett would actually have to go in and alter his cgi scripts that generatethe pages.
So basically, to do a 'real' conversion would have taken a lot longer. I'm very impressed if ncsuk can do it in two minutes :)
Because you just can't reliably do the things with CSS that you can with <font> and <table>. Take a look at all the CSS bugs that IE has, all the things you can't do with it (the '>' child selector, '[]' attribute selectors) unless you add dubious extra divs to your markup. There are also bugs in its CSS positioning that prevent authors from positioning elements with CSS that works cross browser.Everything passed the first sentence is irrelevent to the context, as we're talking about the use of font tags only. And countless CSS based sites would contest that their stylesheets are just as durable as archaic font tags.
If you are going to make tables etc then that can take a little while longer as you may need to make multiple version of CSS files. All in all though its not too hard to do and I personally dont know a great deal about CSS but its easy to work out.
It isn't like the majority of their clients are going to protest, right?
Jeez - if they were hand-coding they'd have carpal tunnel for sure from all the unnecessary font tag keystrokes ;) They'd likely be the first to convert!
But if you are going to hand code every page on a hundred page website - or even use a WYSIWYG editor... You would be better off learning how to program.
But I still love the power of CSS for font specifications, and for border controls and colors.
I still use TABLE though, it's easy and I get what I want.
One issue for me - I tend to ignore non-MSIE browsers... maybe because I don't want to make my life more complicated in "retirement"! :-)
(old guy with red suit and white beard)
