Forum Moderators: not2easy
This is not a trick question...
And to what degree?
If someone does go and check, how do you want "degree" quantified?
1 - for font tags
2 - for positioning
3 - for printing
etc...
The remainder either dont use it/use frames so i couldnt be bothered to look furtehr into it/or use some sort of script which would just annoy me.
Just thought id add that in :)
Good luck finding one that doesn't use any tables!
Good luck finding one that doesn't use any tables!
Just to set things straight - CSS based layout does not mean you can't use tables! I use tables all the time, when appropriate to do so.
But "pure css" would mean no tables... not necessarily a better creature, just the only one that can claim that title...
Wired is the only one I know of, off the top of my head, and its #736 :(
(actually they now have a little table at the bottom of their code for an ad!)
To what degree are they using css? Fonts or are some using for positioning as well?
But "pure css" would mean no tables
That is not true! "Pure CSS" means "no tables for layout", but there are hundreds of other usages for tables.
Microsoft
uses style sheet but no font tags
Google
uses style sheet but no font tags
Top 3 sites in the world but only use css in a small way, must be due to the cross browser compatability?
ncw164x
must be due to the cross browser compatability?
That has to be a big factor. Who wants to brand with a site that looks one way in NN4, another way in... etc. (someone's going to slap me for this one!)
When you look at it, how many BIG NAME sites are using CSS to it's full potential? (not full wrt the specs, but wrt the lowest common denominator... nn4, hmm, maybe lots of them are!)
These guys still using tables etc. have a solution, and one that works. Maybe for them, going over to css just isn't worth it. For now a 'why fix it if it ain't broken' attitude.
In most industries (maybe I'm wrong here), and for the most part, isn't it the little guy who innovates and the big guys who eventually get called slugs?
There are big-name sites out there that have gone full css, don't get me wrong, but for now they are the exception and not the rule - I see them as the gutsy pioneers. But for sites like Google and Yahoo!, maybe they are a bit distracted right now with all of the happenings and competition, and maybe MS is just too entrenched...
The wave is coming, I just think it's starting small...
[edited by: mipapage at 5:38 pm (utc) on Oct. 30, 2003]
Just think about how many pages they have, and long it would take to convert all those pages to CSS only.
I think that once NN4 is completely dead (about as dead as IE3 and 4 are today) we will see a lot more sites switch over to CSS. It's a lot easier to make a brand new page work well for NN4 people, than to turn an old page into CSS, and still please those same people.
As far as i can see, the majority of those that do use CSS are using it mostly for fonts etc. I dont think i noticed any using it for postioning yet, but theres a few external files to nosey through yet!
But "pure css" would mean no tables
I guess someone doesn't display tabular data on his site.
My question to Brett:
If all of the top 100 sites on Alexa used css in some manner, would it be enough to convince you that CSS is good for usability? And I don't mean pure CSS layouts, I mean CSS in some compacity, that even NN4 will always get right.
It's just odd to me that Brett keeps preaching to not use CSS. And since many people actually listen to him, it might be detrimental. It's pretty laughable that one of the best webmaster forums is still using font tags. It's not much of an example to others.
But we are all certainly entitled to our own opinions.
It wouldn't work for someone like Yahoo or Google to launch a pure CSS page. Their userbase is less "techie" than that of A List Apart, for example.
Webmaster World is falling somewhere inbetween. There are a lot of highly technologically advanced people using the forums (which are usually the ones advocating for a step up), but there are also those that have just started down the path... Then again, WebmasterWorld is supposed to be a forerunner, someone lighting up the path for its users, someone who's showing what you can do.
I agree that Brett's strong advocacy against CSS may turn some people away from CSS, it may even turn some back to using tables. Personally that's not a situation I would like to be in...
someone who's showing what you can do.
Haha! Easily solved: take a note from hotbot and the zen garden:
A redesign contest!
okaaay, I'll shutup now...
For now a 'why fix it if it ain't broken' attitude.
Very probably true. And it may even be that it can't be fixed for an affordable cost.
Any system more than 18 months old is a legacy system. It's been built using obsolete (though still workable) technology and with a whole host of assumptions built in that may no longer be true but are unecconomical to fix.
I suspect many of the top 100 sites, if rebuilt from scractch today, would use a lot of different underlying technolgy to maintain and present the content.
But the fact they may have one foot stuck in the past is no argument to emulate them.
The real question is would they embrace CSS if they had the luxury of a clean start? I suspect many would.
As an aside, am I the only one here who thinks that the WebmasterWorld markup is superb? For one thing, it validates [htmlhelp.com], which is rare in this category even though internal pages often don't validate due to improperly nested tags in member's comments. (It would validate in the W3C validator too but for the missing character encoding, which is a one-line fix in httpd.conf anyway). What's more, it is very minimalist and functional. I challenge you to set aside your prejudices and view source on this site - pure retro chic!
You would never remove the tables on a forum anyway, and what's the ROI in replacing the (in this case perfectly valid) font tags with CSS? The bandwidth saved would be negligable, and you mess up the layout for users of older or unusual browsers.
