CSS Web Applications

practicality of CSS for ui intensive web pages

[webapp]

Hi, I'm not sure if this has been discussed before and if it has, please point me in the right direction.

I'm working on a ~100pp web application and would appreciate advice from people who have worked on converting web application pages laid out with tables into CSS-P content-design separated pages.

I know there are many benefits to converting to CSS-P but is this the case with web apps? The content does not need to be indexed, the layout is graphic intensive, and pages seldom have similar columnar layouts.

Hypothetically, if more than half of the pages have unique layouts (share a header and footer with others but that's about it), would it still be practical/beneficial to convert to pure CSS-P? In the future there will definitely be redesigns and co-branding look & feel changes.

I am fairly new at this but I have a feeling that when the time comes to redesign, using a combo of tables and CSS for layout would be more efficient (time-wise) than using only CSS-P and divisions (and tweaking for odd browser behaviour). Accounting for so many different page layouts with CSS might not be as practical in this situation. I could be way off, though, so any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[webapp]

*nudge*

Anyone?

[Mr Bo Jangles]

I have a web application, and started out trying to have it 100% pure css, but it was just too difficult for the data tables - to get them perfect etc. - and I had professional css assistance!
So I settled for a hybrid - using css for everything except the data presentation in tables. The css controls the appearance of the tables, so in a way I've got the best of both worlds.

Overall, I'm glad now of this whole approach - and glad I used css (there are over a 100 pages in the web application, so changes outside of tweaking a css file can be painful.

[webapp]

Thanks for your input. I have done several pages with pure CSS to test, but like you mentioned, data entry sections (and everything else) didn't look perfect unless I used wraps upon wraps of division tags.

Plus, I'm afraid that if there were a redesign, entire sections of the application would need to be shuffled around (ex. moving a "Help" link from the footer to the header, replacing text links w/ images, etc.) that the benefits of a pure CSS layout won't present itself.

I'm beginning to think that pure CSS, at its current state, is not the way to go for web applications. I think I'll get the most out of the CSS-table hybrid method you suggested.

I've noticed My Yahoo and Friendster switched to mostly pure CSS, though they modified their UI to easier accomodate it. I probably won't have that luxury with a co-branding project.

[tapodaca]

Speaking of tables, remember they are not to be completely removed from the web. There is a place for tables in this internet we just have to be smarter about when to use them (presenting/organizing tabular data!).