Semantic disjunction, or something of that nature....

CSS is NOT ALWAYS CSS-P

[vkaryl]

I've been noticing lately (not just here, but on other fora I visit regularly as well) that people will state things like "tables or CSS" when they mean "tables or CSS-P". Whether it's because they're in a hurry so don't dot i's/cross t's or because THEY don't realize that the two nomenclatures are not 100% identical, it's still fairly misleading - since plain "tables" and "CSS" are obviously not mutually exclusive.

I think there needs to be a reframing [NPI!] of the way we talk about/think about/post about CSS. All CSS is NOT CSS-P, though all CSS-P IS CSS. And perhaps a change in "frame of reeference" might iron out some of the situational difficulty that occurs when someone tries to delineate why CSS-P might be preferable to tables.

It's frequently difficult to determine quickly WHY a poster thinks heesh can't use tables with CSS. I think much of this confusion (okay, maybe I'M the only confused one here - not unlikely, considering!) arises because CSS and CSS-P are not necessarily one-and-the-same, though of course they share elements and foci....

[createErrorMsg]

vkaryl, welcome back. We've missed you here in #83.

You raise a good point. At the very least this idea should be disseminated on the web to expose 'newbies' to the fact that there is far more functionality to CSS than just the debate over it's layout stability.

cEM

[vkaryl]

Thanks, cEM - y'know, I was just thinking back over my beginner days in CSS (NOT, mind you, that I'm "advanced" now - FAR FAR from it!), and figure it took me a number of months of reading posts here to actually realize that they were really two different things, with points of congruence yes, but with basically differing raisons-d'etre. Now perhaps that just means that I'm abysmally slow, but perhaps I'm not the only one!

[ronin]

That's an excellent point vkaryl.

I would add that it is equally important to make a distinction between layout tables - ie. using the browser rendering of tables as a hack to lay out pages - and tables which are a valid document component in the same manner as lists, headings, images and paragraphs.

Just out of interest, is CSS-P an official term or is it just an informal term to describe the positioning controls of CSS 2?

[vkaryl]

I don't know, ronin. I knew of CSS well before I began attempting to be a productive member here, but only when I got further into CSS did I begin to see the differences between CSS-for-styling-pages and CSS-P. It may be that a once-informal designation has now taken on a concrete formality?

And you make an equally good point about tables, which do seem to exemplify some of the same dichotomy that CSS does.

[SuzyUK]

Good points! agreeing with what has already been said, I think that this "disjunction" is the whole cornerstone of the animosity in arguments against CSS usage (incorrectly of course ;))

Just out of interest, is CSS-P an official term or is it just an informal term to describe the positioning controls of CSS 2?

I think it's an informal term that's been coined by those who already knew there was a distinction, (and possibly tried to find some way to tell others that they weren't "purists" who would only use CSS and positioning or be struck off the CSS "elitist" register because a <table> element appeared in their source code :o)

(OT ~ sorry I'm laughing, but I just re-read a 16 page article which is so anti "CSS" and rants on about it's users being "elitists", it's ridiculously funny! Not that I mind opposing views but this particular article could be summed up with the author just saying he doesn't like to use CSS-P, he prefers tables for layout because yes he uses stylesheets for font styling, and no I'm not linking (troll feeding!)..

CSS-P does the job, CSS+P might've been another way to describe it because essentially it is trying to infer the use of CSS for styling plus the CSS positioning properties, and styling and positioning properties can be used independantly.

Suzy