Forum Moderators: not2easy
There are some who swear by CSS and standards and will advise you to take the time and trouble to learn CSS as it will stand you in good stead in the future.
I listened to them, ended up spending several days learning CSS (perhaps I should have spent a month or two), and gave up in frustration. Yes, you've got to work out hacks for IE5, workarounds for the mac, and pull your hair out to get even the more basic design. If webdesign is your business then maybe you should take the time to learn CSS. If your sites are your business it's easier (and cheaper) to outsource the design. If you want to do it yourself the best compromise is to control your fonts/colours/headings etc via CSS and use tables for your design. Even some CSS advocates agree that there's nothing like the old table for ease of layout. If it's quick loading times and the caching of the CSS file that you're after you can still use tables and create divs with appropriate background images for various locations in your table/s.
hard to make a webpage look the same on all popular browsers
Yes, that would be almost impossible. Instead, just concentrate on making the site usable in all the popular browsers (and the 'unpopular' ones too). It is more important that your site is usable cross platform than whether it is pixel perfect design in ie. There's no reason why it can't still be attractive though.
My advice, DO NOT try to make a design similar to the design you currently have using HTML.
You rather start from scrap and decide with layout you want (2 or 3 three-columns layout).
And MAKE IT SIMPLE! Just like Yahoo home page, 2 columns and lot of small boxes.
This is only compliant in I.E at the minute - 99% of visitors over the last year are I.E users, this is why I haven't bothered to get it cross-browser.
Research your log files find out which is the most popular 3 browsers and build to be compliant in them - that way 1 out of a 1000 visitors may have trouble but the rest will be fine.
I totally agree that browser support is so lame - pure hassle but CSS will be around for sometime and idealy you would want to get started now rather than fall behind with such a big subject. One of the best resources is HERE!
It is more important that your site is usable cross platform than whether it is pixel perfect design in ie
99% of visitors over the last year are I.E users, this is why I haven't bothered to get it cross-browser.
And some of your pages do have problems in Firefox. I'm surprised your logs show 99% of visitors using IE, that doesn't reflect IE's general market share which is much lower than 99% ... and dropping.
workarounds for the mac
Heh heh, depends where you're coming from. I design on a Mac with no problems, and I need workarounds for PC / IE.
I recommend checking your CSS with the validator at W3C.org. I've had more than one incident where the problem wasn't that I needed a workaround, it was that I had made some sort of error in the CSS. Some browsers are better than others at adapting to our glitches, so we blame the other browsers for not looking right instead of realizing what the real problem is. Make sure your CSS is valid before you tear your hair out over cross-browser workarounds.
Hang in there, and take it a step at a time. CSS is something you can grow into; you don't have to learn everything overnight.
[edited by: buckworks at 3:02 pm (utc) on June 28, 2005]
take it a step at a time. CSS is something you can grow into; you don't have to learn everything overnight.This is why you first design should be very simple.
Yes, you've got to work out hacks for IE5, workarounds for the mac
Not necessarily. I use CSS all the time and have never used a single hack. It just means using what is compatible, which means knowing the limitations and then working within them. It is quite possible.
You can replicate any table layout with CSS
I believe the biggest problem people have when they move to CSS first is just that. You have to stop thinking in tables, which is hard when you are used to them.
I taught a class recently in HTML for beginners to a group of primary (grade school) teachers. After doing the very basics I started them off laying out a page with CSS, made no mention of laying out with tables at all. The ones who had some experience and had used tables had tremendous difficulty with this - the one who had done nothing at all before had no problems whatsoever.
checking your CSS with the validator at W3C.org
Vital but equally important is not to become obsessed with validating for its own sake. It isn't a holy grail.
I agree Abbeyvet, use strict CSS1 and I am sure you will not need hack.
The advantages of this are:
1. You know exactly what you need to do. Although it can mean a little more work, you are not trying to experiment with various versions to work in different browsers.
2. The client apps have to play catch up rather than you.
3. There are various sites that will validate your code for different types of compliance.
4. If your sites complies with the standards (particularly xhtml and css2) then you are about 80% of the way to having an accessible site (nothing can make up for lack of planning and common sense).
5. It will probably look OK in most browsers. If it doesn't, and you have an external css file it is much easier to write a second css for another browser than to try and make the same code work on many browsers.
Best regards,
Andrew.
I by no means stated you should build the site in I.E forgetting other browsers. I totally agree on building in FF then correcting any rendering problems with I.E.
But, unfortunatly in the real world / at work I for sure haven't got spare time to sit down and make a site cross browser, I was recommending if your following tight deadlines to research the most used browsers in order to ensure the majority of visitors have no viewing problems.
This was pretty easy and only took an hour or so to create. Boss was happy :)
I hate to think how much more complicated it could have been if our site wasn't using pure css, and was a complicated tabular layout like it used to be in the bad old days.
This is the kind of reason why I'd say it's worth it :)
I will never go back to table layout, not no way not never, CSS is SO flexible and friendly, it just takes some learning, certainly you cannot expect immediate results - but when it starts to drop into place it really makes so much sense, for so many reasons. You need to understand much of the way of using CSS for layout is very different, you have to adjust your thinking
I have to say without Web Master World, I would be up the creek without a paddle.... and a boat...!
********FORMS STYLING********
Hi ikkyu
Yes I have done some form styling, and without tables,
You have some great hooks to style using CSS, such as:
<fieldset>
<legend></legend>
<label></label>
</fieldset>
no need to use tables, and can get some nice results..
ZA
This [webmasterworld.com] is quite a nice start into the subject of CSS forms...
