Make the CSS Right property work with absolute elements in IE

Anybody that claims to make a pixel-perfect web page is either a liar or
a fool, perhaps both. You do no service to those you claim to help, you
are merely providing the means to create pages that will likely fail
miserably in any "non-standard" browsing environment. That helps no one,
least of all your clients.

There's already enough crap on the web, please don't add to the dung heap.

I totally understand and respect your point of view. I've tried to answear
to this critisism in other messages, please feel free to argument.

Best regards, John.

"WYSIWYG HTML generator" is an oxymoron.

This cannot be stressed enough!

The whole point of web design is to abandon control over how the browser
renders the page. We can suggest and expect, sure, but never assume the
next user will see what the last user saw.

I should have probably said "WYSIWYG HTML generator using CSS (clearly
defined properties)". Why is that so bad ? Because some older browsers can't
understand CSS ? Should we have continued to use candles and stop creating
bulbs because electricity wasn't available everywhere ?

Thank you for your comments.

Best regards, John.

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 00:46:55 +0200, jonjon <none (AT) for (DOT) now> wrote:

But
now I have a question for you, if people find it useful and like the way
they are creating their web pages, all in a WYSIWYG way, don't you think
the
technology should listen too them and software developers and standards
should listen to what they want ? Or do you prefer telling them... no
there's no way but keep learning how they have defined it, or shame on
you.

It's kinda like the joke we have at school - teaching would be a great job
if it weren't for the damn kids.

All I'm saying is that it's the nature of web design to realize that what
you see is not what you get. WYSIWYG software, when purporting to produce
HTML code, is a lie.

Now, if it's done reasonably well, and with respect to the user in that
they are made aware of the limitations of this way of doing things, I'm
cool.

It's not like we didn't follow the standards, CSS allows us to create
absolute positionned elements, why shouldn't I use this possibility ?
would
you say the guys behind that were stupid and this functionality shouldn't
have been there in the firste place ?

Not at all. Absolute positioning has its place.

Imagine producing a tool kit for someone with no experience fixing or
building. You are going to have to either explain what all these doodads
do, or you are going to have to make sure the hammer cannot be used on a
screw. Likewise, this software is being designed so people don't need to
learn HTML and CSS. Therefore the program must not allow code to be
misused.

I submit, respectfully, that if you cannot make absolute positioning work
the old-fashioned hard way, you'll never get a program to do it. You're
going to have to do experimentation. Fact is, there are a lot of things
like this that will pop up. Until you have a grasp of what a human web
author has to do to get things to work, you'll never be able to automate
it.

We already have a lot of poor websites because businesses don't
recognize
that some idle manager is not going to be able to throw together a
competent web page in a few weeks.

Could you define what a "poor website" is ? Do you mean a web site
following
standards that old browsers, almost not used anymore, can't correctly
render
?

I mean websites which fail in current browsers. I mean pages which look
great on one computer in the author's office but fall apart in browsing
situations that differ from that.

Read this ng to get an idea of what I'm talking about. We discuss this
constantly. Think about:

- platform
- screen size and resolution
- operating system
- browser make and version
- presence of Js and Flash
- ability to habdle images
- readability for aural browsers
- text browser compatability
etc....
- viewport size

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 00:47:00 +0200, "jonjon" <none (AT) for (DOT) now> wrote:

"WYSIWYG HTML generator" is an oxymoron.

This cannot be stressed enough!

The whole point of web design is to abandon control over how the browser
renders the page. We can suggest and expect, sure, but never assume the
next user will see what the last user saw.

I should have probably said "WYSIWYG HTML generator using CSS (clearly
defined properties)". Why is that so bad ? Because some older browsers can't
understand CSS ?

No, that's not the problem. The point is that people have different
monitors, different window widths, different eyesight, different
preferred text sizes etc.

A WYSIWYG editor shows how the page will look at *one* particular text
size (etc). It encourages one to produce a design which looks very good
at that one combination of text size etc, but dreadful if the reader
selects e.g. a text size which is slightly larger.

Now you might be able to address this by providing a button that cycles
the editor view through half a dozen different combinations of text size
and window size, with one option for a text-browser simulation. That
would help.

Should we have continued to use candles and stop creating
bulbs because electricity wasn't available everywhere ?

Analogies are rarely a fruitful way of arguing, but a closer one would
be to say that it is not a good idea for manufacturers of radios and
shavers to produce only models which require mains electricity, given
that many people like to go camping.

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

jonjon wrote:

But
now I have a question for you, if people find it useful and like the way
they are creating their web pages, all in a WYSIWYG way, don't you think the
technology should listen too them and software developers and standards
should listen to what they want ?

The WWW is a medium designed to be much more flexible than DTP, which is
good. So techniques used for DTP are not necessarily usable for the WWW.
And WYSIWYG editing limits necessary features of the WWW.
--
Johannes Koch
In te domine speravi; non confundar in aeternum.
(Te Deum, 4th cent.)

jonjon wrote:

I should have probably said "WYSIWYG HTML generator using CSS (clearly
defined properties)". Why is that so bad ? Because some older browsers can't
understand CSS ?

No, because e.g.
* users may need and can use a different font size in their browsers,
* users may have different browser window sizes
* users may use a mobile device
* browsers allow for applying a user style sheet
* ...
--
Johannes Koch
In te domine speravi; non confundar in aeternum.
(Te Deum, 4th cent.)

Stephen Poley <sbpoleySpicedHamTrap (AT) xs4all (DOT) nl> wrote:

"WYSIWYG HTML generator" is an oxymoron.

This cannot be stressed enough!

Should we have continued to use candles and stop creating
bulbs because electricity wasn't available everywhere ?

Analogies are rarely a fruitful way of arguing,

:-) Anyone else spot the contradiction there? I always thought an
analogy was a rhetorical figure, now I learn it's a type of fruit
tree.

--
oxymoron: "English cricketer".