Re: Coding practices of large sites

Jonas Smithson wrote:

2. Can anybody provide links to any large commercial or institutional
sites (whose subject matter is not "coding practices") that *do* use
CSS to define their page geometry, so that I can look at their code?

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index is certainly not about coding
practices and they have some time ago changed their page layout to use
CSS instead of tables.

But note that I just mention it as you asked for examples, I do not
consider that site well done for many reasons, neither their HTML markup
nor their CSS validates, it is served with some dated document type
causing Mozilla to render it in quirks mode, they throw a simple
JavaScript if (!document.getElementById) check at the browser to send it
to http://espn.go.com/browserupgrade.html.
Netscape's DevEdge site even featured an interview with one of the site
designers
http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsour...-interview/01/
http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsour...-interview/02/
proudly presenting the site as standards compliant while you then find
statements like

when you have a site like ours which dynamically writes out a lot of
content, uses third-party statistical tracking, makes liberal use of
Flash, and offers complex and flexible advertising modules, validation
is simply a pie in the sky

and if you look at their JavaScript you can easily see that they simply
don't know about escaping a closing tag when it is output with
document.write (e.g. document.write('<\/p>')) to have it validate.

Still, it is an example of a commercial site using CSS for page layout.

--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

Martin Honnen <mahotrash (AT) yahoo (DOT) de> wrote

Jonas Smithson wrote:


2. Can anybody provide links to any large commercial or institutional
sites (whose subject matter is not "coding practices") that *do* use
CSS to define their page geometry, so that I can look at their code?

Personally, I think this whole thread is great - discussion of minds
and how CSS is being used, should be used, can be used etc.

A UK perspective (perhaps):

Most large sites, particularly in the UK use portions of CSS1 & 2. The
further time advances, the more CSS seems to be used (I say this
because some larger sites are now using positional, opacity,
background elements etc).

The trouble is that technology progresses fast and companies no-matter
what the size have finite budgets and time available to implement
solutions. To add to this, the majority of developers experience is
based on HTML and smatterings of CSS (although it is growing - which
is good). They discover that CSS can do things HTML can't, which saves
time, bandwidth and money.

After talking to a number of colleagues about this issue, CSS is seen
as a tool in a toolbox, which is used, where neccessary and plausible
to help achieve the desired 'look' of a site/layout/page. The final
solution, dependent on the developers experience might include HTML,
CSS, Javascript, Flash etc in varying degrees. One *BIG* plus is that
CSS is seen as giving more control/accuracy with regard to layout and
design. I like that!

One fact which complicated the matter is that there are just too many
unknown variables about browser usage and therefore most sites are
table-based complimented again by varying degrees of CSS.

Moreover, tables can be used as an 'exacting' standard(using a
plethora of workarounds as you would expect) just as CSS can, but they
are more established and more acceptable by browsers in general.

Walled-gardens (intranets/extranets) are a different matter, where
access is internal to a company only - in many of these cases, ONE
browser is used as standard across a company/institution and
developers are free to exploit the supported elements of the chosen
browser. More often than not, in my experience this is usually IE5 or
IE5.5...but I have seen NN4 used.

Coders are happy to experiment with CSS, indeed I have seen such
experiments recently, but time is money and the powers that be are
often too scared to go with a complete CSS solution. A memorable
example being a primarily table-based site, with a multitude of
different stylesheets for different browsers.

However, in the last 12-18 months, there does seem to have been a
shift in the view that its good to separate the design from the
content and I can think of quite a few instances where, for better
control companies have a web-based product(built in tables), and CSS
controling more and more visual elements - colours, some tentative
positioning etc... but rarely have I seen the complete visual
experience controlled by CSS. Its often deemed too bleeding-edge.

One area of usage has been the ability to use CSS to define printable
versions of pages - that has grown, but the majority of sites still
have the familiar 'click here for a printable version'.

Bests
Nick.