Who can't add up, me or Internet Explorer?

You can't do all possible things in the presentation style. It is bound
by the order of things in the content. Try swapping the 1st column with
the 3rd column from your 3 column layout by only changing CSS.

Hombre, you need this:

http://www.csszengarden.com/

to calm a bit down (your repeating too much what's _not_ working in
CSS instead of maybe realising how _much_ is possible with CSS, it's
quite neurotic, because as long as you believe CSS sucks, CSS _will_
suck for you), and to get at least an understanding of the _basic_
abilities of CSS (ZenGarden is _basic_, easy, simple (and also
artificial) CSS design).

For sure you can move around structured HTML completely _independent_
of the structure. So you make your semantic or OO structure in HTML and
do whatever you want with it in the presentation. If a 'header' is left
or right or down, or in the middle, if it overlaps the sitemap or
underlaps a menu, that you _dont_ define in HTML.

Ciao
Niels

On 12 May 2006 12:09:05 -0700 niels.froehling (AT) seies (DOT) de wrote:

You can't do all possible things in the presentation style. It is bound
by the order of things in the content. Try swapping the 1st column with
the 3rd column from your 3 column layout by only changing CSS.

Hombre, you need this:

http://www.csszengarden.com/

to calm a bit down (your repeating too much what's _not_ working in
CSS instead of maybe realising how _much_ is possible with CSS, it's
quite neurotic, because as long as you believe CSS sucks, CSS _will_
suck for you), and to get at least an understanding of the _basic_
abilities of CSS (ZenGarden is _basic_, easy, simple (and also
artificial) CSS design).

The sample page designs (from links on the right side of the main page)
look nice for things like blogs and simple information sites. For a
lot of other things, including some of what I have coming up, this just
doesn't cut it.

Some of my sites will be high information density, and will use style
and graphics to guide the eye around the page. These blog designs are
not anywhere near that kind of thing.

I'll look around the resource links. But if they are like what I have
seen from others, they are likely to still be narrow in ultimate intent
(such as the majority of designs being for blogs).

Compare this with some of the latest submissions for the Slashdot CSS
redesign contest. Some are quite nice. Some are just awful.

If you want to show me a great design, show me one that would be "the
next level" for something like craigslist.org or other large complex
community sites that.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Phil Howard KA9WGN | http://linuxhomepage.com/ http://ham.org/ |
(first name) at ipal.net | http://phil.ipal.org/ http://ka9wgn.ham.org/ |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In article <e431v00tc4 (AT) news2 (DOT) newsguy.com>, phil-news-nospam (AT) ipal (DOT) net
writes
<snip>

| http://www.csszengarden.com/
snip
The sample page designs (from links on the right side of the main page)
look nice for things like blogs and simple information sites. For a
lot of other things, including some of what I have coming up, this just
doesn't cut it.

I have been grappling with exactly this problem since I started learning
CSS layout recently, and have come to the conclusion that it's a false
problem.

I think the fact that most of the samples you see are for blogs and
simple sites is that the people writing sites describing how to use CSS
want to keep the point clear and simple. Most of them have simple info
sites, most of them have blogs, therefore it makes sense to use those to
show how to do layout with CSS.

This does *not* mean that this is all you can do with CSS. I have just
been working on a couple of sites, one an e-commerce site and one for a
company offering company formation services. Both sites are quite
info-heavy, but can still be styled in CSS.

The point is that CSS is not a restriction on the type or quantity of
info that is on the page. It is simply a way of keeping your
presentation separate from your content. For an info-heavy site, that is
an even bigger advantage than for a blog or simple site.

<snip>

If you want to show me a great design, show me one that would be "the
next level" for something like craigslist.org or other large complex
community sites that.

You probably won't find this in any of the CSS showcase sites, simply
because the CSS would be so complex that it would overwhelm anyone
trying to learn CSS from it. Once you have the principles of CSS under
your belt (and no, I don't claim to have that yet, I'm still learning),
you can apply them to a site of any size or complexity.

Hope this helps. It's a difficult point to accept, but when you finally
see it, it is obvious.

Just as an aside, what's so complex about craigslist.org from a layout
point of view? Sure, there's loads of links there (probably too many,
the site is very confusing, but that's a UI issue not a CSS one), but
the layout and style is pretty simple. This is not meant as a criticism,
just a question. I would have thought that you could do that in CSS
without too much problem. You would then have the huge advantage of
search engines liking the site even more when you dropped the tables,
plus you could give the whole site an instant facelift by changing the
stylesheet.

Just my 2c. Ta ra

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)