(rant)...i still dont get css & master pages...

Not that I have been playing with a new - amazing app recently ( well - amazing for programmers)

but all i can say ( *legally*)
is Im still back to my old rant on tables vs layers

pretending i was using some new app - and exploring all its new css based features - i have to say the app is great (css)- but at doing something that seems to offer less - (user - wise) than the last versions (tables and html) can / could.

to every single programmer here - i can full heartedly reccomend you try out this new program - whatever it is.  i think you will find it fixes all your old gripes and adds features with css you will just love.

BUT

if you like tables and html - youve sort have been put out to pasture.

Hey fine! - in with the new...but layers and css still dont translate to wysiwyg editors as easily as <font> and table manipulation

for 1. - css "everywhere" means tags - everywhere.  sometimes started neatly in an included external file - but very soon - adding to each individual document - and populating the styles pane like a kid with the flu

for 2. layers stink compared to tables for functionality /customizing - yet it seems tables have been dumbed down in this release ( of a program un-named) to army like rigor  (how dare you DRAW!)

am i complaining? NO. it is great and does a great job at trying to figure out THE MESS THAT IS CSS

programmers - will love this version

...but maybe people who use quark, corel, illustrator and this old app called frontpage - may be a bit dismayed and the above 2 things ( css everywhere) could be disorienting - especially with the new lock down grid / only drag from mouseover "dot" you cannot find - try to pull table/layer lines around as they flash on and off

..no preview (ya ya add it to the bottom)

this new "app" is a must have for programmers to actually like wysiwyg - for everyone else - you got more and saw more in older versions - where "dragging" wasnt a drag - where tables trumped layers (and still do functionality wise) and moving or creating areas was done graphically not mathmatically (like all OTHER competing apps could only offer)

so thats why i like tables more than layers and fonts more than css and includes more than master pages

has nothing to do with any app - real or fake
just ANY app that disregards whats better for whats cool isnt cool

ps - but thats just my opinion - i could be wrong 

I haven't moved into ASP.NET yet to play with master pages (soon I think...) but for the CSS vs. Table battle I'm totally in favor of CSS.

The Sitepoint book DHTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS was a great resource for me. There is a Second Edition out now... haven't seen any of the changes in there though...

I'm a big fan of the Sitepoint books, they are pretty easy to read and give a good deal of information.

worried that i didnt get my point across...

in a nutshell:

why should i belive these css ( easy edit across all pages "promise") and layers ( less options harder to use than tables)
and master pages -(where there is only ONE? design - and it gets LOCKED?)

in comparison to:

a separate header page - included where needed graphically
( the same for all other content areas...footer...ads...) so i can be totally in controll of the components i call or need per page? rather than a locked master "template"

its all bogus

who died - killed tables, and made lame css layers the boss?


edit: "a Play"

thing 1:  Well the user feedback studies are in sir...
Boss:      Let me hear them
Thing 2:  All the users loved vista, ie7 and the new ___ app.
Boss:      Thats great news!
Thing 1:  ..well - there was this...ONE..user
Boss:      Go on.....
Thing 2:  Well he thought every change in each application was worse than before
Boss:     Worse?  how could that be?
Thing 1: Functionality sir - it seems many of the new things we added came at the expense of lost functionality - only in comparison to older versions....sir
Boss:  how many people noticed?
Thing 2:  ..um ... just one sir...yes...one
Boss:  well then - we've nothing to worry about then have we?

id go for the css - drink the koolaid - if it was css 3 or whatever

*in the "old" days of ie3 and 4 - ms wrote css standards

you want me to drink the layer css hype - make it equal the functionality in css 3 tables/layers - otherwise ermmm DONT dumb down another great app to lowest common "standards" denominator (= no drawing tables) - just squares)  ADD the stuff to make layers = tables and let the FF crowd boo!

theyre just mad youll get it done

i HATE standards
unless ms worked on them

jamie wrote:

worried that i didnt get my point across...

in a nutshell:

why should i belive these css ( easy edit across all pages "promise") and layers ( less options harder to use than tables)
and master pages -(where there is only ONE? design - and it gets LOCKED?)

in comparison to:

a separate header page - included where needed graphically
( the same for all other content areas...footer...ads...) so i can be totally in controll of the components i call or need per page? rather than a locked master "template"

its all bogus

who died - killed tables, and made lame css layers the boss?

Tables are to display tabular data, not to created layouts. How does the browser for blind people know which way to read in a table? It simply things this is a table and will read it as a table, which will probaly end up in not making any sence.
Using all div's isn't the solution either, they are here to divide your page is sections. Using a paragraph tag for a paragraph a h1 for a page title is the solution which makes sence also to applications that aren't as smart as the human brain. Our powerfull brain know's what to do because we walked into this puzzle before, and are able to visual figure it out.

Take this for example if you want to create the following on a page:

par1 par4
par2 par5
par3 par6

in a table style it is

cel1 cel4
cel2 cel5
cel3 cel6

in the non table style it is

p1
p2
p3
p4
p5
p6

The computer in this case doesn't know if cel 1-3 and 4-6 are related, do they follow eachother? or is it seperated information? we can visual figure it out with our brain but the computer is clueless.

CSS is something you need to learn and if you come from a wysiwyg background this is probaly a hard thing. I used notepad from day one of my webpage creating proces, so I needed to learn new stuff but it made sence. I just stepped from using the style attribute to using css files.

Never worked with master pages yet, but I don't see why that is a locked thing. If I am correct they work like templates, so you create 3 or 4 master pages and then apply them to your pages, so each group of pages has it's own template (articlepage, userinfo, etc.)

While with the old way you did a lot of copy paste of include tags for header, footer, etc. for each file. So you already used a sort of template/master page, only now you are able to do it without copy pasting include tags to each file on change. Sure for a small page this master pages seems useless, because there is simply not enough content to make it usefull.

..great reply thanks

just seems counter intuitive to need to create page "scenarios" - when i can just open a "girdle table" and edit away / add/ subtract on the fly


*haha re:scenarios: "im billy - i download mp3s!"

edit: *includes* = FP graphical incudes = the template is there - totally viewable - not a code tag/inc icon 

I don't see how you could fancy tables in any way, unless you want to list customer details. I used to work with tables and they simply caused me so much trouble that I forced myself to try Divs, while it was a lengthy learning curve I haven't looked back.

Colspan this, colspan that, cellpadding there, cellspacing=0 over there, slice_r6_c4_spacer_image.gif over in that corner, and so on. Then there's the fact that if one cell expands all of the other cells in that column/row will expand as well, causing a mess.

CSS positioning with block elements is a lot less restricting, requires less HTML markup and more choices to play with.

Find a table on this site, and this one, or maybe this one. Oh wait, they're all the same site! See my point?

Tables aren't necessarily the wrong way to layout a page, but they have so many side-effects and problems associated with their complexity.

..id agree 100% if i wasnt "Bytor of the Table Draw Tool and Snowdog of the castrated feature"

ermm..

table / cell -right click-  properties/ bg colour / black

 

layer...ummmm...select.... go to top menu....format ...go to borders and shading - look around ...change outline by accident - click tab to shading - change colour

no right mouse on layers? ..oh ya the vista mac thang...

jamie wrote:

ermm..

table / cell -right click-  properties/ bg colour / black

 

layer...ummmm...select.... go to top menu....format ...go to borders and shading - look around ...change outline by accident - click tab to shading - change colour

no right mouse on layers? ..oh ya the vista mac thang...

If you want to be restricted by software for newbies then have all the restrictions you want, if you're smart you'll type the code yourself.

re: "So no more excuses!"

see above... 

</repeat>


edit:

master COMPONENTS - sure
master PAGE? - all pages unique

jamie wrote:

re: "So no more excuses!"

see above... 

</repeat>


edit:

master COMPONENTS - sure
master PAGE? - all pages unique

You know the great thing? ASP.NET lets you do both.

MasterPages are meant for the situation where every page has the same basic look and feel. Like Channel9, for instance. Now I believe C9 is still using ASP.NET 1.1 so it can't be using masterpages, but look for example at my C9 clone at http://www.ookii.org/c9. That's done using masterpages (and also not a single table). The main section of http://www.ookii.org available from the home page, also done with master pages.

Also, master pages lock your HTML. And in a real CSS scenario, your HTML isn't your design, just your content. CSS is your design. You can use ASP.NET themes, or (like me) change the stylesheet programmatically on a masterpage, and suddenly the same HTML has a different design. Have you ever seen CSS Zen Garden (visit it using Firefox or IE7, not IE6)? That's one single HTML page that's always the same, but a thousand different designs done 100% using CSS.

But you don't have to use master pages (they don't make sense in every situation). You prefer to use "master components"? Sure, no problem! ASP.NET calls them "User Controls", it has had them since the first version, even before master pages.

EDIT: Jamie, did you read this article? It was recently mentioned in a post here on C9. Anyway, I think you're either category 4 or 6.

Sven Groot wrote:

visit it using Firefox or IE7, not IE6

Sorry to nit-pick, Zen Garden designs only qualify if they render perfectly with all current major browsers, ie, Firefox, IE6, Opera, Safari, etc.

The only browser I wouldn't view it with is IE7 Beta 2.

Rowan wrote:

 The only browser I wouldn't view it with is IE7 Beta 2.

Why not? It works fine here using IE7 on Vista 5381.

Sven Groot wrote:

Rowan wrote: The only browser I wouldn't view it with is IE7 Beta 2.

Why not? It works fine here using IE7 on Vista 5381.

Because none of the existing designs were tested with IE7, there may or may not be unexpected results. I was just saying.

Well, clearly some people are going to disagree with any given perspective.  Here's mine, and as usual, it wanders in and out of context.

Ever tried to line up a specific part of two or more images of different dimensions?  You can literally sit there for hours messing with VALIGNs, CellPadding, CellSpacing, borders, and so forth... When all you had to do was move it down two pixels: style="top:2px; position:relative;". Same attributes no matter the object.

In CSS, objects work in the same hierarchial fashion as HTML. I've found that when you're also using XML for whatever reason, the three can be made to work together easier.  Somewhat.

Over the course of the past year, I've learned C#, ASP.NET 2.0, CSS, XML, Visual Studio, and probably half a dozen other new technologies.   Previously, I had been coding manually my HTML 2.0 in NotePad, and never got more high-tech than a frameset, nested IFrames, or (very occasionally) a basic imagemap.

Now, on the other hand, I'm literally writing server-side programs that spit out a website (Crude translation, but accurate). You'll be able to see it when I get DamnedNice.com back up (after I get ASP.NET 2.0 hosting enabled). 

Within one single ASPX file, I can use C# to create virtually any content I want.  Combined with CSS, it's become almost as easy to position objects on the screen as it was in Basic, eons ago ("LOCATE 13,1", I think?). 

Now a year ago, if you told me I could have been doing this for years already, I'd have laughed in your face.   This is pretty amazing stuff.