World: r3wp

One question though. Both class and id are used mostly to describe 
layout. I mean - Gabriele's temple uses class and id to identify 
what/how data should be filled in, but it may not be in correspondence 
with design. I should note, that Temple design is how I imagine templating 
system should work. When you work in trio-mode - user (entering data 
into app), programmer and designer (which can't program), most template 
systems are not acceptable, as they break the ability to see the 
design work result, unless loaded into production environment, and 
that is not acceptable in my situation ...

CSS3 is on the way -- but very little supports it.  Firefox has some 
CSS3 goodies supported.

More compatibility info than you might ned here:
http://www.corecss.com/properties/full-chart.php

Not sure I understand the issue with class / id and templates.  Can 
you say more?

Gabriele's Temple uses  class and id elements to mark certain html 
page areas to be filled with data. Then he has functions like find-by-class 
find-by-id etc. That may impose certain logic on how you mark your 
html sections with class and id elemetns - simply data oriented. 
But design (css) may or may not on-pair with it - you simply might 
want to use class and id elements in different way ..

Thanks.....that's a limitation of the approach taken by that design 
then.

Probably best not to use the same classes and ids as are being used 
the the templates for data editing. You'd need a list of the "reserved" 
names -- or ask him to use a special prefix to distinguish them from 
the ones you use.

Hmm, can you mark anything having two classes? :-) Probably not I 
guess ... so that one class would be used by our .css and second 
one for data.

I really don't understand, how ppl can use whatever existing template 
system not working in a Temple way ....

That aproach must be done by programmers, not designers. It imo missess 
fundamental thing - desinger is not a programmer and he/she does 
not need to know anything about it.

need to go now ...

Petr -- there is no design in non-CSS HTML that you can't achieve 
with CSS -- even if you need to use barebones tables occasionally 
to do column things.  The statement "why do all .css based pages 
look the same?" might as well say "why do all web pages look the 
same?".

Also, CSS designs are typically faster -- less code, not so much 
nested table calculation.  Try this book -- http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/

Petr, stil not sure I understand the template issue.
A tag can have more than one class:

<p class="warning large"> would assign the p *both* classes "warning" 
and "large"

Sunanda - thanks a lot, did not know I could use more than one class 
for one particular element ...

Chris - I know what you mean, but css pages really look so "similar" 
:-)

I wonder what is typical workflow of developer using css extensively 
...

E.g. two ppl I know do their work in Photoshop, then they decompose 
it into html ....

If I understood them correctly, Photoshop helps them to cut image 
into html design .... I wonder how they decide what will be covered 
by typical html aproach (e.g. tables etc.) or using some div + css 
aproach, as that requires rather distinctive aproach?

nice, the book is available in Czech language too ...

Chris - have you read anything from Eric Meyer?

another question - if we want to consider IE 5.x and above, Mozilla/FF/NS, 
Opera 6. and above, are we ok with xhtml or should we stick with 
HTML 4.x transitional, or?

I also wonder, why java-script did not worked for html, if it is 
imo better to have general programming language (where you can do 
nearly everything) instead of something like css, where you can only 
refine your design, but have no constructs as loops, conditions, 
etc.

The variant of HTML you select depends in part on the audience/market 
you have. There is no fixed answer to that.

Chris - do you use Adobe ImageReady in conjunction to Photoshop?

hmm, now I read that browsers for PDAs do very little support of 
css, that is a pity ...

One of the advantages of well-structured CSS is that it degrades 
well.....
It  looks great on the platform/browsers it was design for.
It looks very good on older versions.

And the webpages are still usable on sites with even older or non-CSS 
access.

Petr, seriously -- I can't think where this idea of yours comes from. 
 I'd like to know which non-CSS sites are so different?  Unless you 
are thinking Flash sites...

The biggest restriction of CSS is you have to work harder to build 
layouts.  Otherwise CSS gives you *all* the control that depricated 
HTML attributes give you -- *plus more*.  So perhaps there is a dominant 
web style used by those experimenting with CSS (understandable if 
designers are learning from the same source, whether that is Eric 
Meyer, A List Apart, or WPDFD); but to use CSS as the excuse for 
this is a copout...

Petr - this example of wrapping text around an spherical image isn't 
boxy is it?

http://webdesign.about.com/library/layouts/zwraparound.htm

Perhaps this is a better example http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/curvelicious/demo.html

CSS Workflow -- easy: create a concept based on information needs; 
plan how to acheive this with the box model; create a base HTML template 
and build up styles around that, incorporating background images 
as required; then test and revise, test and revise, test and revise, 
etc.  Simplified somewhat.  Basically the same as any legacy HTML 
project, only easier.

It's also similar to the way I create styles for VID projects too. 
 I use Xara X and PPaint far more than Photoshop though -- Photoshop 
isn't imo the best tool for the job.

XHTML, whether transitional or strict, is less ambiguous when it 
comes to creating the structure for the CSS box model.

If you're unsure what the transition from HTML 4 will entail, check 
out the NYPL Style Guide -- http://www.nypl.org/styleguide/

Man, so many points to address :o)

Eric Meyer is a great resource for all technical aspects of CSS. 
 He is, by his own admission, not a designer.

Re. JS -- Netscape 4 used a technology called JS Style Sheets -- 
it was a horrific mess.  IE lets you evaluate JS within CSS -- it 
is a security risk, and of course does not work if JS is turned off. 
 Think of CSS as like an image format -- you don't evaluate PNGs, 
you just display them.

on Gab's Temple. 


pre-defining the 'id' is a way for developers and designer to communicate 
and agree on certain stuffs. That is how the separation of work is 
being done. Developer will code with 'address' in mind in their business 
logic..and designer just design the layout and only need to put in 
id 'address'.

Drat, that is another point I had wanted to make :o)

Chris - the discussion is pointless imo :-) No matter what css is 
or is not, the sites are distinguishable. While it may allow for 
nearly whatever design, it is like i said.  Now the question is, 
if it is because developers are starting to use css and use some 
existing templates, or technology itself allows for easy creation 
of such designs, which all share similar design patterns ...

I did not say I don't like how css look. It looks maybe even better, 
kind of a book design -more typographically correct, more blending 
of images and text, which was not easily possible with tables etc., 
simply different ...

re workflow - interesting - I will order Zeldman's book too .... 
Alistapart seems to be a good resource too. I never build large site, 
just few webpages, generated by script or using DreamWeaver 4 long 
time ago. My mine problem right now is - how to start to think of 
a design. From typographics area I know I should divide page into 
some sections. I did so using tables extensively, now I wonder, if 
I should use css columns, simply using "div" tags ...

I can also see combination of table (to create column/row template) 
and the rest be done using css ...

So - if you would build "typical" webshop, would you go for tableless 
design?

maybe at the 'checkout' part where u list all the items in the cart... 
that could be one of the area where I think 'table' is better suited

try e.g. http://www.dxt.czand choose whatever category on the left 
... products are placed in a grid (table). I wonder if you would 
use table or go without it ...

personally, within the product category, I would not use table. But 
the whole left column (seach field, mailing list subscription, prodcut 
category ) will probably sit within a table

Divs are ultimately more flexible than tables.

Tables have their place -- for the display of tabular data as they 
were intended.
For page layout and markup, DIVs are ultimately less boxy.

They also, usually, produce data flow that is more friendly than 
tables for people using accessibility aids.

So for typical boxy design, as e.g. webshop product listing, you 
would use tables or not?

ID and class -- the "problem" (aka "advantage") of an ID is that 
you can only use it once on a page -- it has to be unique.

That's a good reason *not* to use it for the page design. So leave 
IDs to the template people. Then there's no clash.

For a product list -- a table -- then yes, I'd use a <table>. It's 
what they are for.

If it'sa single column table (just the product name, say) use a list 
-- <ol> or <ul>

That way the page is "semantically" marked up -- that helps accessibility 
aids.