World: r3wp

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.

The biggest advatnage you'll find in workflow is when the client 
starts making changes.


1000 pages all with <font color=blue> and they now want all <p>s 
to be green -- that's not a search and replace job -- you need to 
check the context of each <font> tag.. It might take hours. Next 
day, they ask for dark yellow.
In css:

p {color:blue} -- you can show them the whole site changed in 1 minute.


Though, of course, you need to think through the styles you need 
first. That's a big bit of the design.

Interesting that Firefox next release is intending to have a by-site 
user CSS feature. So I'' be able to personalise *any* site I view 
regularly in Firefox by simply adding some CSS.


I can see a market for customised style sheets (make MSN look good, 
or mold Google to my corporate colors, or just look funkier than 
the boring original). Afterall, websites are just about the only 
thing on my computer that I can't reskin.


In the future, sites that are easily reskinnable, may have a competitive 
advantage over those that are not. That means using CSS.  (CSS was 
always meant to make this possible. It's the browsers that have been 
slow).

how will they do it? Will link refer to local storage, or?

in FF, there is an option that says always use my 'Fonts or Colors'... 
they probably need to extend it and says use my stylesheet. ..


and that should load your stylesheet instead of the one from the 
site

probably nothing to do with what the site 'designers' have to do.

or rather..site designers do not need to do anything to allow that

about Temple...

the idea is just that, since you will be using classes and ids already, 
why not using that for templates too?

that said, i have to add that my latest version (used in the Detective 
builder portal) is able to match any tag using patterns

so you continue on developing temple further?

for example, the pattern [any attrib "x"] would match any tag with 
the attribute "attrib" with value "x"

[a href "http://www.rebol.com"] would match any link to that url... 
and so on

i use it mainly for [input] tages, when i want to match an input 
tag with a given name, etc.

yes petr, i add things as i need them. i just don't have the time 
to polish it up and design a dialect for it

Nearly the only thing I did not like about Temple (well, except the 
lack of higher level dialect and docs :-), was that it uses two-phase 
process, and once you build web-page from rebol block structure, 
it knows nothing about original template formatting, I mean - html 
source code formatting, so you may end-up with ugly code, but that 
is not relevant to 99% of users :-)

maybe one day...

petr: usually the formattin is preserved, bacause all spaces and 
newlines are preserved

hmm, it is long time ago I looked at Temple sources, but it seemed 
to me, that first phase generates block of blocks ... then you use 
some functions, e.g. find-by-id, etc., which does lookup in rebol 
block structure and then it replaces/adds data to it. Now once you 
generate html content, how does it know about its original formatting? 
You would have to store pointers to certain sections of original 
template to fill-in releavant data, but maybe I just was looking 
wrong into it ...

inside the blocks, there are still strings with spaces and newlines. 
:)

i.e. spaces and newlines are treated as any other text content.