More CSS talk

Over time I'm finding more of the talk about CSS for layout/design that happened recently. Good links and info on these pages or from these pages:

Jeff's Radio Weblog, Feb 13th / Glish: CSS layout techniques / CSS Koolaid for Newbies

And now an observation... (this isn't a flame, it's not even "pushback")

Many people have remarked that they don't understand why Dave Winer "doesn't get it" w.r.t. CSS vs. table layouts. I have noticed instances where Userland poo-poos a technology, method or standard that is otherwise overwhelmingly favoured... which is not easy to implement or otherwise would not perform well in Frontier for one reason or another.

In this (CSS, tableless) situation, Userland has a LOT of HTML hard-coded in scripts... in Manila, Radio and the fundamental "HTML Framework" which dates back to what, 1995? And a lot of that HTML doesn't validate as valid HTML4 or XHTML, as designers will remark. And not surprisingly, there's a lot of HTML Table code in there. If Userland jumped on the CSS bandwagon they'd find themselves crushed under an avalanche of work to make their products compatible with "the movement". Work which... frankly won't do much to improve their bottom line right now. And that's the bottom line.

So don't be surprised, and don't read too much into there not being unanimous support for CSS layout at the moment. AND, let's credit Userland for doing a CSS theme for Manila and commisioning the Radio-Design group on Yahoo! Groups.

Written on February 17, 2002