[UPHPU] More CSS frustration

[John David Anderson]

On Jan 17, 2007, at 12:02 PM, Joshua Simpson wrote:

>
>
> On 1/17/07, John David Anderson <uphpu at johndavidanderson.net> wrote:
>
> The idea with CSS is to keep your markup semantic, and move the
> presentation layer off the the HTML. If you're using tables to make
> things pretty, you might as well <em> to make things italic, and
> <strong> to bold things. Part of the reason CSS is taking hold is
> because it represents a philosophy of separating content, markup, and
> presentation.
>
>
> I fail to see how a smart combination of CSS and table layout  
> cannot meet these goals to a respectable degree.

If you're using tables to format the presentation of information that  
isn't... a table, then your markup is no longer semantic–and that's  
one of my main goals when building the front end.

If you're using table-layout, what's wrong with emphasis-bolding,  
blockquote-indentation, or using radio buttons for decorations? You  
can use tags to achieve a certain effect, but you lose meaning in the  
content when you mark it up in a way contrary to the purpose of the  
markup language. Markup is about meaning, and using tables to hold  
sidebars and entire sites makes the markup meaningless.

I think that the reason CSS comes across as fanboism is because its a  
design philosophy as well as a design implementation. Sure, its nice  
to have centrally designed styles that cascade, but the whole idea  
stems from keeping your markup semantic and separate from your  
presentational styles.

-- John