[Tripredacus]

BenoitRen, on Aug 18 2009, 01:08 PM, said:

Did you say "no real pictures" because IE6 doesn't support SVG rendering?

Yes it only had SVG and DX transforms/trickery. In order to view the site you needed Adobe's SVG plugin v3 for IE.

[Multibooter]

cluberti, on Aug 18 2009, 08:55 PM, said:

It just may not get more money from a lot of businesses... for a good while yet.

It depends on the length of the recession, if it lasts 5 more years I could imagine the possibility of Chapter 11 for MS. This might give the next push to innovate, with companies not wanting to depend on the technology of a hypothetically troubled company. The current recession started with a big surprise, Bear Stearns, and might end with another big surprise, MS. And that might not be bad: with the decline of the near-monopolist IBM in the 80s a new cycle of economic expansion started, which ended with the dot-com bubble.

[Fredledingue]

Benoit Ren

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Another site of mine, SeaMonkey.be, doesn't render properly on IE6 because it doesn't support the CSS min-height property. And that's a very basic design.

Why don't you use tables?

[CoffeeFiend]

Fredledingue, on Aug 22 2009, 06:34 PM, said:

Why don't you use tables?

We'll pretend you didn't even write this (nor "I'm positive that a website will look fine on IE6 even if never tested on this browser."). It's better this way.

Quick and lazy answer for those who would have said something like the above, while being serious. Welcome to 5+ years ago. What's next? Animated GIFs, hardcoded font tags everywhere, sprinkled with blink tags?

Yes, let's bring down web design and development to the absolute lowest common denominator (making it suck for everyone) because a handful of people don't want to ever upgrade, right.

[Tripredacus]

Oh no, the T word! DIVs are your friend! hee hee.

[Fredledingue]

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The problem with using tables:
mixes presentational data in with your content.
...and...
keep the actual content of our pages separated from the way they are presented

This is a M.Y.T.H.!
Because the specificity of the web is that content is tied to the way it's presented and vice-versa, the presentation influences the meaning of the content, especialy for text.
You always need to know how the text looks like and where it is when you write it. And while typing it you always find words or phrases that should have another apearence or be placed somewhere else.
Saying I write the layout and I'll write the content later simply doesn't work.

A sub-myth is to believe that on a website all the pages can look the same and that all the content can be distributed and arranged the same way on every page wihtout intelligent thinking.

There are two ways, IMHO, to display areas of content on a webpage:
Fixed and square with tables and flexible and where you want with absolute positioning.
With absolute positioning, again IMHO, you can make cooler things but you are more likely to mess up than with tables. Not just about old IE but with human errors.
This depends wether you want to make a website fun or serious. Wether you want it to be dressed in a suit or in baggy rapper clothes.

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Instead of nesting tables within tables and filling empty cells with spacer GIFs,

Ok, I don't even know what he wants to talk about here. Of course if you compare state-of-the-art css based websites with trashed out bloated old-school html and piled up tables (probably made with a WYSWYG editors), surely css layout will look cool.
Now let's have a look at trashed out clumsy bloated css and we will see.
And believe me I have seen some specimens!

You can do smart things with tables and old html tags. Better yet: Using the best of css with the best of tables.

Why wanting to do things difficult when there are easy solution already? Why discarding old tags just because they are old?

For example I'v read that the new scholars don't like the <b> tag and prefer the <strong> tag.
This is INSANE!
Also insane is to replace the <b>, <u>, <s> and <i> tags with a css class when they apply on just a few word and no other attribute is applied.

And why dropping the <br> tag? I don't understand.

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Reducing the ratio of code to content

This is the funniest thing I have ever read this month.

If you look at the source of most famous websites, there are ridiculous amount of garbage in the shape of javascript but also useless pictures, redudant menus, things absolutely useless to read, ads, etc compared to realy useful content.
Add to this a flash here and there, some rotating ad feed and the code for your tables are just 0.001% of all the garbage and spam eating into your bandwith and slowing down the download.

In the case of Benoit Ren website: SeaMonkey, I realy don't see the advantage of <div> over <table> especialy for someone who is still supposed to use W95.
I visited it on IE6 and yes it display the content half-properly: The yellow menu streches out of the blue column. Beside that everything is ok.

Finaly, one more point in favor of tables vs. separate style sheets: When you save the webpage as "html only" and all the "tables" are on a separate css file, good luck to read it later!

This post has been edited by Fredledingue: 23 August 2009 - 04:00 PM

[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

It sounds to me like you really don't like CSS for some reason. To be honest, I can't see a use for plain old HTML when CSS can do it smarter, faster (if you have multiple web pages) and just generally have a higher level of consistency across pages. If you keep all your CSS in a separate file, you can easily make changes to one file that will automatically change all of your HTML pages. That can be useful if you have a large amount of HTML files, but want to give them all a consistent style without using some PHP solution or whatever. Not being a web designer, I'm not hugely sure on the specifics, but one thing I do know is that just because IE6 has broken support for it, that doesn't mean it sucks.

And to be honest, I have never seen a modern, well put together, HTML-only page.

This thread went off-topic rather quickly, didn't it?

[CoffeeFiend]

Fredledingue, on Aug 23 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

This is a M.Y.T.H.!

Only because it flew WAY over your head. Tables for layouts change nothing to the context of words.

Either ways, it's quite a stretch to go from someone who admitted to knowing NOTHING about web design (by saying things "I'm positive that a website will look fine on IE6 even if never tested on this browser." which no one who's done any kind of web development would ever claim), to contradicting the vast majority of experts in the field by saying "it's a myth!"

Fredledingue, on Aug 23 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

Saying I write the layout and I'll write the content later simply doesn't work.

Says you. Except, it actually works great for most people.

Fredledingue, on Aug 23 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

A sub-myth is to believe that on a website all the pages can look the same and that all the content can be distributed and arranged the same way on every page wihtout intelligent thinking.

That's a myth? Who claimed you could do anything without thinking?

Fredledingue, on Aug 23 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

With absolute positioning, again IMHO, you can make cooler things but you are more likely to mess up than with tables.

CSS positioning works very reliably across the vast majority of browsers, providing the person who does the job has a clue.

Fredledingue, on Aug 23 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

This depends wether you want to make a website fun or serious. Wether you want it to be dressed in a suit or in baggy rapper clothes.

Except, it's really nothing like that. Misusing tables along with your general distrust towards modern techs like CSS makes sites crappy. It's like hobo style (tables) vs professional.

Fredledingue, on Aug 23 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

Now let's have a look at trashed out clumsy bloated css and we will see.

Wow, you meant some people can misuse techs (just like tables)? Color me surprised. A couple folks didn't use it as intended, therefore it must be universally bad. That was your point?

It just sounds like you're trying to fight progress and advances at large (from OS, to browser, to markup, to design and everything else). You thinking using <strong> over <b> is insane (despite being more semantic -- and deprecated in XHML 2, and not actually bolding text in HTML 5 and as stated "should be used as a last resort"), and not getting why using paragraphs isn't better than a billion <br> tags just goes to prove the point. Or perhaps you know better than all of the W3C members too?

Have you noticed it's been 10 years since there's been any cheese in your part of the maze?

[Fredledingue]

No, I love css. I just found some arguments here and on a website refered here above, a little bit fetchy, if not radicaly extreme.
My point is that the W3C shouldn't discard too quickely old html just because css is cool.
I also never said that css sucked, only that, if you want or if you are not careful you can make it sucks just as well as with html.
The quality of a code doesn't depends on the language, but on the programer. Just look at your intenet cache and you will see tons of bloated css files. Right now I have one weighting 54 Kb. I opened it: amazing! it's from Y!. I wonder how they can manage their website with such thing.
But it's only a portion beside bloated js files, unnamed files or with exotic extentions, flash files and orgies of gifs.

[Fredledingue]

"CoffeFiend" said:

You thinking using <strong> over <b> is insane (despite being more semantic -- and deprecated in XHML 2, and not actually bolding text in HTML 5 and as stated "should be used as a last resort"), and not getting why using paragraphs isn't better than a billion <br> tags just goes to prove the point. Or perhaps you know better than all of the W3C members too?

It seems yes!
Chosing <strong> instead of <b> as a standrad is insane for the very reason that it takes 5 characters to type more, 10 with the closing tag.
Sorry, but I don't like that.

And again I reiterate that "I'm positive that a website will look fine on IE6 even if never tested on this browser." And I'm right as demonstrated by BenoitRen's example above.

I do not distrust or hate css. Just this conversation is a bit overdone.

This post has been edited by Fredledingue: 23 August 2009 - 05:32 PM

[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

Fredledingue, on Aug 24 2009, 12:32 AM, said:

Chosing <strong> instead of <b> as a standrad is insane for the very reason that it takes 5 characters to type more, 10 with the closing tag.
Sorry, but I don't like that.

What you're saying here is quite logical. I'm not overly sure why the W3C would choose a longer tag. Perhaps there is a reason though.
However, your next statement is horribly inaccurate.

Fredledingue, on Aug 24 2009, 12:32 AM, said:

And again I reiterate that "I'm positive that a website will look fine on IE6 even if never tested on this browser." And I'm right as demonstrated by BenoitRen's example above.

This statement goes against the experiences of millions of web developers across the world. I know of people who would go about for hours in order to fix their site to work in IE6, and these hacks would then go and cause another browser to break, although they all worked perfectly before the hacks were implemented. These aren't complex, massive websites I'm talking about. The designs were, by and large, simple. they just wouldn't render right in that one particular browser. Hell, the majority of phpBB themes seem to break IE6 support, complex or otherwise. The rest use hacks.

The majority of sites work in IE6, yes. Why is that? Because most of them were designed with IE6 in mind. They still are, it's one of the most popular browsers in the world. Imagine all that time lost to make it so, having to work around the lack of PNG transparency, the lack of native SVG support which means that sites cannot use one resizeable graphic in the place of lots of jpgs. Transparency is a big deal, because it tends to make sites look far more elegant and easy to customise. Its use is now becoming widespread.

You seem to not notice that the web is moving in a different direction to what you may wish it was. While some people may be happy to use tables, bold tags and all that old stuff, perhaps for backwards compatibility or simplicity, the big sites and people with ambition want to squeeze more out of that web browser. Embedded videos, embedded audio, shadows, transparency, SVG support, a ton of CSS options and so many ways to manipulate that text, interact with that content and guide you through that page. The web is becoming focussed on interactivity. IE6 holds back the web with its broken rendering and lack of features. Then again, IE 5.01 SP4 (as included in Windows 2000 SP4) is still supported, so should we be building websites for that? God no.

I can't stress enough how small sites with home pages and simple navigation, without database functionality or any fancy stuff, are so very outdated. They're going away already. IE6 is fine for that. It's not fine for anything bigger, because IE6 was a 2001 product, and this is 2009.

Please, PLEASE don't tell people that any site works in IE6. They're built to accommodate it.

[Fredledingue]

I understand what you mean and I agree.
However I don't think it's so important to check the layout and eventualy, themes, transparency, shadow and other cool stuffs in IE6 because that won't break the readability or the original functionality of the website.
The text would be there, the hyperlinks, sounds and videos if any would still play.
Ecxept of course for a graphical artwork or some interractive map or any web 2.0 app you could imagine, but in thi case just inform the user of minimum requirements.

I don't think it's necessary anymore. But I understand the angst at such situation web developers have faced for years.
IMO, we should first see a real website that has never been checked on IE6 and build for, say, the last version of FF and see if it's realy impossible to navigate. Flash nothwistanding.

[BenoitRen]

"Fredledingue" said:

Why don't you use tables?

Because the table element's semantic meaning is tabular data. It should not be used for lay-out.

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This is a M.Y.T.H.!
Because the specificity of the web is that content is tied to the way it's presented and vice-versa, the presentation influences the meaning of the content, especialy for text.

This is wrong. HTML is a semantic language.

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flexible and where you want with absolute positioning

Now this is a myth.

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You can do smart things with tables and old html tags.

Which inevitably leads to bloated mark-up.

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For example I'v read that the new scholars don't like the <b> tag and prefer the <strong> tag.
This is INSANE!

The b element has no semantic meaning.

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And why dropping the <br> tag? I don't understand.

The most fanatical drop it. It doesn't have to be dropped, though.

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If you look at the source of most famous websites, there are ridiculous amount of garbage in the shape of javascript but also useless pictures, redudant menus, things absolutely useless to read, ads, etc compared to realy useful content.

This has nothing to do with separation of content and style.

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In the case of Benoit Ren website: SeaMonkey, I realy don't see the advantage of <div> over <table>

It's more flexible, and less mark-up. I can decide tomorrow that I'd want to have the menu be a bar at the top, for example, without changing any HTML.

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Finaly, one more point in favor of tables vs. separate style sheets: When you save the webpage as "html only" and all the "tables" are on a separate css file, good luck to read it later!

It will still be readable.

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Chosing <strong> instead of <b> as a standrad is insane for the very reason that it takes 5 characters to type more, 10 with the closing tag.

There is more to the strong element than just being longer to type.

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And again I reiterate that "I'm positive that a website will look fine on IE6 even if never tested on this browser." And I'm right as demonstrated by BenoitRen's example above.

Except my design is very simple, and while IE6 doesn't outright break the site, it's not a pretty sight.

"Sl@y3D for my n@..." said:

I can't stress enough how small sites with home pages and simple navigation, without database functionality or any fancy stuff, are so very outdated.

Now, now, this isn't necessarily true. Less is more, and content is king.

"Fredledingue" said:

However I don't think it's so important to check the layout and eventualy, themes, transparency, shadow and other cool stuffs in IE6 because that won't break the readability or the original functionality of the website.

I agree, but people are being paid to make a website that looks the same everywhere.

This post has been edited by BenoitRen: 24 August 2009 - 04:53 PM

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

on Digg today:

[Tripredacus]

Where's the sliver of my excuse? I never use Windows Updates! Well, except I'm on XP with IE6!

[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

I don't see MY excuse either; testing sites for compatibility.

[Fredledingue]

"Benoit Ren" said:

Because the table element's semantic meaning is tabular data. It should not be used for lay-out.

And in what the two uses are different? Displaying lists of numbers or names in a table is... still and only, a form of layout.

Like I could say, CSS is for style, it shouldn't be used for layout. LOL.

Allas, the days when the only two tags left to be used legaly in html will be <div> and <span> are closer and closer.

[BenoitRen]

"Fredledingue" said:

And in what the two uses are different? Displaying lists of numbers or names in a table is... still and only, a form of layout.

The two uses are different because tabular data is a form of data association. Each row and column is related in some way.

If you use it for lay-out, there is no such association. Each cell contains either some paragraphs, images, or an unrelated spacer GIF image.

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Allas, the days when the only two tags left to be used legaly in html will be <div> and <span> are closer and closer.

Total nonsense. Especially because they have zero semantic meaning.

[JustinStacey.x]

PC_LOAD_LETTER, on Aug 24 2009, 09:28 PM, said:

on Digg today:

tr00f. One of my computers has IE 6 and that is because it never goes on the Internet!

[JustinStacey.x]

Tripredacus, on Aug 25 2009, 04:28 AM, said:

Where's the sliver of my excuse? I never use Windows Updates! Well, except I'm on XP with IE6!

Neither do I. I install Service Packs, and that is it. although I like XP Sp3 so much I don't know if I will ever upgrade it unless the future SP4 (?) is so promising.