Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong

[PktMma]

I'm having a hard time finding info on CSS Tables.

[UberLifeTroll]

Is he a faggot? I'm gay too btw, so it's ok to ask if he's a fag ;)

[CCalo24]

Sad to see all talk and no code.

[joels341]

Wow........ ok, look. If you really want to know how to make a website correctly, work with a team of web programmers and learn from them. You can't get this experience from a book.

Why make your div tags look like a table just to recreate the web 1.0 functionality with CSS? This is a god awful waste of time and technology.

If you need to resort to CSS tables to program your whole site, you are doing something wrong. A website is not a table!

[jonasxx100]

OMG shot up!

[BirminghamDan]

i thought u were gonna really prove people wrong but your video doesn't live up to its title. so i will give u something that will genuinely live up to such a title:

styles are still semantic data, so they should be still be marked up in XML. and maybe one day, we'll have a tool which can organise the web by the colours used and all kinds of other style-wise factors that some people really want to parse and store in their database.

[t3kn0b0y]

COUNTER STRIKE SOURCE ?

[StaceyTownsendDesign]

So I just bought the book HTML UTOPIA: Designing without tables using CSS... so you are telling me it's worthless...and the hard way of doing things?.... ugh. wish I would have seen this video before I bought it.

[RoscioTube]

Hi,

in the last few years I read many books and articles about CSS and my feeling was ever that "everything I know about CSS is wrong"...

So I wonder what's wrong in all this matter, and why there isn't noone who knows really how it works!!!

I then ask you: are you sure you're the "one and only" who knows it? (I hope so :), and how can I reach a "good" (professional) level of knowledge about CSS.

Thanks, Sergio.

[floopy312]

Im a beginner in CSS and i was wondering if a must read this book as well as

"Build your own web site. The Right Way using HTML and CSS" or just this last one.

I mean, will the last one give me all the information i need to make good CSS styles?

[SitePoint]

Hi floopy312,

This book is for people who already know CSS, so you should definitely also pick up "Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML and CSS" to learn the basics first.

[guitarobsessed85]

@SitePoint Glad to see you mentioning the book I was already thinking about buying. Do you have an affiliation with the author by chance?

[liquidplastic62]

I would personally say to hell with IE6. Anybody using it as their default browser is probably watching b/w telly.

If developers keep holding out till it's gone, we'd be looking at 2012. Sink it for good and let it rot at the bottom of Bill Gate's swimming pool. IE7! Oh no! I forgot.

[CarMoves]

Obviously you don't make your living programming.

[mamoulion]

nice video

[Janissary225]

firstly, i do like the way that cup reflects on that desk, reminds me of my CSS projects :p

secondly, that was actually a good informative preview/review of the book, but you give alot of attention to I.E8, what about other browsers? will firefox, opera and others support the css tables?

and finally your not wrong about CSS in its present state, there are times when it makes you want to rip your hair out just to align something in a certain way.

[SitePoint]

Glad you enjoyed the video!

Yes, Firefox, Opera, and Safari all support CSS tables already. Internet Explorer is just the last to the party (as usual).

[cybershake380]

if you have 3 div all with display: table-cell; how do u apply margin to the mid div just like in float and absolute layouts?

[BlakeAnthonyDesign]

Good Video Kevin :)

[intothetreebob]

Did they just let him talk without any pointers? Feels like I'm listening to my grandma telling me a long story about how it was during the war.

[Nakashii]

I thought perhaps your sensational title would not have a shred of truth.

In reality, your idea of supporting CSS tables early and worrying about non-compliant browsers last makes sense.

It's incredibly fast to design for CSS and using CSS tables might in some circumstances make that even quicker.

When I design sites these days I find myself making a ie-sucks.css file specifically for IE6 anyway.

[rinpoche1]

IE6 will be around for a very long time because many corporations have locked their users into it. This is especially true for companies that have developed internal-facing ActiveX controls.

While users at home may upgrade, when they get to work many will still have IE6.

[Nakashii]

rinpoche1: You're absolutely right. I do a lot of work for businesses and many of them are locked down by their IT department for one reason or another.

I don't think he's proposing leaving IE6 in the dust so much as treating it as a special little retard, however.

[bEx3d]

last year november, ie6 had locked down 33.6% of the market. in november 2008 that had dropped down to 20.2%. the percentage of ie7 users has plateaued to around 26% this year, and should begin a decline in the not so distant future. i wouldn't overstate the importance of a dead browser who is losing users at a faster rate every month.

[ncub8]

Because of its corporate adoption, IE6 will continue to have hundreds of millions of users for the next few years.

Calling IE6 "dead" is ridiculous and wishful thinking. According to the webstats collected on 18,000+ sites by the W3C, IE6 holds 28% market share as of November 2008. Even if your numbers were correct - 20% - that means IE6 has ~292,000,000 users as of Dec 17 2008.

I'd love it if IE6 would just go away, but pretending it's not important is silly.

[bEx3d]

i never said it wasn't important, i said i wouldn't overstate its importance as it is in decline, and the rate at which it is losing users is increasing.

[CarMoves]

So you're willing to drop 20.2% of your customers because they can't navigate your site?

[bEx3d]

You mean 14.5%. 20% was for SIX months ago when I left the comment. Even if the css isn't pixel perfect in ie6, it doesn't stop people from using your site. And anyway, I do optimize for ie6 when I'm paid for it.

[shonkyboy]

And another of my problems for One is the Title "Everything you know about CSS is Wrong" when most of what i know about CSS is FROM Sitepoint books I have bought!(And Mr Meyer of course)

[rollandburn]

an obvious marketing ploy, worked though

[shonkyboy]

Someones cheese has slid of their cracker if they think I would design 3 style sheets to support different browsers. Back to users of ie6 for me that accounts for a huge portion of the market as being an IT enginner as well I see many companies that are still on IE6 and will be for some time.

So If your main stay of business id B2B then its not going to be much use at this point

[hungrysquirrel08]

I am quite surprised as most people who made comments are too. Just because a new IE is on the way does not mean we should abandon reason. What we need to focus on is pressuring browser makers to build and deliver a responsible product so that users enjoy both the entertainment and utility the internet has to offer and designers and coders don't waste brain power solving some sub par dated browser.

I don't see the time savings. Still have to build numerous stylesheets! Bad Sitepoint...bad dog;)

[googleboughtmee]

watched the video, listened to what you had to say, still not convinced. i a year you'll be saying there's yet another new way of making sites, and we should all switch to that instead.

[secoif]

"i a year you'll be saying there's yet another new way of making sites, and we should all switch to that instead."

Um, Exactly, and I hope so. Are we afraid of "learning"?

Some people are fond of "progress" and making things better. I didn't realise anyone was still around advocating the use of tables...Scary. (or maybe just I missed the sarcasm in this post)

[googleboughtmee]

so why bother buying this book then, why not wait until the next big change?

[4allweknow]

What about Firefox?

[y0utub3sucksb4lls]

What about it? It supports the display:table that Kevin was talking about. Its just IE thats in the stone ages.

[jiouoiuuu]

On our main site, half of the IE6 users are not human!

They are robots and spambots announcing themselves as IE6. We no longer spend much effort making the site work with IE.

[JustinAtack]

I like your reasoning, I'm all for less work... however there wasn't one hint of how accessibility is effected e.g. screen readers, now it's true I don't know enough about CSS tables to pass judgement but this is seems to be a big point missed?

[DiPhoenix]

CSS tables still use divs (although the structure will be a bit different to the whole 'float' thing), so I don't think accessibility would much different to the current div + float practices.

[johnwey]

Your kidding! Everyone can read tables, no matter the browser. On the other hand you prefer I use 2 style sheets to cater for 3 IEs! And no mention of all the other browsers!

Have you got rocks in your head? Would you exclude 5% of your potential customers from your store? Search engines aren't confused by tables. Thats bullshit, just ask Matt Cutts. Your just selling ur product, who do you think ur fooling? Ur type of thinking is why ur economy is such a shitfight. When will u guys ever learn?

[y0utub3sucksb4lls]

download jaws or window eyes and see how the text reads in your table layout.

[zenlips]

Eh, just like CSS for layouts is a good start, so is this book. As soon as you said "There's a LITTLE bit in there about browsers that don't support it... Really, you're entire book should be about that. Looking forward to the next one, perhaps it will be more helpful.

[mmahgoub]

i feel like your book title is insulting me :(

[GulfSpr1te]

Giving a slick experience is so not important as compared to accessibility. CSS is not a pain, it is easy, I can build a site (full site) in half the time the tables based designer can. Question: will the new browsers read nested tables the same way the old ones do? Because it isn't just removing layout from content that caused many designers to move away from tables. And shame on you for propagating that building for IE8 only is even remotely a possibility with the current market share if 6/7!

[sik4toyz]

Mr. Yank, you said it; IE 6 and 7 still don't support CSS tables--there fore we have workarounds for all browsers, which in fact, does make more work, not to mention more testing. I know you like to be ahead of the curve, but its simply not practical to implement. Not yet.

*If you have stats on when that minority will be on the older browsers, then out with it!

[JoomlArt]

Thank you for the great edition. Our Club's Joomla templates have problems with IE8 and the book will help us blowing them away.

[milesbwa]

Great work on the video, Kevin. Look forward to reading the book!