CSS, is it worth it?

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by nickjason, Jul 19, 2009.

  1. #1
    OK, lets see who shots me and who cheers!

    CSS.... potentially offers an almost perfect soloution to design elements in Website design.... it offers practical, efficient and quick methods of altering the design, whilst also offering great diversity and flashy positioning and affects......

    YET IT IS HARDLY SUPPORTED!

    As yet, it appears that the Font/Text, Borders widths etc. are basically the only things are are almost 100% supported.

    Things such as margins/padding, hidding/visible, positioning etc... are so "browser interpreted" that it's laughable!

    So.... my conclussion, after reading through god knows how many SitePoint books on CSS (which I really don't recomend people payying for, you can find the same stuff online at any two sites for free!), and looking through over 14 sites with hints/tips, tutorials and examples,......


    CSS isn't worth designing with!!!!!!!


    Yes, use it for formating text, for general layout of paragraphs and basic body elements.... but for anything even slightly breaking away from the "I'm looking like a magazine" design/layout, then use tables or flash!

    NOTE:- If you are wanting to Design a site that resembles a magazine etc., the CSS is fine, so long as you learn all the little bug fixes, passes, hacks and work arounds for the numerous browser srew ups!

    where as, if you use tables, you tend to get what you layout!

    So, who is for NO CSS, and who is for CSS ?
    Please give valid reasons as to why you answer, as well as presonal prefence
     
    nickjason, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  2. nontemplates

    nontemplates Peon

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    #2
    Wow. Do some more reading.
     
    nontemplates, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  3. kk5st

    kk5st Prominent Member

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    #3
    Sorry, nickjason. You don't know enough to be critiquing css yet.

    cheers,

    gary
     
    kk5st, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  4. gareth_gillman

    gareth_gillman Peon

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    #4
    css borders, margin,padding etc are supported..... its just IE needs some slight hacks to fully use some designs

    i use firefox and ie7 and never had a problem with sites not showing right in either

    what do you recommend if css is useless? table layouts went out years ago, css is the only way to do a decent website now
     
    gareth_gillman, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  5. danb100

    danb100 Peon

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    #5
    How can you not like using CSS, you can do anything and every thing with it!

    Using tables to design a website layout is a step backward they look ugly and are far less fexible compared to using divs. Everything uses css these days even all the bloging platforms and cms systems such as wordpress and joomla. If i needed to use flash i would imbeed it and use inconjunction with a bespoke css file.

    Take a look at the cssmania website to see what you can achieve with css websites, why would you want to ever define a websites structure in a table format these days?
     
    danb100, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  6. drhowarddrfine

    drhowarddrfine Peon

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    #6
    Web Browser Support
    I'll have to double check the date of this thread. Is it 1999 all over again?
     
    drhowarddrfine, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  7. HivelocityDD

    HivelocityDD Peon

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    #7
    I am not sure your idea about css is correct.

    1) Now a days almost all designers are using css only for designing instead of using the styles inside the html tags.

    2) It is the most powerful html supported designing option in performance and loading time

    3) Browser dependency is not an issue with CSS. All browsers are supposed to validated to the w3c standards. But most of the time IE wont do that. May be their business strategy but firefox do
     
    HivelocityDD, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  8. AbsoluteMig

    AbsoluteMig Active Member

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    #8
    Wow, really sound like a wanna be designer...
    Read more about CSS and Im sure you'll change your mind.
     
    AbsoluteMig, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  9. Sapphiro

    Sapphiro Well-Known Member

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    #9
    So you suggest coding websites with tables? That's the old way of doing things. HTML tables are actually meant for only data. Also, with CSS and HTML, you can easily code your presentation styles from the actual contents seperately. (So future modifications is made easier).


    Anyway, that's wrong as well. try out "font: 600 12px arial" on modern browsers and IE6, the bold thickness will look different. PS. you can always use something called CSS reset to make different browsers behave more similarly.
     
    Sapphiro, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  10. pipisdicelana

    pipisdicelana Peon

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    #10
    what book did you reed?
     
    pipisdicelana, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  11. FaceJolt

    FaceJolt Guest

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    #11
    CSS really is the only way to work going forward. It offers much more readable and quickly editable code than tables ever did. The problems, if any, can be avoided by using a bit of knowledge and a few different things here and there.
     
    FaceJolt, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  12. Rodder7

    Rodder7 Active Member

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    #12
    any web developer worth their salt will tell you everything of the future is leaning toward css for good seo and design. i would take another close look.
     
    Rodder7, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  13. bobson

    bobson Peon

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    #13
    bobson, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  14. roshandark

    roshandark Guest

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    #14
    yes css is the best for designing with, i always use css for designing my website and for seo purpose CSS is best
     
    roshandark, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  15. sundaybrew

    sundaybrew Numerati

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    #15
    LMAO - Until they break or bust........

    BTW - CSS 3 is almost here and umm........yea I have to say CSS rules if you know how to use it

    #sundaybrew {

    :):)
    }
     
    sundaybrew, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  16. Wilah

    Wilah Peon

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    #16
    Immmmm..!!


    you are right . CSS is only for styling and it is not suported alot.

    However, we don't know is the concerns that you mentioned will be solve in the future.

    we don't know

    but working with every thing that help me . is the way what I will go with.


    thanks
     
    Wilah, Jul 19, 2009 IP
  17. nyxano

    nyxano Peon

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    #17
    The problem with using Flash is that while it looks great and you can do some amazing animation effects, any data, content, and pretty much anything else can't be accessed by search engines. If you don't rely on search engine traffic, flash is great but if you want most (or all) of your traffic to come from organic search engine results, flash is NOT the way to go because it can't see your content and therefore can't index it.

    I will admit, tables is far easier to use especially when you want things like equal height columns so that background colors or images are of the same height but it can be done in CSS. Also, CSS is a difficult to learn and a huge pain in the ass to master but once you do - it is the most awesome, effective tool any web developer can have!

    I used to design in tables all the time until I started using CSS. I got frustrated all the time with CSS and often though that it wasn't worth it when I could do tables in a quarter of the time. Now? I can create sites much faster using CSS and find tables quite limiting.

    CSS is supported by every browser - if you know what you are doing. Paddings and Margins can become tricky especially comparing IE7/8 to Firefox but all it takes is a couple of minor tweaks and your sites will look identical in both browsers.

    Lastly - CSS helps you rank better in search engines because one of the factors it uses is what's called "text to code ratio". The more code you have compared to your content, the less your site values when it comes to SERPS. CSS allows you to keep your text to code ratio very high because it takes only a fraction of the code to do something in CSS as opposed to Tables.
     
    nyxano, Jul 20, 2009 IP
  18. CasinoSEO

    CasinoSEO Peon

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    #18
    What?!?! Forget HTML 4.01!!!
     
    CasinoSEO, Jul 20, 2009 IP
  19. prajnaseeker

    prajnaseeker Peon

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    #19
    It is true that some features of CSS are "browser interpreted", and that will probably give you headaches from time to time but the advantages of using CSS are well worth it. You can do almost anything with it.

    I've used it in all of the sites I designed and wouldn't be able to get the desired look for the sites without it
     
    prajnaseeker, Jul 20, 2009 IP
  20. claire0917

    claire0917 Peon

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    #20
    Though different browsers interpret css codes differently, there are always workarounds. CSS makes designing and organizing your layouts easy. It's really worth spending some time studying it.
     
    claire0917, Jul 20, 2009 IP