|
Re: Why is CSS such a mess?
"Separating content and presentation" is a worthless buzz phrase, without clarification. Bolded text (presentation) carries meaning (content). Granted that it's nice to be able to bold an entire class of things (section heads, say), one needs to distinguish between presentation that is merely a stylistic or formatting issue and presentation that adds to the meaning of the document.
The problem is that disciplines almost always breed a class of people that I call "high priests." The people issue dictums to their acolytes and expect 100% compliance and obediance; no independent thought, and no exceptions. A "kiss my ring and the hem of my robe, you little effer" kind of thing.
Another problem is with the rendering engines, themselves. Even "compliant" browsers choose to set their own values for certain defaults. Examples would be margins, paragraph spacing, and so forth. The only solution to this is for the designer to "zero out" all the default values and set them all from scratch to the values he or she wishes to use.
After that, one then hacks for "non-compliant" browsers.
All that said, I personally prefer the CSS approach, applied semantically. That isn't to say that there aren't things that make me regularly grit my teeth and mumble imprecations.
I highly recommend A List Apart, linked to earlier in the thread. It's very good, but it isn't God's Word, so keep a couple of your brain cells under your own control.
|