MiKuS

if such a system was coded using un-obtrusive methods then there would be nothing to worry about, there are lots of ways to gracefully degrade a site; for example the XHTML should always be available.

Darkhack

CSS is one of those things that takes practice and there is some weird behavior when you're not careful with mixing elements, but overall it's a fine language and I prefer it over embedded styles because it allows for code reuse and it is simpler to apply properties to multiple elements instead of copying and pasting every single attribute.

Care to explain how? Makes sense to me to offset data which is going to have a different style applied to it than the rest of the page. Separating design from content is an important concept but don't take it so literally that you believe the sole purpose of HTML documents is to organize pure data. They aren't. The whole purpose is so that you can put content in logical blocks or sections so that styles can be more easily edited and applied without retyping all the code. HTML documents are not organizing the data by it's content value, but by the logical sections in which styles are applied.

Isn't that a good thing? HTML documents are read top-bottom, left-right and trying to create a document any other way is stupid because it makes it harder to read and requires nasty CSS.

Ever try using XHTML with IE? It degrades in the sense that the browser will render it, but if you try to send it as an XML document instead of text/html, IE will have a freaking heart attack, cut its wrist, and bleed like a hemophiliac. Even Gecko's support isn't complete yet. I always use HTML Strict for my documents.

MiKuS

Even still, part of the reason we use css is so we can easily position elements around the screen - and then when the style sheets are detached (by a screen reader or text based browser) it displays inline semantic html with no styles at all. All having a javascript framework to render pages would do is add another step into degrading the site:

(X)HTML -> (X)HTML with Style(CSS) (basic styling) -> javascript rendered css (depending on user agent) OR javascript rendered flash

take for example - sifr which renders a custom font in flash, if the user does not allow javascript/flash then it gracefully degrades to a core font.

http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr

These types of kits will be what render pages completely top to bottom, whilst keeping things accessible.