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You don't come from print design by any chance? You've not been doing that whole web design thing for very long, by any chance? Those of us who have been aroun

by cygx 7y ago

You don't come from print design by any chance? You've not been doing that whole web design thing for very long, by any chance? Those of us who have been around for a while do remember the inadequate layouting capabilities of CSS of bygone eras. While I was on the semantic markup side of the debate at the time, it's not as if the pragmatists that just went with the table for convenience's sake did so for no reason at all...

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
I started web design for lynx browser, back when using pine for email was hot, then moved on to Mosaic and NN. There's a clear body of web design/dev people that think it's just a visual display medium, and a lot of those seem to come from print design. The web for me has always been primarily a medium for information transfer, visual design is nice but not at the expense of semantic markup; table markup for visual layout is entirely unnecessary (and was terrible for accessibility). People went with table layout because marketing people demanded pixel matched presentation and/or they didn't care to make sure their content was machine readable. The same views lead to IE only and give us websites that don't bother with semantic blocks now, or that don't work without JavaScript when that js is just being used for presentational flair.
- cygx 7y ago
  My mistake, then. Point is, you didn't need to start off in print design to end up with certain attitudes under discussion. Customers demanded it, and you can only do so much trying to convince them otherwise. For another, wishing for a certain amount of control over the layout seems like an entirely reasonable demand to me (eg you should not need to jump through hoops just to place something in the center of the viewport). Lastly, if we're being honest, how much has semantic markup improved the web experience in practice, and how much did layout tables hurt us? When I used to do web design, I was a good citizen, avoiding layout table and arguing for semantic markup. But nowadays, I'm far more forgiving, though I still think there's some value in it insofar as proper markup can improve the screen reader experience.

by cygx 7y ago

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

I started web design for lynx browser, back when using pine for email was hot, then moved on to Mosaic and NN. There's a clear body of web design/dev people that think it's just a visual display medium, and a lot of those seem to come from print design. The web for me has always been primarily a medium for information transfer, visual design is nice but not at the expense of semantic markup; table markup for visual layout is entirely unnecessary (and was terrible for accessibility). People went with table layout because marketing people demanded pixel matched presentation and/or they didn't care to make sure their content was machine readable. The same views lead to IE only and give us websites that don't bother with semantic blocks now, or that don't work without JavaScript when that js is just being used for presentational flair.

cygx 7y ago
My mistake, then. Point is, you didn't need to start off in print design to end up with certain attitudes under discussion. Customers demanded it, and you can only do so much trying to convince them otherwise. For another, wishing for a certain amount of control over the layout seems like an entirely reasonable demand to me (eg you should not need to jump through hoops just to place something in the center of the viewport). Lastly, if we're being honest, how much has semantic markup improved the web experience in practice, and how much did layout tables hurt us? When I used to do web design, I was a good citizen, avoiding layout table and arguing for semantic markup. But nowadays, I'm far more forgiving, though I still think there's some value in it insofar as proper markup can improve the screen reader experience.