Very bad english I have, and can’t fully understand, but it really doesn’t matter. I am here to state a question.

I need to show a list of products and price. I put a thumb image and the price of a product into a ‘div’. Each page show 6 products by now. To make the ‘div’ ‘wrap’ by itself, I don’t know what to do without float:left. Thats why, it really make sense to me if we can have float:center.

Please don’t say I can define a table and put 3 products a row. I just hate static.

I don’t like CSS too, but, we have no choice. If you like, please go to yahoo.com and view their source.

Any alternative way to achieve the goal is nice. Although, making table to make things center is very horrible, I still do.

Maybe I am a young programmer, I love javascript more than XLS, flash or something. Just dislike browsers are able to limit it’s power.

Also, many intranet projects have no real benefit for tableless design.

I’m sure I could come up with more examples, but you implied wanting to know just one. :)

Yes, there are many places where the cost of hacking together a fragile CSS solution is just not worth the effort vs “giving up and using tables” (Hat tip to: http://www.giveupandusetables.com)

“CSS – in many cases, the cost of doing the ‘correct’ implementation far outweigh the benefits”

@Trevor
Ideals are nice. However, I would have a very hard time advocating anyone spend a day getting a CSS hack to work correctly rather than and spend half an hour on a table layout. And this is the real problem with CSS – in many cases, the cost of doing the ‘correct’ implementation far outweigh the benefits, not to mention actually proving *more* complex and *less* intuitive or maintainable. It starts to feel futile.

[table style="width:100%"]
[tr align="center"]

[table]
[tr]
[td] you img or text [/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

[/tr]
[/table]

The human race really is in trouble…

I’m not the more proficient person when it comes to CSS but I can get by fairly well although when I’m having to center elements I tend to find that it takes me ages to get the CSS right for these elements.

I’m 100% behind your comments, it perfectly articulates my own spite towards CSS and the pedantic authors behind it. If there was a truly innovative and progressive body behind these standards, I’m convinced we’d be lightyears beyond where we are now. Just look at what you can do with various proprietary browser plugins (Flash Player, Silverlight, Java) using declarative markup and style definitions!

Hopefully something like the ESS you propose will be brought forth in a serious way, embraced by the major browsers, and we can thank the W3C for what their time (and wasting mine) and bid them goodbye.

What a legend! What a rant!

Been working with CSS for years, though never fully appreciated how stupid or “brain dead” it is on some issues.

Totally agree that it shouldnt be such a pain in the arse to achieve some of the most basic layouts like the “holy grail” 3 col layout, float center, and the one that pisses me off the most – vertical align.

I love CSS and wouldnt ever go back to inline formatting, but I agree with Mike that whoever agreed on its spec, left their brain at home that day.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with optimizing your sites for standards compliant browsers, and just making sure that it still looks ok in the poorer browsers. I think that is always the right way to go. The hard part is convincing clients.

1. % and ems are relative units of measurement
2. You should take a look at examples of elastic designs. As the user increases the font size, the horizontal and vertical size will scale as well. Basically, it is what you see in Firefox 3 when you do a page zoom.

2) If a user increases a font size, the amount of horizontal space for that line will, I presume, increase. If I have specified a size based on the smaller font, it will presumably not be large enough to hold the larger font still on a single line (and will begin to wrap some lines). I would prefer that an individual line of a poem NOT wrap.

What I have now is perfect . . . except that I cann0t specify that I want it in the middle of the page. The lack of float center seems to me a gross omission of a function with obvious utility.

1. That’s fine, you can set a width in % or ems.
2. As long as you stick to % or ems for a font size, that will give all users the ability to increase or decrease their font size.

1) I like an “elastic” page, one which adjusts as the screen narrows rather than suddenly requiring scrolling to go from side to side.

2) For the poem, a line should generally fill one line, as long as the page size is wide enough. But setting a width presumes a specific font size, which may or may not be what the user chooses. Thus, unless I am missing something, specifying a width means that I am imposing a font size choice.

I support your position.

In general, you guys are too nice and forget something essential.

Time is the matter of life. And all the time wasted on css layout trash could be well spent in the gym or somewhere else better.

This self-important w3c body has little consideration regarding what matters most. Time, money and everything in between: friends, precious children, spouses and many other activities that make life worth living. The amount of life wasted to get css layout work is mind boggling. The money wasted by countless designers could save Africa’s starving children or reduce the carbon footprint to Gore’s delight. Give the css spec to a single talented, hands-on guy and the results will be visible within days. Not so with a body full of luminaries tickled by self importance that they are called to save the world.

As a server side guy, to be expected to hire a designer in order to align some elements in a page is absolutely shameful.

I could care less if float:center violates some precious notion of correctness. To me a thing floats even if stationary – it’s just everywhere to see. Don’t like the word ‘float’? Call it ‘kitchen-sink’ but make my element stay put on center. Huh!

Start with css and end with friendly TABLES if needs be. Enjoy life. Defy committees and ignore purists. Life is short.

But the context in which I was trying to get it to work was in the context of theming a WordPress plugin I was coding and it didn’t lend itself to using a table without making the plugin code more fragile to requirements changes. Also, the requirement to use tables adds a lot markup that ideally would not be required for something that is such a common use-case. The whole “inline elements shouldn’t have widths” is a really shortsighted limitation and results in lots of frustration for people whose tasks don’t include doing CSS all day every day and hence don’t remember which attributes don’t apply to what elements.

Actually, I figured out how to line up with I needed and it was to give labels both “float:left;”, “width:100px;” and “display:-moz-inline-block;display:inline-block.” Unfortunately that solution is both obscure (i.e. very hard to find as a solution simply by googling) and the float has side effects that can be unwanted.

Once again: Sheesh.

If somebody starts giving you crap about semantics or whatever, a smug way of shutting them up is to have the markup as such:

<thead>
<tr>
<th>Field description
<th>Field input
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><label/>
<td><input/>

A great resource for everyday generic complaints like this is Eric Meyer’s CSS discussion list [http://www.css-discuss.org/] — it’s full of experts who are generally more than helpful for little tips like this.

Mind you if your project is full of such things and is really doing your head in on a regular basis, you might have to consider hiring a front-end guy to come in and take care of the whole lot?

The reality is both have their places and having both is much better than having only one.

@Barney
Regarding Javascript being difficult, yes it is, but it is a very different kind of difficult compared to CSS. Javascript takes mastery but as you master it you can divide and conquer; CSS does not allow that. I could right another epic to explain but I won’t, I’ll just leave you with the term “closures” (Google it); Javascript has them and CSS has nothing like them. Closures are just a great example of why Javascript can scale in complexity but CSS cannot.

It’s interesting in that, whereas CSS-excellency is a pre-requisite in front-end development job (again, I don’t understand the masters of Pearl and C++ railing against the exclusivity of CSS — don’t they get paid through the nose for their exclusive know-how?), more and more I see ‘knowledge of JS frameworks ie jQuery+Scriptaculous || mootools etc’ being a prime consideration for the ability to fulfil a current front-end web dev role.

JavaScript is widely hailed as a brilliant language (if incredibly loosely typed & hugely ambiguous regarding its principal application — the DOM), yet it is something that is so difficult to use in what the common man sees as a practical use-case that expertise is gauged on the basis of being able to understand a particular re-writing of it.

Is this bad or good for the industry? Is this bad or good as an indicator of how intrinsically worthy or succesful the language is? …And does it bear any indication as to how people might want to deal with CSS?

But, I think that CSS is great in theory, but has some limitations in its implementation. Think about how much better the web is because of it. Not to mention the increased usability.

And hey, I used to be one of those high school kids!

I mean, once upon a time, all was written in notepad or something similar and people were amazed at the coders skill level.

Then, here comes Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG programs and all of a sudden, high school students are putting out web pages that look better than those hand written pages.

Oh no, said the programmers, what will we do now that everyone can do what we do very simply? I know, let’s develop a system no one will understand, except for us advanced coders…that way we can stay ahead of the regular people and keep our jobs. So what if the new system is not perfected and wastes a lot of time trying to get it to work in all browsers..the regular folks will ‘never’ get it to work, and besides, we can convince everyone this is the wave of the future and ‘the’ only way to make good websites. Our jobs will be secure!!!

Tried to use the [pre] tag but it didn’t work.

“How come it worked so easily and consistently with tables and the command in straight HTML if it has technical shortcomings?”

And tried to put a [center] tag in using [pre], but it didn’t work either.

I don’t understand what you mean by” disdain for web-based language success”. In the web world what I disdain is unnecessary complexity in most forms, arcane, inconsistent and non-intuitive languages, bad communication (especially that which is full of assumptions) about those languages, and implementation that does not work as advertised. And I utterly detest that HTML and javascript are so tied to each other yet don’t work the same. It is abjectly stupid that you can put perfectly formatted HTML into a js variable and it will break a function. There is no rational reason for having to escape characters and remove all returns. Javascript should be able to ignore everything from the beginning to the end of a string just as HTML does with the command which I just used here to show pre.

That disdain is especially strong when considering that it doesn’t need to be this way and simplicity, versatility, ease, and power can go hand in hand. Overall, I would say that many of the basic and common tasks (that are not dependent on processing power or storage), especially relating to the everyday interface have become more difficult and take longer than they did a decade ago.

As for my last paragraph that intrigued you: “The original Macintosh was very easy to use from the first moment you sat down with it in most ways even including some programming. I work in an internal language in a database that, while far from perfect, is easy to understand and is still robust. Even the non-WYSIWYG WordStar on CP/M had very powerful keyboard commands that were very simple to learn in a few minutes if someone showed the user how intuitive the diamond pattern was.”

The original Mac brought most of the standards that have lasted and most of it was obvious. To go to something you use the “Go” menu, etc. I highly recommend studying Apple’s old HI (human interface – see I didn’t assume that everyone reading this knows what HI means) guidelines from the 80s. They spent massive amounts of time intimately studying how humans ACTUALLY work and the ADAPTED THE COMPUTER TO FIT THE PEOPLE not the other way around as we tend to do nowadays. Apple had a pretty good macro recorder from the very beginning and later on had one of the best ergonomic keyboards. Unfortunately, they have abandoned many of their great features and now have crappy keyboards.

The database I work in is Panorama. The Mac version is way ahead of the Windows version and there isn’t a Linux version, so you really have to see it on Mac to appreciate it. ( http:provue.com ) They make a generally great product some weak points in the display area such as not being able to display RTF or XML. And, their marketing is non-existent.

With WordStar you could do almost any selection from the home keys with the left hand. And, as you moved further from the center of the key pattern the commands got bigger. I don’t recall accurately but it was something like, control-d selected character-left, control-s was word left and control-A was line left. It worked similarly for moving right, up, and down. If someone SIMPLY presented it you to create a PICTURE and UNDERSTANDING of the OVERALL CONCEPT, you never needed to consult the manual as it made such obvious sense due to the ANALOGOUS ASPECT of the commands and results.

BTW – What started all of this was the whole float:center issue and you arguing about certain technical issues. How come it worked so easily and consistently with tables and the command in straight HTML if it has technical shortcomings?

You mischaracterize. I do not at all have any “disdain for web-based language success.” I in fact applaud the success of technologies on the web and have huge respect for the architecture of technologies such as URIs, HTTP, and HTML (which, btw, are the three core technologies of the web.)

Where my disdain lies is in poorly designed and very poorly considered specifications that were adopted en masse simply because they were sponsored by the w3c, such as CSS. Sure there are many “great” things you can do with it, but it causes as many problems as it solves, if not more so.

What I’d prefer to see is success of *well-designed* web-based languages.

“So I guess my message is thus: You pity those without 2 decades in programming, but we’re legion and we’re OK!”

Clarification for me: I pity those who are twice your age *and* don’t have 2 decades in programming. Further, I pity that the world has to waste so much time because the designers of CSS didn’t ensure that the many things people want to do with CSS wouldn’t be so difficult (positioning, equal length columns, etc. etc.)

As for “Javascript and CSS have fared based…” note that I don’t argue against JavaScript, other than a personal distaste for semicolons and braces I think JavaScript is brilliant. OTOH simply because something (CSS) has been adopted doesn’t mean it can’t massively improve. CSS has been adopted because the browser vendors agreed to follow w3C standards and CSS is a w3c standard. So it really didn’t thrive in a “open market”; it had a monopoly. Easy to thrive in a monopoly. (That’s not to say I’m arguing against standards — no I strongly advocate for standards — I’m just arguing against bad standards.)

As for that last part, you got way esoteric and hence over my head.

I had this problem with Mike, he was annoyed at my not answering questions too — but I can’t find them! Which questions are these (sorry there’s so much copy on this comment thread!)?

“Two points in response as you missed the point. First, with Ruby, Python, etc, I AM a layman and have tried to make a decision on whether they are of use to me. The intros to all of them were so bad that I didn’t bother. The intros to javascript and PHP also sucked, but I had to persevere as I need them. Turns out both were okay and I now write hyper-simple and elegant code that I can explain to novices who catch on immediately.

Second, if someone like me (and my VERY experienced friends) with over two decades experience as a programmer of commercial software, consultant, teacher, web designer, sysop, web master, etc cannot get a decent perspective of a new programming environment in a half hour how can the less experienced do so?”

This intrigues me. Let me chuck in my disclaimer right now: I don’t have 20 years of experience in programming. I’ve barely got that many years’ experience of life. So you might want to start treating my whole stance with a pinch of salt because I don’t have the necessary overview to take the new environment of web-popularised tech within the larger context of history.

The languages I know are exclusively those you mentioned as being a layman in (except Ruby, I’ve only just had a look at it). As far as OOP is concerned, I’m no great shakes — I’ve learnt what I’ve learnt as a means towards self-sufficient web design and to be perfectly honest the times I tried to start learning C# and VB left me bored and aching. I think you’re in a similar position to Mike, he speeks of the same experience and has a similar disdain for web-based language success.

So I guess my message is thus: You pity those without 2 decades in programming, but we’re legion and we’re OK!

—

To be honest, despite the unplummable iamgination and energy reserves of the independent open-source community, I’ve not seen a CSS alternative that works better yet. I’m not talking about something W3-approved, that has been corporately-endorsed, or any such thing… But surely if things were so bad someone somehwere would’ve built, just as proof of concept, their own markup styling engine?

—

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t believe simpler things exist, but the whole argument as far as I see it is one about socio-economics: Javascript and CSS have fared based on competing implementations by organisations with critical financial intent in the most public environment application ever (teh interwebs). Add to this the mix of ratification bodies struggling for impartiality as effective judges in the domain of rival interpretations by products with commercial legacies and colossal user-bases, idealism for an exponentially expanding future of the environment, and the need for backward-compatibility for the incredibly valuable internet that exists.

For those of us who grew up with this in mind, we make do with learning and hacking because we have to. You can’t fight the cybercom — our youth and relative poverty might not be such crippling disadvantages!

“All in all cenocre, I think you have to resign yourself to the fact that even the DOM and HT page layout are very complicated things.”

No. They are actually quite simple and the problems are both in the explanation and implementation where they do not work as intended due to browser quirks. I regularly teach novices and they are surprised at the simplicity IF PRESENTED to them in a logical manner that shows the BIG PICTURE. They are then appalled when show how Internet Exploder breaks things.

“You constantly refer to ‘the layman’ but as you’ve just said — and much as I suspected — you’re a professional web designer.”

Two points in response as you missed the point. First, with Ruby, Python, etc, I AM a layman and have tried to make a decision on whether they are of use to me. The intros to all of them were so bad that I didn’t bother. The intros to javascript and PHP also sucked, but I had to persevere as I need them. Turns out both were okay and I now write hyper-simple and elegant code that I can explain to novices who catch on immediately.

Second, if someone like me (and my VERY experienced friends) with over two decades experience as a programmer of commercial software, consultant, teacher, web designer, sysop, web master, etc cannot get a decent perspective of a new programming environment in a half hour how can the less experienced do so?

“Surely you must accept to some extent that the reason you’re making a living is because you’re undertaking skilled work that requires knowledge and expertise that other people don’t have?”

Partly agree, but what the skill that I get paid for is the ability to make a simple and functional product that users can understand and use immediately. It is my understanding of the user the most important – WAY more important than the programming. Usability from understanding and essence are what I get paid a premium for, not the ability to make a form accept info.

Basically creation on a computer can be done so that it is open to anyone. It can be like music and photography where anyone can create nice sounds and images. I like it that anyone can sing and take pictures and it is no threat to my career. What I get paid for there is to create something with essence that moves people.

So, while anyone can use a word processor, they are rarely a great writer. It can be the same with web design. Placing boxes, text and colors on a web page, SHOULD BE BRAIN-DEAD SIMPLE and should not even be a skill. The basic pay should be for your labor there. The premium pay should be for the artistry and ability to create functional simplicity. Most unfortunately, understanding humans and how they function is the rare skill. Typical computer design aptly shows how that skill is so lacking.

“I’m still happy to charge $400 a day! — but still, have some respect for your skills. …

I charge WAY, WAY more.

“…using this abstract language that makes no sense to any of my friends to tell a machine how to make a document appear on screen…”, but that’s the nature of the beast. Coding has always been weird and difficult.”

And that is where the BS comes in. Coding need not be “weird and difficult” at all at most levels, ESPECIALLY at the level of making a web page. Producing a web page should be no harder than using a word processor. It could and should be so easy that when you tell a 100 x 200 pixel box to sit at the bottom of all other elements on a page that it will simply do it. It is easy in a DTP program, a word processor, the database I work in, and with tables. There is no reason whatsoever that it should be difficult in CSS.

Look at SketchUp and Cheetah 3D and see how easy working in 3D can be (although they still have a ways to go. Then check out Blender which has been created by open source geeks. I can think of nothing less intuitive. Compare administering WebSTAR from a decade ago to Apache today. The very same action in Apache is often a hundred times harder. There is zero reason for this.

CSS could also be very simple work as advertised.

“Computers aren’t intuitive, and achieving professional results requires professional dedication to the craft.”

Bull. Their manifestation is often not so, but that need not be the case. Computers are not non-intuitive, the creators are. The problem is that a large portion of the people creating them and ESPECIALLY the languages lack intuition. They tend to not understand how people work and the fantastic HI studies done by Apple have been forgotten about even by Apple.

The original Macintosh was very easy to use from the first moment you sat down with it in most ways even including some programming. I work in an internal language in a database that, while far from perfect, is easy to understand and is still robust. Even the non-WYSIWYG WordStar on CP/M had very powerful keyboard commands that were very simple to learn in a few minutes if someone showed the user how intuitive the diamond pattern was.

I should have looked at your website before writing my last comments. But now I know that I was correct. You are 23 and have 2 (max 3) years experience programming. You’ve only ever programmed in Javascript and PHP and never Python, Perl, Ruby, C#, C++, C, Visual Basic, VBScript, Java, SQL, AWK, Tcl, dBase, Clipper, FoxPro, XSLT, or 8086 assembler right? (I’ve programmed in all those.) And as expected, you have absolutely no computer science background from university, only Typography, Art, and French. Sheesh.

You’ve been drinking the koolaid, and if one of the luminary standardistas says it is true you blindly believe it to be so. Your CV statement sounds like it was pulled from an Eric Meyer book!

“I hand-code XHTML, HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP with an absolute priority on crossplatform
compatibility, graceful degradability, accessibility and maintainable code with
separate content, style, and interactive elements.”

(BTW, Eric Meyer is good and I respect him, but blindly believing anyone is crazy. Our industry is filled with lemmings who don’t actually consider if recommendations make sense, which is why I have to be a contrarian.)

I’m sure you are a great designer, as great as a 23 can be, but please stop telling me that you have more of the knowledge and experience required to evaluate programming language design and the problems associated with it. Come back in at least ten years and after you’ve led some major projects when you’ve gained some experience, then we can talk.

(Note: I rarely ever call someone out like this online but your last post was just too over the top for me to let it go. Again, look in a mirror and you’ll see the one lacking credibility.)

You didn’t anger me. The situation angers me and has long before you came out of the woodwork on this post. You’ve actually given me a foil against which to vent.

“I’m afraid to say I think you’re in a tiny minority regarding your frankly bizarre opinions…”

Now THAT angers me. By calling my opinions “in the minority” and “bizarre” you are attempting to marginalize them which is a classic dishonest debate technique like calling a political opponent an “extremist.” If you can’t debate the merits of the argument then you are not worthy of debate so let’s stick to the discussion points and don’t try to win by painting my arguments as not being worthy of consideration.

“on the difficulty of things and don’t really understand how CSS or programming in general work — and CSS is an incredibly basic form of programming.”

Are you trying to say that I don’t understand programming? This is your further attacking me with language rather than debating me on the merits.

The problem is I understand programming far too well, and I understand that CSS is a really poor design. Further, CSS isn’t even really programming, it’s a declarative language. CSS’ problems include inability to control scoping hence no way to reduce combinatorial complexity, many edge case it doesn’t handle, and an ideology that had it be too simple for its own good (i.e. CSS doesn’t allow you to define relationships between element types such as I illustrated with “ESS tables” above.)

“I develop for a living, I learnt this stuff from scratch and I’ve helped many a person learn it.”

From scratch? Maybe that’s the problem. You’ve not actually studied computer science from a university, right? Maybe that’s why you don’t know what you don’t know.

Would you tell a doctor who has had 10 years of medical school that you know better why you are sick? Why do you assume that self-taught programming gives you enough background to fully understand programming?

I’ve got 20+ years of programming experience in all different languages and I know that in my twenties I was far surer of what was right and what was wrong then than I am now. Now in my 40’s I’ve had enough experience to learn how many of those things I thought were so smart actually turned out to have been not such a good idea after all.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but my guess is you’ve got at most 1-3 year programming experience, and you are fully self-taught?

“You’d be amazed at the volume of previously non-technical people who have been empowered (to professional levels) by CSS.”

How do you know what would amaze me? You make a lot of presumptive assumptions. Yes many people have been empowered, but not nearly as many as could have been had it been better designed and thus better implemented.

“It is an incredibly intuitive language…”

Well, that’s the opposite of my experience with literally hundreds of people I’ve interacted with. See the group I organize that has almost 800 members who are interested in web but are mostly not full time developers: http://web.meetup.com/32/

OTOH w/o benefit of usability testing to prove one way or another we’ll not be able to prove that it is or is not intuitive, it will just be our opinions.

“and its popularity and accessibility are testament to that.”

Hardly. Its popularity is due to the fact that the w3c designed and standardized it and because of that the major browsers implemented it. It has NOTHING to do with the quality of its design. Had there been 2 other competing specs that users could choose to implement AND it had emerged on top then I’d agree but that hasn’t been the case. It’s “popular” because it is the only option.

“To be honest your notions on ‘debugging’ CSS instances that don’t achieve what the user meant them to… Is a kind of nail in the credibility coffin. You speak as if the computer is going to be the designer and the developer for you, and anticipate your complaints when it takes your vague instructions as given. Being so demanding of AI levels of intuition from what you might be trying to suggest from a machine… Is frankly just banal petulence.”

HUH?!? What, are you thinking by attacking my credibility that you can avoid the discussion points and instead wound me so I run away? You clearly don’t get it, do you? You’ve (my guess is) empowered yourself to make a living using HTML & CSS and now you take any criticism of it as a personal affront. Typical immature self-taught.

What I described where the computer recognizes obvious errors and generates an error message is a best practice for building a robust system not “banal petulance”, whatever that is. Generating error messages is exactly what compilers have been doing for decades. The fact that you would characterize is as “anticipating my complaints from vague instructions” and “being so demanding of AI levels of intuition” means you’ve clearly never read “The Dragon Book” cover-to-cover. (Don’t know what “The Dragon Book” is? Google it.) You’ve ignorance is just so blatantly obvious. Maybe you don’t know the old saying? “Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Looks like you have been doing the latter.

Have you ever used a compiler, or even an interpreter like PHP, or has your limit only been HTML+CSS?

Ever heard of “lint?” What I’m talking about is lint for CSS built into the browser. Don’t know what “lint” is? Google it. And Google “lint for css.” What I’m proposing is a lint for css built into the browser. Clearly this is a new concept for you, but not a new concept among programmers. (Maybe all those programmers who use lint are just being banally petulant?)

“I think you have to acknowledge the fact that you’re simply not half as patient, insightful or willing to learn as the millions out there who do understand this incredibly simple language.”

I think you have no clue what my skills or ability to learn are. It you were face to face I’d just you see what others locally think of me, but since you are obviously in Europe somewhere and not here in the USA locally with me I’ll say that I’m known among the various groups I attend (including the Drupal user group) as one of the fastest learners around. I’m also the one that always seemed to be tagged to give training presentations when others are not available. But I have no patience for stupid implementations, and CSS is a stupid implementation. I would say it’s like the fact that I don’t suffer fools, but then my engagement with you on this issue would obviously discredit me if I were to say that.

I can make CSS do anything it can do. My gripe is that it is far too hard to use, especially for newbies (I care about them but evidently you don’t.) I know what is possible in good programming languages like C#, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby and even PHP, I know about encapsulation and information hiding and polymorphism and modularity, and it frustrates me that CSS is so backward as to not incorporate any of those features that could otherwise make using CSS more pleasant.

I also notice you never answered my questions:

– How many large web applications with complex CSS code developed by someone else have you had to come in and make major changes to? What are the URLs?
– How many large web applications with complex CSS code have you developed from scratch? What are the URLs?

Or could it be you’ve only even used CSS for small personal websites? Yes, for small personal websites CSS is really easy and seems like a dream. But for large complex websites that dream becomes a nightmare, especially if you were not the one who originally developed the large complex website.

“I mean, would you ever try to help yourself with any of these concepts — even to the level of thinking them through on a practicality level or suggesting specifications — or are you honestly just outraged that someone isn’t serving them to you ready-made on a plate simply because you screamed loud enough?”

I really don’t even know what you are trying to say here but it seems insulting without basis.

>> By the way, were you really a trainer?

For seven years before the turn of the century, and occasionally the past several years:
http://mikeschinkel.com/blog/alittlebackgroundisinorder/

Why, are you acting surprised?

“PPS: Are you having us on in a bout of ‘contrarianism’?”

Yes, but not as a troll. I fully believe CSS is stupid.

CSS has huge problem, but all you are giving is Pollyanna answers and defending what appears to be your beloved. If you are so capable rather than hurl veiled insults and employ dishonest debate techniques why don’t you present some examples that might explain that you have any credibility?

For example, show me the book you wrote on programming (mine is here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201570181; read the third comment). Or show me large websites you’ve implemented (mine includes http://www.xtras.net (though it’s had small updates since I left) and http://atvillustrated.com). Or show me a large group of people where you present your web knowledge frequently that has a rating >=4 stars (mine is at http://web.meetup.com/32/) Or some me a place where you have presented an advanced computer topic and >=4 stars rating (one of mine is at http://drupal.meetup.com/4/calendar/6779397/) Show me something, anything that indicates you have even a smidgen of credibility.

IOW, talk is cheap. Stop talking and start showing me that you have credibility instead of questioning mine. Take your “credibilty” accusations and look in the mirror.

P.S. BTW, is it always your way to apologize to someone for your behavior then start hurling even more insults at them?