CSS v tables

It seems that tableless CSS designs are all the rage, but why is tableless considered good? What's wrong with tables? Enquiring minds want to know.

I think when I get round to doing a new design for my website I might try this out so I can learn it. I've also been toying with the idea of an xml stylee thing (not quite sure how yet) so that I would have an easy time swapping things round in future. Hmmm. Roll on S2 that's what I say :)

Recipe for a lovely evening

1 lovely boyfriend
2 takeaway meals
good TV to watch
1 sofa
1 blanket
small amounts alcohol

Method:
Invite lovely boyfriend round to watch TV. Each collect one of the takeaways. Sit on sofa and eat meals, drink alcohol and watch TV. When eating/drinking finished snuggle up on sofa under blanket and hug while watching TV.

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Damn you! Yesterday's poll was no use at all! A 4 way tie this time. Now I'm going to have to make my own decision. Although, it has been pointed out to me that what with scanners being so cheap I might as well get one anyway so I think I'll go for that at least.

Genital Piercing

Seeing truecatachresis's post reminds me. At the OUSFG agm I was elected Genital Piercing Officer (or GPO for short). For those of you unaware of the duties of the holder of this august post, I am required to revive flagging conversations, the suggested method being by talking about genital piercing as then other members will hasten to change the subject, thus reviving the conversation. Oh, and I am required to help out should the society become boring. So, all in all, not an onerous post :)

More on table-free designs

Ah-ha. Now that I've read this on A List Apart I understand why people don't like table designs. Because up until very recently I've gone for minimal design (black on white, no borders or fancy stuff generally) it was very easy to use tables to do layout where necessary and not a problem to maintain. I have been slowly starting to realise though that (for example) the code that I've nicked from LJ for my website is horribly difficult to follow. Its a mass of nested tables (even the blue borders are created by nesting 2 tables one inside the other) and I did vaguely wonder whether there was a better way to do it. In the end though I was satisfied to make a few tweaks and leave it at that.

I have recently though started to hanker for a design of my very own, not ripped off from someone else (although inevitably it will be a mish-mash of elements from designs I've seen and liked in these explorations). It's unlikely that I'll release anything before S2 comes out as it seems foolish to redesign my LJ only to have to redesign it again but I have decided to start work on a new look with the following goals in mind.

• My pages and my stylesheet will validate.
• I will separate style from content. I haven't yet decided whether I'll do it by XML or CSS but I will do it.
• I will use XHTML. I was surprised to discover that it's not that different from HTML, and given that I already know XML it is actually an obvious combination of the two.
• I will download the latest version of Netscape, Oprah and Mozilla and test my site in them and ask friends with Apples and Linux to look at the site through that. However, I will not make an effort to support older browsers but instead (like A List Apart) will support the browser upgrade campaign, using the "kinder gentler method" of notifying users of older browsers that things would look better in newer versions and removing styles.

The only place where I'm uncertain about these goals is here, in my journal. If I want to continue to use the autoformatting, I can't use XHTML here as linebreaks are replaced with <br> which is not valid XHTML (use <br />). If I decide to stick to the XHTML goal, I could write without the auto-format in future (it wouldn't be that much effort after all) but it's unlikely that I'll actually go back and change the stuff I've already written. So my archives wouldn't validate and nor would my friends page. Not much of a woe, but still. Alternately, I could decide to ditch XHTML for my journal in favour of validation and put my journal into HTML 4.0 (it doesn't validate for that at the moment). Personally, I'm inclined to go for validation over XHTML but opinions are welcome.

Addendum: I will improve my grammar and spelling and be more consistant in my use of punctuation.

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How much do you know about this weeks news? I got 7/7 (but then, I listen to the 6pm news on R4 every night) :)

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Well, I was going to stay in, watch TV and get an early night, possibly doodling some website designs. In the event, Ian and Ruth's housemates hadn't done any washing up so they wandered over to see me and fortunately I hadn't yet started cooking so I fed all of us with pasta and salad and Ian bought wine and we just sat around and chatted which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, now I am slightly drunken and so don't want to take my lenses out until either I get a bit steadier or Alex gets home and can watch me do it. Still, I stayed in.