W3C vs Browsers war?

[barnettgs]

It's basically about centering div because we have to go extra length with extra coding just to make div in centre when we could simply use just 'center' which doesn't work in any browsers.

Has this 'centering' fuss to do with W3C vs browsers war?

Because there seems to be too many issues with CSS compatility conflicts with all the browsers which means we have to work around a lot just to make our pages work for the browsers' sake.

I have seen all the fuss that we should use div instead of tables even when I have seen so many modern corporation sites which use table layout. I guess they are doing the table layout cos they know that it is still the early days yet with W3C's CSS standard which still need to be sorted out with browsers first before they can jump to 'div' bandwagon.

What do you think?

[MotherNatrsSon]

For a large site, say LL Bea's online store or something of that nature, using style sheets and CSS would be a total nightmare, imho. Sniffing for browsres and making sure each fets a style sheet it understands would be quite the task with a site that large. There would also have to be multiple style sheets for different pages because all pages are not laid out the same. Multiply that by 5 because of extreme differences in browsers, to apply all the necessary hacks to get it to work in every browser and it gets to be an insurmountable task quite quickly.

The site I am curious about is Apple's. I read somewhere Zeldman and Co. had/have something to do with the redesign and layout of that site. Is it "completed", in the procees of, or not happening? I don't go to the Apple site often enough to notice changes but it is a large site as an example. I would think Zeldman and Co. would attempt CSS and standards based layoutss for it..???

I also see sites done in tables with linked style sheets or styles in the head because the layouts don't break so easily I guess.

What do I know anyways? I'm a newbie...

My 2 pennies...

MNS

[ronaldb66]

In the W3C CSS2 specification, which became a recommendation in may 1998, the centering behaviour for block elements using margin: auto is decribed specifically and in detail; if browser manufacturers started doing their job implementing that specification, we wouldn't have to bother with extra coding to accomodate misbehaving browsers.

In his book, Zeldman describes a transitional approach for complex layouts, or web designers not ready to convert to pure CSS ones, using lean, mean tables for layout, and semantically correct (X)HTML and CSS for everything else (oh, and scripting, where needed). Such an approach, if applied while being fully aware of the drawbacks, could incorporate many of the advantages of using CSS while - for the time being - avoiding some of the snags of CSS positioning, including browser incompatibility.

[liorean]

Most problems when it comes to centering is rather the authors not knowing how the box model and the positioning/sizing works in css than anything else. That the box model in older browsers is different doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. Most corrections needed are not related to the actual centering but rather the box model in ralation to parent and content elements.

[oracleguy]

Originally posted by barnettgs
I have seen all the fuss that we should use div instead of tables even when I have seen so many modern corporation sites which use table layout. I guess they are doing the table layout cos they know that it is still the early days yet with W3C's CSS standard which still need to be sorted out with browsers first before they can jump to 'div' bandwagon.

The more likely reason that some of those corprate sites are still using tables for layout is that they are huge and re-building them is a significant expense. It just takes time.

The software project we are finishing at work now was using frames and tables for layout but thanks to me when we re-did the design I made it make use of CSS based layout. We've also converted several other internal sites to it as well.