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[Bruno Medeiros]

On 14/10/2010 09:09, Stephan Soller wrote:
>>
>> There is no confusion, I know "the "position" property does not
>> influence how large an element is". I don't care how big or small the
>> inner div is, I just want it to be contained in the parent div. I just
>> mentioned the 'position' property because if position is 'fixed', it
>> does make sense for that div not to be considered as contained in the
>> parent div. But not so for other values of position (at least for the
>> default one).
>>
>
> Sorry, look like I got confused then. :)
>
> I'm still not sure if I understand your point correctly. Do you mean
> that it's inconsistent that some positioning models take the element out
> of the document flow?
>

Not exactly. My problem is that when an element is taken out of the flow 
(such as with "float:left"), it means the element no longer needs to be 
contained in the parent div. I think that model is very unhelpful. 
Although I'm no expert in HTML coding, I would venture that in at least 
90% of the cases that's what you want (for the element to be contained 
in the parent, if its position is not 'fixed').
Otherwise this brings up several problems: it messes up the layout of 
the elements right after the parent div. Or it messes up the area for 
the background/border colors of the parent div.
However if a clearer div works without additional problems, I'm probably 
happy with that, even if its more verbose.


>>> But all this does not change the fact that
>>> using floats for column layouts is still nothing else than a workaround
>>> for the missing column layout model in the early days.
>>>
>>> For many page layouts this actually isn't needed but especially people
>>> used to use tables for layouts often try to use this technique because
>>> it mimics tables more or less. With CSS tables you don't have to use
>>> floats any more since you have all the power of tables in CSS now (with
>>> less markup in most cases). These however only work with IE 8 or newer
>>> (I'm not sure if not already in IE 7) and I don't know about FF 2. If
>>> you have to make pages that work in IE 6 and 7 you still have to use
>>> floats though.
>>>
>>
>> Well I would say some sort of "column layout model" (if understood your
>> term correctly) is pretty essential. You need something like that, or
>> something that can do the same job nearly as easily. So are you saying
>> its ok to use CSS tables now? (disregarding the issue with old browsers)
>> Because when I first learned about CSS and div layouts, the mantra was
>> "tables are evil, don't use tables".
>>
>
> I also heard/read that a lot when learning CSS. Using table _elements_
> for layout is bad stuff since the table element in HTML indicates
> tabular data. If you use it for layout the abstract content (or data) of
> the page gets totally screwed up just for it to look right.
>
> However the layout rules of tables are quite useful and so they found
> their way into CSS. If you can properly separate data from presentation
> you can use whatever layout rules you want. ;)
>
> Basically don't use table _data_ to push elements around in HTML. Using
> table layout rules in CSS is ok since it does not interfere with the
> data of the page.
>

Ok, so it is as I thought, is is still "wrong"/unrecommended to use 
tables for layout. The recommended way to do column layouts is still 
with divs, right? By "column layouts" I don't mean tables, but stuff 
like a sidebar of any kind (the typical two or tree column layout).

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer