Is there a point where...

[lilyofthevalley]

This is something that's been on my mind for about a month. I've never thought of myself as a computer whiz. Computers have been a part of my life, but in the last 5 years, my businesses have come to rely on my sites, which is why I knew I needed to make sure they were up to speed.In the last 3-4 months now, I have been trying, diligently, to learn clean XHTML, using CSS. Trouble is, a lot of what I used to be able to get away with in Java script, or tables, or slip-shod type hacks, I now can't by the new rules. More and more, java causes that infamous "boop--do you really trust this site to run a script? It could be perfectly fine, but it could also be malware" which of course I don't want my surfers running into, and that started pushing me towards php, which I finally learned how to get Apache to unravel it right, sometimes, although it seems like sometimes ASP would be better, but I can't with Apache I just found out today, so there went that, not that I know any more about ASP than I do about php. And then there's DOM, but I don't even have a good solid handle just on XHTML and CSS yet to even think about toeing into another form. And I'm stll hesitant about using anything that deals with MySQL, because I just haven't had enough experience with it yet. And since every darn markup/language has its own comment style, this way of doing, that way of doing, there are times when I simply cannot, for the life of me even when I've got a similar example in front of my nose, feel like I'm doing the right thing.In the meantime, I'm getting very frustrated with CSS layout in that everyone seems to think that X way is the right way, and no matter which way I do it, I can't quite seem to get it to look nearly as nice as tables did (or sometimes even close to what I was looking for) with 1/4 of the work before, and then there's all the tweaks that I didn't really have to worry about before. And I'm realizing that a site the small size I've worked on for about 80-90 hours on (research takes time too--and I often lack the vocab to resaech efficiently), I would have finished and been updating in about 30-40 tops. And it would have looked better, although probably not on everyone's browsers, and prolly wouldn't validate as nice either, and a lot of it definitely would be loading slower.I'm starting to worry that I'm spending so much time trying to bring my sites up to speed that the rest of my business end is lagging, but I'm not at a point where I can just hire someone to do it for me, which I don't want to do anyway because I feel like I'm just getting so close to getting a handle one the next step, but despite my quiz results from W3S, I still have doubts.So when...when do you say, "Oh well, I tried," and just either find a happy medium between bad html and good validation, and still have time for the rest of the things a small business needs and some semblence of a social life (and stuff like laundry, sadly)? I'm not saying you just stagnate altogether, but when you realize you've got an awful lot to really get a handle on, how on Earth do you catch up without other things faltering? Or is it just one of those things like laundry that's just always going to need to be done, and you just have to grit your teeth about it when it gets behind and catch up in the hopes that at some point you'll be running with the tide instead of chasing after it? Or do you just say, well, that's that. Either hire a professional or start looking for an X job again.Sorry if this seems negative at all. Folks here have been super great and so very, very helpful, but I'm just so darn frustrated with the amount of time it seems to take to do the simplest things because I have to do it the new way. And I've barely started converting my other sites over, which with one in particular, I know is going to be my personal li nightmare.I mean, on one hand, I'm terribly proud that I have that little site pretty much done with the basics, and the CSS and the Strict XHTML is validating, although apparently wrongly so on a few things. But on the other hand...ick...it's just seems like it's taking forever.Maybe I just need a nap. Maybe it does get easier from the first. I dunno.Thoughts? Anyone? Or is everyone here just super whizzes and I'm always gonna be the one-step-behind n00b?

[Jonas]

Nice rant, it feels good to get it all out like that every once in a while, right? The thing is, xhtml and css as languages aren't that complicated, they are logically and structurally designed. The mastery of xhtml and css is in the layouts, and really, no tutorial can teach you all the quirks and twists there are to making layouts work. You shouldn't worry as much about using table-layouts, it's fine if you think that's easier to organize a layout. If your xhtml is valid and the css as well, using divs comes second. The main purpose of css is to 1. make it easier for you to update the layout across pages, and 2. make the site load quicker for the user. Tables take a bit longer to load than divs, but it's nothing to lose sleep over.

[reportingsjr]

It does feel nice, I am lucky because something like this hasn't really happened to me! I just found the right stuff, and everything just comes to me. You can always come here for help if you want, some people are whizzes, but usually in one to three areas. I'm sure someone here would be willing to help work on your site. If you want I will help, but everyone I have offered to never really does anything. Just pm me on here so you can work on the business end for a bit.Were you one of the people who got deleted in the hacking? I swear I saw you here before, but it says you registered on jan. 4th. Hmmm, oh well. Cya later!

[jlhaslip]

I find that it helps to 'take a break' once in a while from the coding project. Leaving it alone for a day or 4 helps me get some thoughts together and I find I am more productive in the long run if I do this.As for help and assistance, post your questions here and like reportingsjr says, someone will assist you. Similarly, I would help you upon receiving a PM, too.

[Jonas]

I can't do it right now when in York, but when I get back on the 17th, I can help as well. Ask me any questions on html -> xhtml/css convertions, or send me an html file, and I'll gladly update it free of charge. Some of the most difficult stuff with tables is removing attributes like margin="", valign="", cellpadding="" and cellspacing="", because the equivalent css attributes are totally different. My process of changing html files to xhtml/css involves first making a copy of the file so I can go back to the start, and then I'll start with all the easy attributes to css convertions. Then, when all of that is out of the way, you do one difficult conversion at a time.

[boen_robot]

Some of the most difficult stuff with tables is removing attributes like margin="", valign="", cellpadding="" and cellspacing="", because the equivalent css attributes are totally different.

Offtopic://Actually, margins and paddings are quite similar, excluding the "margin: auto;" thing. As for vertical-align, in an article I read recently, it seems that vertical-align is simply used only in table cells and inline element and in inline elements, it's supposed to tell how is the inline element aligned according to it's block text (or something like that) but not to align the element vertically to the dimensions of it's parent. In other words, only valign is a bit different and is probably one of the reasons for complete adoption of CSS.As for the main thing in this topic, as I've said once, never learn more then you need to. Master the things you need and if that's not a best practice, transition slowly to the better one, step by step.

[jesh]

I find that it helps to 'take a break' once in a while from the coding project. Leaving it alone for a day or 4 helps me get some thoughts together and I find I am more productive in the long run if I do this.

Same for me. I ran into the same problem when I was first learning div-based layouts - tables were just so much easier and no matter what I tried, I could never get the divs to look like the tables. I just had to give up and use tables. Six months later (maybe it was a year), another project comes around and div-based layout just sort of clicked for me so I gave it a shot and it worked brilliantly. I just needed to take a break and before I realized it, I understood how div-based layouts work.The same goes, with me, for almost all projects that I encounter - whether that's writing code, building a layout, gardening - that if I don't totally understand something right away, and if I'm not able to understand it after a few days of intense studying, I'll walk away from it and work on one of the hundred other projects that I have going on. Then, sometime later, when I go back to the project that stymied me,nine times out of ten I'm able to understand it.

[MrAdam]

Offtopic://Actually, margins and paddings are quite similar, excluding the "margin: auto;" thing. As for vertical-align, in an article I read recently, it seems that vertical-align is simply used only in table cells and inline element and in inline elements, it's supposed to tell how is the inline element aligned according to it's block text (or something like that) but not to align the element vertically to the dimensions of it's parent. In other words, only valign is a bit different and is probably one of the reasons for complete adoption of CSS.

I too am in the process of switching from tables and also currently trying to convert a site .. could i just ask, what actually is the alternative to valign="middle", would you have to use "padding", orrr?- Thanks (don't mean to hijack your post by the way)

[justsomeguy]

style="vertical-align: middle;"

[Skemcin]

I can feel your pain. When I started 10+ years ago I had NO where to start except the library - no online discussion forum, no continuing education course to enroll in - nothing. For me, there was no pressure to find a happy medium - I just had ot make things work. Acknowledging that times have changed, I've still come to take the pressure to validate with a grain of salt. As much as I would LOVE to make sure all my sites and pages validate, my clients do not see the importance in justifying the time to do so. So, if it is easier for me to use tables and some CSS, then my client is happier. I know I don't code junk so I'm not giving them garbage - I'm just giving them well format, well rendered, HTML and CSS that is "close enough". Mind you, I am very particular and I do strive for perfection, but if I see a job, application, or page beginning to snowball, I give up and do it the way I am certain will produce the desired outcome - css, tables, validation or not.As for programming language - I too had my first hesitations with asp and php - which is why I loved ColdFusion when I discovered it. A tag based server side language capable of doing everything asp and php could do but with a much much shorter learning curve since it is tag base - its like an expanded set of HTML tags. Now that the developer license is free and it is easy to install with any web server - its the best time to learn it. Yeah, yeah yeah, some will say stay far away - but ask them how much they know about ColdFusion and they will not have much to say. There are just as many hosts as the others and the jobs are out there if you look. In fact, a Cold Fusion job is more secure than any asp or php job right now.Anyway, this is like learning to play golf - you don't learn on the golf course, you learn on the driving range. When I managed a course out east, I saw too many folks trying to learn golf on the course - you play golf on the course, you learn on the driving range. So, find your driving range, most developers (i.e. just as aspnetguy did with his freshly launched site) use their personal site for this and then apply every solid skill they have to their jobs.I'm not sure if this really has helped much, but just don't worry about the pressure - when it comes down to it all the developers in the world can give you a raft of $hit cuz your site doesn't validate, but if it is making your client millions of dollars, you're not gonna get fired.(waiting for the reply that tells me this is a horrible approach and that it only holds the pursuit of standard compliant websites back)

[Chocolate570]

Man, I really didn't feel like writing this post. I usually never do when Skemcin has visited a topic with his well-thought-out-god-like-really-really-long-amazing-post-of-doom. Just kidding.The problem with web design is there are two main choices. Do you want your website to benefit you or the people visiting? Think about it. If you use CSS hacks and so on the website loads much faster and looks the same in many browsers, which is a plus for your users. But what about you? Hours and hours of continuous testing in different browsers and OS'. Definitely no fun. Then there's the options to put a shoddily coded website together that works in one browser, but looks great in that browser. Anyone not using that browser probably wont visit your site ever again. Yet you're in love with it, because it requires you to put some straightforward markup into notepad and probably never test it as tables are predictable. Which do you choose? I usually choose to make it easier for my users, beause that is the reason I'm making the site. If I make a website like..a script database, no one would ever visit if you had to use netscape 7.34 build 8, because it would be inconvenient and wouldn't work in their browser of choice. My site would be a total failure just because I decided to make it easy for myself. But am I willing to spend all that time on it?It's choice and only that.

[justsomeguy]

(waiting for the reply that tells me this is a horrible approach and that it only holds the pursuit of standard compliant websites back)

I'm with you. When I have a website with a deadline that I need to meet, and I need to make 5 pages with different layouts, I give myself about a half hour to work things out with CSS. If I'm spending more time then that debugging the layout, I'm not going to meet the deadline, because I still have the PHP to write. If I can't do what I want to do with CSS quickly (the operative word here is "quickly"), then I opt for a table approach. It takes me much less time to do, and I know it's going to look the same everywhere. I don't think that practices like this hold back the pursuit of standards-compliance, I think the standards themselves make compliance more difficult then it needs to be.

[Skemcin]

I'm with you. When I have a website with a deadline that I need to meet, and I need to make 5 pages with different layouts, I give myself about a half hour to work things out with CSS. If I'm spending more time then that debugging the layout, I'm not going to meet the deadline, because I still have the PHP to write. If I can't do what I want to do with CSS quickly (the operative word here is "quickly"), then I opt for a table approach. It takes me much less time to do, and I know it's going to look the same everywhere. I don't think that practices like this hold back the pursuit of standards-compliance, I think the standards themselves make compliance more difficult then it needs to be.

whew, thank you for the reply. I don't feel alone in the world anymore. I do mean that sincerely, too. I take the exact approach you layout and feel the same way you do. The few times I've tried to post that opinion (in other forums) I've gotten a variety of criticism - hence my disclaimer. Tables, as unfortunate as some may feel, is more likely to render consistently in browsers than elaborate CSS - at least as long as IE is around.(uh-oh, I just opened a can of worms on that one too - disclaimer - use pinned browser discussion to rip me there please)

[lilyofthevalley]

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who responded. :)Ironicly (ironically?), I already kind of did what many suggested--back off for a bit. When I wrote the start of this thread, it was after one of my long haul "Oh wait, maybe this will work" periods when you just sort of forget about sleep for a little longer than is sane. I need to go back to my old rule of never more than 10 hours of just site dev in a day, with breaks just like when I worked union stagecraft, and no meals in front of the screen. *laugh*The good news for me is that I really haven't given up, but gosh at that moment, I was close. I think part of my problem is that I dove head first into Strict XHTML w/ CSS because in my mind, by the time I learned it, it would no longer be the latest and greatest, but I would be leaps and bounds ahead of where I was. *laugh* A larger part, aside from the cross-browser issue, is the fact that there is more than one way to do things. And, at times, when people make suggestions, they are quite valid ones, but I can't always implement what they are suggesting which does put me in a bit of a holding pattern. I have to remember to make a list of "someday try" and push forth with the things I have managed to handle until this test site is complete. (I can get absolute positioning to work at its most base level...but not what other folks have suggested which will prevent the issue at narrower viewing.)My only thought to pass along on the cross browser issue is that until recently, I never cared. Most of my surfers use IE/Netscape and some Firefox & Mac based browsers. Very few use the others. I was looking more into the accessibility issue, but that wasn't until the last year or so that I really was trying to focus on it. With Firefox becoming more popular, and, just to try to be concious of the rest of the world's options, I am now checking on most platforms, although I admit, not Linux--one step at a time there. So really, I've only had browsers other than IE/NS on my computer for a month. That's when I started realizing how rampant the issue of cross browser was. I was worried enough about 800 vs 1040 before, and now this. *ugh*Comicsgal is my tester. I have over a dozen other sites that I maintain, and trust me when I say none of them will validate even in HTML, but they work with IE/Net/and sometimes firefox or opera, depending. I knew that it would be smarter to master a new format first, and then implement that process to the others. And I do not regret that decision at all. I think I would have thrown something through a wall by now otherwise had I not. :blink:My goal, I thought, was simple. Build a site based on Strict XHTML & CSS that would work on the 5 majors (I think Mac browsers are usually pretty good, but not as familiar anymore with them these days), and also try to have the nod to the access issue. Then, I wanted to take that layout and learn/implement the resizing and possible font size info. I'm getting there. I've adjusted my business/projects plan now so that instead of having all the sites changed over by June, I've now given myself the rest of the year. I think that will take a lot of pressure off, especially since I do most of my travel in the first five months of the year.I do have some concerns about the site being live as is, but I don't think that's killing me yet so far as turning off people who find me at random, especially since I haven't started trying to link it anywhere or even added meta tags. (A google for comics gal doesn't show me on the first 5 result pages--ooo but comicsgal shows me on page 1 already--erk--but really, who's going to do that search?)After reading through the responses to my other inquiries, I'll be delving back into the site the rest of this week, a few hours at at time, before a business trip of two weeks, which should be a great break if needed before I come back to it again. Ok, now to personal responses:Jonas: Yes, it was good to vent. I'm just glad everyone was so very nice in responding...as I was worried the next morning it did seem too down. I think part of my problem insofar as the logic of it is that I just need to focus on that logic when things aren't working, as opposed to saying "well it's supposed to work" and just getting frustrated scanning the markup instead of pulling it back apart. When I attempted the basics of li and such, they worked. When I tried to start layering elements and pushing the design further, that's when I seem to be having my worst breaks in my layout. It is tempting to go back to tables, but I know with time, I will get this. (I haven't even begun converting, yet...I'm just sensing the potential issues with my first run which was what I was hinting at.)reportingsjr: No, I am new here, but I have tried a few other forums before feeling at home here, and I always use the same screen name. Maybe you recognize me from one of them. Give me a month or so, and if I really get stuck...I will take you up on your offer!jlhaslip: Yes, the break was needed, and boy did I find a nice book to read in the meantime. I have put queries in, and, as I said in my inital post here, folks have been awesome with their help. That's why I made sure to mention that I wasn't trying to blame anyone involved with this forum other than myself. boen_robot: Good to know...I have this thread bookmarked as there are a lot of helpful nuggets nested within. It has been a bit tricky at times determining what I need to know. I was trying to add some php, but I've now backed off, and I'm back to just the Strict XHTML and CSS. (The php hack was killing my htaccess for my blog--but I'll worry about that another time when it's pertinent.)jesh: I'm working towards the day when it all falls into place. I've actually put a sticky on my monitor now that says "Time for a BREAK?"MrAdam: Just don't let it happen again! Glad justsomeguy came to the rescue with the answer.Skemcin: I have not looked into ColdFusion much--part of the trying to not bite off more than I could chew issue. I originally cut my teeth with php when I was editing the skin and such of my first phpbb. (I had used a different kind prior.) It was tough. At the time, about a year ago, I felt that php devs were micromanagers to the Nth, but now I'm starting to appreciate why they do the things they do. For me, validation is a brass ring, but also a checkpoint. Since I'm trying to learn, if it validates, I must be doing something right, but I will keep what you said in mind. Oh--and as far as my other regular sites...I haven't even touched them yet. Need to keep those working while I learn on something that doesn't matter to the general public yet.Chocolate570: Ultimately, I want my sites to be easier to maintain. But, I also want people to visit them or what's the point of having them, as you stated. The reason I started this current project is I was realizing that many people visiting my sites weren't seeing what I wanted them to see all the time, and I'm talking about issues due to unclosed tags, forgot an & or ; in an

which IE will forgive, but Firefox will not. (A friend who uses Firefox was the first to tell me, which was truly the starting point of this adventure.) I think over time, I'll be able to figure out who I will make that time for (the browser look), and who will sadly get left behind.justsomeguy:

I don't think that practices like this hold back the pursuit of standards-compliance, I think the standards themselves make compliance more difficult then it needs to be.

Hear, hear. There are a few things that I simply cannot understand why the couldn't just let them be. But, I'm also not savy on all the back end in that manner. There's one discussion board I visit sometimes that has pages and pages on this very topic--it's something folks can be very passionate about. I don't consider myself up to speed as far as CSS layout that I could do what you do, but normally, when making a site, I was about there. If the initial home page layout (a unique, not a template I'd already done before) was taking more than 2 hours--I was definitely doing something the hard way.Skemcin: Getting back to the tables-aren't-the-spawn-of-all-that-is-evil idea, now I'd be confused as to whether I had to build the table in the CSS or do regular HTML with it inside.

[Jonas]

You could still use CSS for the formatting info, for example:

table { width: 800px; height: 600px; border: 1px solid #000; }td { width: 800px;height: 300px;border: 0;background: #efefef;}

<table><tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr></table>

It should load a bit quicker than using html attributes for the table.

[Akula_dude]

Yeah, i know the feeling. I wrote my entire clan's website in about a week only a month after buying my first PHP book. Uploaded it, it was all good, until I realised the HTML side of the site, which i had put together in 5 minutes, didnt work with IE. So, i tried picking my code apart, seeing what was wrong, but so much of it was php-generated and messy I gave up and got a good ol' CMS. I was still working on my version of the site on-off for a few months, until last week when we decided to give up the clan. So all-in-all, it was a good learning exercise, but got me nowhere in the end.

[lilyofthevalley]

Thank you Jonas. Good to know.Akula, I used my GW Guild site like that when I was first experimenting with gif overlay and my first background image. So long as what you learned is still viable, it's not a waste, although I can see how you'd feel that you got nowhere with it.