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Becoming standard

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6 Aug 2003

A year ago it was notable when a company redesigned with Web standards. Now it is less so.

There are a variety of companies that are using CSS instead of tables for page layout. AIn October, I mentioned Mercedes-Benz and Wired. Since then Cingular and ESPN have both redesigned with CSS layouts and been mentioned here.

It is interesting that CSS is becoming the norm instead of an exception. I’m even doing the site for a California state agency with pure CSS layout. As far as I know, it’s one the first state government sites to be done this way. (The state of Montana site uses a bunch of absolutely positioned layers instead of tables, but this technique isn’t much better than using tables.)

Is anyone else finding less resistance to the concept of CSS layout from clients and bosses?

Paul Scrivens
August 6, 2003 2:10 PM

Too be honest my clients don't really care as long as it works. When I explain the benefits, they are all over it though.

Paul Scrivens
August 6, 2003 2:39 PM

Let me elaborate. My clients are starting to put a greater trust in my abilities as long as I show them up front what I know I am talking about. They are more focused on getting a working "end result" than they are on the process or tools I used to get there. Some clients are starting to understand that their website should not just be a toy or little something they use on the site, but can be a great business tool that can benefit them tremendously.

Josh Santangelo
August 6, 2003 10:46 PM

I think clients and bosses are caring less about the old browsers that were holding us back from doing good markup, while developers like us are learning better how to execute it. I think it's just a natural case of time marching on.

Trackback from Jim Mangan's Weblog
August 7, 2003 8:57 AM

Standards the Norm

Excerpt: Becoming standard :: Kalsey Consulting Group It is interesting that CSS is becoming the norm instead of an exception. I'm...

Keith
August 8, 2003 8:37 AM

I think both Josh and Paul have made good points. Most clients don't really care how you do it as long as it gets done and meets their goals. It a combination of them letting go of legacy browsers (NS 4.7 in my case) and Web professionals starting to learn more and think about how we work. I still think we have a ways to go. I know and have worked with quite a few designers and developers who don't get the benefits of CSS, etc. I've been asked to code a rather large site's secondary navigation as images recently. It was a bit of a battle but my solution won out (thank goodness, we're talking around 100 nav images) and we went with text styled with CSS. Sounds obvious right? Well, it wasn't to them, and these were fairly seasoned professionals. No it's not the clients I worry about too much...

Linda Lane
September 5, 2003 10:01 PM

CSS makes designing large eCommerce sites that are propagated/served via the same backend order management and processing software so easy to do, that using CSS is irresistible. Using mixed servers works too, so one isn't tyed up by just one OS. As I come to understand more about the fluid qualities of css, it is easy to promote it for setting and maintaining design standards, because it is less costly to use it for design, to test, impliment and use for localization. Old browsers are just that - old. Bye-bye (furious waving and smiling!)

This discussion has been closed.

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