Re: WWE in Stamford, CT needs a kick ass PHP Developer!

On Apr 14, 2007, at 10:37 AM, Robert Cummings wrote:

On Sat, 2007-04-14 at 10:14 -0500, Edward Vermillion wrote:

On Apr 13, 2007, at 8:07 PM, Robert Cummings wrote: [snip]

I noticed your site isn't a pixel perfect layout. Probably why you haven't had to tear at your face very hard with CSS :) That whole box-model issue becomes a great deal more elastic when you have some fudge room.

[snip]

I use my templating engine, I can wrap as many tags as I please into a compound custom tag with attributes that expand into the dirty details. This also provides a great deal of flexibility later when CSS support improves, to replace the dirty tables ;) I do prefer CSS, but having done pixel perfect layouts, I know where things break down.

<rant> And here-in lies the problem with most web designers/coders who think they *have* to have tables... "Pixel perfect layouts" are *not* what the web is about. A browser window is not a piece of paper and until "web designers" get that through their heads then we will all have trouble making things work. No matter what the browser makers do. Designers need to start designing for the medium and not for what they want the medium to be, or what medium fits their knowledge base or familiar problem space. You don't have to have that much control over a web page... loosen up a bit and let things be what they are. </rant> Sorry, that just builds up over time and needs to be let out every once in a while....

Sure, but designers head the beck and call of paying customers. Just like we coders do. Sometime you just can't win the argument with a suit :)

Yeah I know... thus the bottled up frustrations... ;)

BTW, why can't a browser window be pixel perfect? I think you're dwelling on what you think it should be, and what others want it to be. The more interactive the web becomes, the more we see web applications mimicking desktop solutions, the more we need pixel perfection. Regardless of whether you think the web should be used for these kinds of applications is irrelevant, because others do think it can and should be used in this way. Throwing cups of water back into the ocean to prevent the tide from coming in just doesn't work.

I think there's a fundamental difference between a web application and a web page. (That's another one of those areas where folks expect what they shouldn't. Like a web application must adhere to the web paradigm and ensure the "back" button retains it's meaning throughout the applications processes, even though there's no real "back" concept to an application.) I'm really finding that the older I get, and the more my eyesight diminishes, the more websites I just don't go to or that I have to fight with if I *have* to get some info from them, just because the designer wasn't designing for the web. But eh, we all do what we have to to get the pay check sometimes... Ed