smacks head Not this again... The answer being who gives a shit? Does it look fine in most browsers?
Who gives a shit? Hackers. And, y'know, with this happening to be Hacker News and all, it works.
Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
11–20 of 93 posts
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#12Because it's Hacker News, not Designer Gallery.
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#13CSS is used for two purposes: for styling and for layout. In my mind, the value obtained by using CSS for larger site layouts is not much. Usually, the claim is that CSS layouts help you re-target the content for another device and stuff, easily. Based on my experiences, I think that's a grand dream not likely to come true. You have almost completely re-think your UI when you are developing for a different device. Re-using CSS layouts is nearly impossible for that.
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#14Because you should read news not the source code.
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is. Table is 'not optimized object code' compared to lists. So you should ask: why your object code is not optimized (and it slow loaded and slow rendered on my PC :).
How old is your computer? I've found news.yc load times are close to instant.
Haha...I can imagine its a quad core, 4 gigs of ram and running vista.
:)
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, I realized that the page was table based by looking at the source. Programmers love to read beautiful code, As a web designer, I love to read beautiful and meaningful HTML. ;)
Tables are embedded in the Arc code for news.yc, as brett mentioned, but probably it could be rewritten in a few hours for a list-based layout. Of course, changing the layout would require an Arc developer, which is the disadvantage to not using templates. You may have noticed that most hackers seem to think web design is unimportant and/or should require a programmer for each change.
As a programmer, I can tell you I really don't mind that changing my website requires a programmer. It's perfectly convenient for me.
The only reason to do something differently is a client requirement, or a desire on my part to get someone else to do stuff for me.
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#17CSS is used for two purposes: for styling and for layout. In my mind, the value obtained by using CSS for larger site layouts is not much. Usually, the claim is that CSS layouts help you re-target the content for another device and stuff, easily. Based on my experiences, I think that's a grand dream not likely to come true. You have almost completely re-think your UI when you are developing for a different device. Re…
I agree. CSS as a layout system is poorly thought out and even more poorly implemented. Why, to center an object, do I have to remember trivia like "the parent needs a width." You need hacks and non-intuitive tricks for cross-browser CSS. Tables are verbose, but they "just work" more often. I still use CSS layouts, but man what a steaming pile.
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#18LOL, this is always one o my favorite insults, "he uses tables in his html"
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#19Most likely because PG or whomever else coded the site doesn't know how to use HTML with CSS, doesn't care to learn, and doesn't think it's important enough to learn.
People might down-mod me for that, but it's basically the truth.
Now, the only real benefits that Paul would probably consider CSS giving him would be the bandwidth usage (stylesheets are cached) and maintenance issue.
I can't imagine either of those two would be enough to coerce him into learning a whole new way of doing things.
I certainly think that PG is missing many more benefits by not coding the site properly, but from his vantage point, (and everyone else who would see learning css as confusing and pointless) it's likely that the risk/reward assessment is not pointing in favour of a tableless layout.
Re: Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
#20smacks head Not this again... The answer being who gives a shit? Does it look fine in most browsers?
>The answer being who gives a shit?
As a web developer, you should. It will save you work in the long run (see below).
As a hacker, you should, the same way you care about the beauty of readable code in any other language.
As a business owner, you should, because it will save you money, in bandwidth costs, future maintenance, training etc etc.
>Does it look fine in most browsers?
It looks fine in most browsers because the browser decided to make it look fine. That doesn't mean that it'll look fine in the browser everyone is using tomorrow. That means more work for you down the road, for no particular reason.
Do I care about it? No, not really. But I do get a little annoyed at hackers that concern themselves with code elegance in every language except HTML.