I’ve been reading all this evangelism about Cascading Style Sheets online, and seeing examples of how interesting things can be done with it, and tutorials and utilities to make it easier. And based on all this, I can only come to one of two conclusions: 1) I’m stupid, or 2) it’s all a pack of filthy, dirty lies.
Since the first is obviously crazy talk, I’ve got to wonder why all these people are lying to me so bad? They keep going on about how tables are evil and it’s possible to do anything you want with CSS, but every attempt I make fails miserably. Even when I copy and paste the code directly from a working page. It’s starting to give me an inferiority complex.
So I’m going back to using tables. It’s easier, and it’s a lot more calming than my ranting about how “float” doesn’t, and “position: absolute” makes things explode, to people who just have to nod and wonder why the hell I’m getting so upset about a mark-up language.
I still say, though, that it’s the most insidiously sadistic thing ever created by man. You can tell that CSS was designed by and for anal-retentive, compulsive people. People with the mindset that every pixel and every color has to be absolutely perfect, even if it means writing pages of mark-up to get it perfect. And what better way to drive people with that mindset insane? By taking the standard and implementing it differently, in subtle but important and sometimes unpredictable ways, in every single browser. It’s ingenious, really.