*Shocked by recent comments*
Excuse me... stylesheets save loads of code. For example, I don't have to panic when Lord HD tells me that the yellow at QBNZ is too bright... all I do is change
one character, and the change reflects on the *entire* site! Stylesheets mean effective code.
Think of it this way. If someone told you that the font size was all wrong and you have to change all the h3 tags, would you rather go hunting through the crap of an HTML document, or change one rule in a stylesheet? Personally, I'd much prefer the latter.
I know that in some places you would end up typing more code than using the HTML equivilants, but these cases come few and far between, especially when you apply one central stylesheet to an entire document collection. Give me an HTML page with formatting embedded, and I would guarantee a 10-50% saving in code overall by using stylesheets. What's more, it
does reduce server load: stylesheets are cached, so you only download it once, unlike with an embedded HTML document, where each time you go to a new page you effectively have to download the formatting again.
Another way stylesheets are effective. You remember those 1X1 pixel transparent GIF images? The ones used to hold empty space or make borders? Each time one of those is referenced in an HTML document the browser has to make another server hit to download it (they are not cached). This means much longer waiting times when CSS properties like margin and padding are widely supported.
Of course there are some down sides. For just a small, one page document an external stylesheet is hardly nessecary, but unless the page is *really* small you can still use an embedded stylesheet to save code. Some features remain unsupported by major browsers too: there is no way to reproduce rowspan and colspan.
But overall, the reasons for using CSS are overwhelming. The
W3C are the standard setting body for HTML etc and they are steering the 'net the way of CSS. It is the way that documents are gonna be formatted in the future, so I suggest to everybody here that you get at least a grounding in CSS for the future. And that includes you, toonski.
*breathes again* sorry :wink:
Re the contest:
excellent idea. I can provide a document just *itching* to be formatted... we can get some people to use HTML formatting and some to use CSS and compare.
I think toonski's ideas for judges is good. I'll be the functionality judge if you want - I have a good understanding of browser compatibility, CSS and w3 standards, and access to Netscape 6 and 7, Mozilla 1.0.0, IE 5.5, IE 6 and Konqueror.
I'll send the document to you, wildcard, if you want, and any other decided judges, unless of course you already have one.
