Why CSS should not be used for layout

“I would rather spend my allotted time skiing or making love to my wife than worrying about whether or not I need to define a virtual destructor in my base class.”

That quote really sums up the argument pretty succinctly, but you may need additional persuasion depending on your circumstances.  It also comes from his second post on the topic.  A follow-up to the masses that commented on the original post with sundry opinions.  Some simply stated that the author was an idiot while others took the time to tear him a new one proper-like.  As the author states, many that would condemn have forgotten to add their own supporting cases; a common problem with these antagonistic debates.

For my part, I see the logic in the author’s comments.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with him, but it at least gives me some ideas of how to defend his method.  We all have to do things we don’t like to do, and sometimes we do things that compromise our abilities.  Web development is no different – in fact, it’s probably one of the defining cases for compromise.

Being a casual web developer myself, I have the luxury to code for standards and play with some of the latest methods available in technology.  Not everyone gets that luxury, and indeed at times, I don’t either.  I have to analyze the amount I can make on a given job versus the time spent on it.  As a hobby along side two children, a wife, and a few other hobbies, I’ve really got to make the most of my time.  As such, if I’m not going to get paid the amount I want, then something else is going to suffer.  At my day job, we’ve talked about Price, Quality, and Time as being the defining parts of a project.  Together, they all make up a circle and have to adjust dynamically as the others get larger or smaller.  If you sacrifice price, and there’s a time limit, then the only thing left that can slide is quality.  It tears at my nonsensical work ethic, but it’s reality.  On the otherhand, a lesser quality job doesn’t have to look like it.  We web developers have the benefit over some other industries because we can hide most of architecture mess behind a beautiful presentation layer.

So back to the conversation at hand: CSS versus Tables.  To bring this all together for you – and I trust you’ve either read the linked articles above or already know about the discussions surrounding the virtues of CSS and table design for XHTML layouts – let me settle the argument for myself.

I am an Arts and Crafts of Olde appreciatist.  I love my work as a craftsman; that is to say, I love the process of reaching a goal through creative and oft eccentric means.  I am learning to be a more pragmatic person in my work habits – at least when it’s necessary.  It’s a slow process, but I’ve made headway in little ways throughout my life.  It’s about compromise and keeping in mind the circle of Price, Time, and Quality.

It’s simple enough to imagine I could always remain vigilant on this circle of project specification goodness, but I wouldn’t.  Sometimes you just want to do a project.  So when either I have no boundaries per the specification, or I’m just personally driven to work at a project for my own reasons, I’m going to use CSS and standards-based coding practices.  When time and/or money are the object with which I am to contend, then I might use tables, or worse yet, a WYSIWYG editor.  The later approach ultimately saves me the most time and a customer’s money, but will ultimately take more time should the customer want some specific types of feature modifications to the code later.  I tend to view cheap and/or quick projects as being throw-away because of this.

I hope this insight has helped you to shed some light on your own dilemna in whatever craft it is that you persue – ever-mindful of the art in your craft, while carefully weighing the cost to your lifestyle (whether monetary, socially, or time management).

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The software sees improvements as well. There are some updated looks, an updated social system, and an improved search system among others. Channels in the Zune (software and hardware) look really great. I am a big fan of the Pandora project, so a Zune-similar feature is eagerly sought. The channels are updated automatically and based upon your ratings of music. It’s based on genres, which if yours are anything like mine, will need some cleaning to get narrowed down to a meaningful set. A new social feature allows you to find people in the Marketplace that listen to music like you. As Dunn comments, you can do this yourself now, but it takes quite a bit of time and clicking.

The one point that Dunn brings up as a downer to this feature-rich upgrade is that most of these concepts are designed around the use of a Zune Pass. For $15 per month, the Zune Pass allows you to download all the music you want for up to three people. They still haven’t worked out the issue of assigning different user profiles to this pass. Our pass is in my wife’s name, so I logon with her account to get subscription music. This will effect the way channels work (that is, averaging the music preferences between all users of the Zune Pass instead of offering an individual’s experience), but I know they’ll work this out in time. For now, I’ve learned to deal with the way the pass works and I can accept it. I doubt very seriously the Zune Pass will extend to such services as Audible (it doesn’t currently extend to the MarketPlace video services), so I’d have to look at another subscription price there. I’ve used Audible’s services before, and I did enjoy them very much. I’m a big fan of audio books, so I will likely pony-up at least a basic subscription.

The one thing I don’t know yet is when I can expect this update. Despite Dunn’s lack-luster summary of the 3.0 update, I am very much looking forward to it!

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I don’t really know what Esquire is all about, but I’ll buying a copy of this one off the stands when it comes out.  It’s a historic moment.

Link: BoingBoing

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It turns out that a picture of my wife was randomly discovered on Digg over the weekend holding a dollar bill on which those terms were written in permanent marker. In addition to the fact that there is now irrefutable evidence showing her guilt to federal property vandalism, the incident now brings her image to celebrity status. Digg is bigg, and showing up on it in any form is worthy of commemoration in my mind.

read more | digg story

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I maintained a “Help” page on my personal blog for a long while. It was a practice in earnest to fight the good fight. I tested browser compatibility and noted errors with specific browsers. It helped me…never my audience. I think I gave up after reading “Don’t Make Me Think.” Ultimately, that is really the mindset and the answer. If I have to provide a help page, perhaps I’m doing something wrong. Perhaps I’m not making that personal connection with people because I’m ostracizing them through some personal elitism. I remember when DHTML was really cool and working with the DOM in unique, arcane methods was more a resemblance to the occult than anything Web 2.0 represents today. We’ve all grown up on this stuff. Internet adolescence is over and it’s time to get a real job; move out of your parent’s basement (no offense to you 30-somethings living in your parent’s basement). So I don’t have a “Help” page anymore. I try to offer help in more constructive ways – ways that a “Help” page can only make excuses for. Besides – who actually takes the time to read a manual, let alone my blog manual?

In many ways, the Internet is like a beloved child which the world is rearing. Sometimes carefully, sometimes irresponsibly. This child of ours is also, at times, a bit unruly. I could dig that further into boredom, but I think you can continue the similes on your own. At any rate, it’s an apt comparison when speaking of the web development practices used on the Internet over time. I used to be one of those elitist programmers that sought out the most obscure uses of the DOM or unknown HTML tags. Hell, I used to only use VBScript, and throw out angry comparisons of my pure VBScript solution to a JavaScript one. I’ve also visited sites where you are completely stumped as to how to use it. You have to mouse over a bunch of slick graphics in order to find out where they go. So you can understand my conclusion that the Internet’s adolescence has come and gone. We all had fun, now it’s time to get serious about [Internet] life and create things that matter. Things that provide value. Things that don’t make other people feel stupid.

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Check out the site for Pangea Day. Learn how you can be a part of the event. Find out where you can go to see it unfold.

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I’ll start with the last event because I’ve only just sat down from it recently. The wife and I rallied the surrogate siblings (DR Boy and Spazzmanda) to join us in facilitating a drum circle for the United Hospice. The event was held at Tallulah Falls, GA for Camp Cocoon – a bereavement camp for children. Alchemy Drumming & Dance was called to put together a drum circle for children ages 5-17. About 60 of them. So four people made the trip to the Tallulah Gorge with a van full of buckets, beaters, and various percussion instruments. The intense sound of kids with percussion instruments filled every corner of an outdoor gymnasium. My wife and Spazzmanda brought their dance moves to the floor and got everybody hopping to the groove DR Boy and I laid down. I think we found some closet drummers, dancers, and gymnasts! The whole gig was a volunteer effort by the Alchemy crew and I think it was really rewarding to everyone. We got a lot of really great compliments from the camp organizers. Each of us also found a little something in ourselves in the challenge.

I also had a Friday night gig with Christine Zaarour at the Mezza lounge in Decatur. I met Christine at a debke workshop. My wife and her friend were there to learn the dance style and do a couple of performances afterwards. That’s also where I performed my first drum solo, and also the reason Christine was interested in having me out at her performance at Mezza. She’s from Lebanon and doesn’t know any drummers in the area, but “I’m the best drummer she knows” sounds better. It so happened that Mezza was having a private party coming that night and was standing room only. 50 or 60 people showed up to see Christine Zaarour perform her dance routines…and I’d have my ultimate test as a solo drum performer. I think everyone had a really good time – it was really a party by the end of the night, which came quite late. The food at Mezza is really wonderful as well. The nicest people, live entertainment, and delicious Lebanese food – this place has it all! Against the staff’s expectations, I also had some Arabic coffee. It’s not entirely different from the Minas coffee I’ve had from Bosnia.

So a weekend of opportunities taken. Stepping out of my comfort zone; once while performing as a solo drummer for Mezza, and again at Camp Cocoon as a facilitator for children of all ages. I think next weekend I’ll try mowing the lawn. Talk about breaking out of your comfort zone!

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You see, the folks at Read/Write Web are right. The Search is “game-over.” Google has won. But there is still a search for the Google-killer.  Problem is, everybody is going after the wrong features. from Read/Write Web: From Search to (Re)Search…

• Cool new features – user interface, alerts, visualization or whatever. The problem is that no single feature is enough for users to switch from Google and most people don’t have the time or motivation to use multiple search engines.
• Natural Language. There is big money riding on this one. It feels wrong to me. This is too much heavy science to crack problems that are totally simple for humans; and Web 2.0 is getting pretty good at aggregating the expanding global pool of knowledge workers.
• Vertical Search and Human Search. I put the two together. Human Search works best in well-defined domains. There are lots of Vertical Search engines that already work well and plenty more will come.

The article cites some good ideas for what this mythical Web 2.0 app should be, but that’s where my idea diverges.

I’ve been mulling over the idea of “concept searching” in my mind as of late. The problem with today’s search engines is that they’re still related strictly to my search terms. The problem is exposed when I need to do a search for terms that may not appear exactly as I type them, but together form more of a characteristic or conceptual pattern of something else. For instance, if I search for red, orange, and yellow, I will get a wide diversity of sites which have these words prominently displayed in HTML content. But maybe what I’m really after is artistic impressions of warm color use. Or perhaps I’m looking for images of fire…

The point is, the terms I specified are related in ways beyond just their placement on a web site. Flickr does a very nice job of demonstrating the power of tagging, categorizing, and respectively searching. By combining definitions of the words we’re searching for, they’re able to build what are called “clusters.” Clusters are groups of tags that seem related and Flickr allows you to pick a cluster to further identify the concept you’re searching on. It’s not perfect yet, but it demonstrates my point very well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/red/clusters/:

This is the next revolution in search engines. It’s a combination of Natural Language and research search types. By analyzing the words’ meanings and allowing the user to refine their particular definition, Conceptual Searching can be made possible.

*UPDATE:
I haven’t read into this much yet, but it looks like Microsoft is already entering into discussions based upon what I’ve said. I like to think they’re reading my blog and getting their best innovations here!

Microsoft Research

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As my previous experiences taught me, I don’t skimp on power supplies either. I was interested in a rock-solid performer with as high an efficiency (power supplied versus power converted to heat) as I could afford. I was surprised by what I found. While there are some exceptions, the more efficient PSU’s available today are running at < =85% efficiency. Of course, there can be dramatic differences from the max load efficiency rating (usually the highest number) to a 50% load average. Regardless, I won't really know what I have until it’s under load and the Kill A Watt is monitoring it.