Technical Stuff
Thinking of expanding the layout here to three columns to include some new features that have become available since my last layout design. ‘People who know’ seem to be writing online that I should also abandon HTML tables in favor of CSS for structuring the columns, but the only rationale I can find is that it might cut down the length of the code by a percent or two. I don’t see a bunch of div tags being that much shorter than a two- or three-cell table. Am I missing something? Will CSS significantly improve or change the user experience?
You might be missing a small point or two… it’ll likely load faster and potentially read better on mobile devices if done right.
The benefits for personal sites are somewhat minimal, in my view. You’re probably not going to get sued if a person with a screen reader has to sit through “begin table. table row. table cell. begin table. table row. table cell. image howling point. table row. table cell. home. pipe. about. pipe. words. pipe. archive. pipe. photography. pipe. links. pipe. surf and weather. end table. table row. table cell. begin table. table row. table cell. howling is best done loudly. table row. table cell. current view. table row. table cell. curiosity killed the cat, not the dog. hyphen diego tries to figure out what’s so interesting about tee elipses. table row. table cell. current stalkees. table row. table cell. link a stitch in haste. link jimbo. link jockohomo.”
Actually CSS seems to going much smoother than last time I tried to use it for positioning. Looks like the new layout, if it goes forward, will use CSS for at least the columns.
Structuring your site so that the layout is governed by the CSS means that 1) your page loads faster and 2) if you want to change the look of the site in the future, you just have to change the CSS file instead of numerous other files. Very handy.
Most of the site (fonts, colors, etc) is already in CSS, and common sections are in PHP includes for one-stop editing – I’ve just never seen much benefits for column layout for the blog given browser incompatabilities and inconsistencies. Looks like I’m going that way, but I’m still not seeing much advantage to it.