Style Sheets

[Chris Lott]

>I can do that now using server side includes and templates
>that work for all browsers.  I can also do a search/replace
>across my whole site if I need to.


How so? Please tell me how you can redefine the look of every internal
second level subhead across all documents on a site with one small change?
Oh, and while you are at it, change your margins across your site from 5% on
the right to 10% but leave the left the same. Oh, and also make the first
line indent of all paragraphs 4 em instead of five. Oh, and can you also be
sure that all citations are in a san serif font without specifying the font
face, since I don't have arial, courier or helvetica on my (or my company's)
machine?

And what about most authors who are not even able to author for sites that
include SSI?

And how about second level headings which you can't do a site-wide search
and replace because there are actually three different kinds of <h3>
depending on context?

>You can redefine <CITE> to look different: underlined for chemistry,
>bold and italic for book reviews, etc.
>I can do that now with HTML that works on most browsers.


How so? Please explain how you can duplicate the functionality of CITE.chem
CITE.review CITE.web on the same page and then change them all on all 50
pages with one simple edit?

All the advantages that I also listed earlier also still apply. Not to
mention that using CSS actually allows better access for the disabled and
retains the content/presentation distinction which makes the web, for some
people, so much more worthwhile than other mediums. CSS DOES give much
better control over the presentation, results that are impossible/near
impossible without problematic kludges, etc.

The only real marks against CSS right now are 1) there are still a lot of
people who don't use browsers that can see them (but then I remember when
even using tables was a real problem for this reason... presumably you use
tables now?) 2) implementations that require Javascript are faulty for the
same reason that using javascript is problematic.

c
--
Chris Lott -- fncll at uaf.edu -- (907)474-6350
Instructional Technology Specialist
Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks