Comments on: Comic Update: Aligning Text In The Outback

By: Miro Keller

Miro Keller — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:29:57 +0000

Every time I read a post like this, and the subsequent comments, I get renewed confidence that we need not only better tools to create web documents, but a whole new language. The content should be pure content -not appearence or behavior-, so XML would be perfect for that, and a interface programming language that allows to define the full appearance and behavior of the web document, with complete independence of the logical structure of the semantic content. CSS has many shortcomings, vertical centering is one of them. This new language I’m developing aims to overcome all of them.

I see the day when we ditch Photoshop (or Fireworks or whatever) and build the site completely with that language. Then we don’t have to do all the work twice!

What would you like to see in such language?

Cheers,
Miro

P.D.: Yeah, it does EqualHeightColumns (TM) too!!! ;)

By: Chris Hunt

Chris Hunt — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:32:47 +0000

Good on yer cobber!

While I’m totally with the “don’t use tables for layout because that’s not what they’re for – CSS was specifically built to lay out pages” argument, it’s more than a little annoying that there are STILL perfectly sensible layout tasks that are easier to achieve with tables than with CSS.

Multi-line centring is one. Vertical alignment is another. Sizing a container to fill the viewport if its content doesn’t do so. Making adjacent containers the same size – why are we faffing around with “faux columns” instead of being able to specify the real thing?

By: John 'mad' Allsopp

John 'mad' Allsopp — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:20:31 +0000

Thanks Mr Squirrel – ‘struth, that ought to keep the Aussie stereotypes rolling for another coupla bloody centuries mate ;-) Hey maybe I should tweet in Aussie – worked for Mel Gibson. Um, hang on.

john

By: Curtiss Grymala

Curtiss Grymala — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:43:24 +0000

Thank you. It amazes me every single time I’m working on a layout that needs vertically aligned content (center, bottom or otherwise) how difficult it is to accomplish that.

As an aside, even without Kangaroo steaks, the restaurant does still have the Chocolate Thunder from Down Under, which is one of the greatest chain-restaurant desserts to ever exist. :)

Also, did you learn nothing about Australia from Yahoo Serious’ portrayal of Albert Einstein? Crocodile Dundee was great, but Young Einstein had it’s moments, too.