June 20, 2007

June 16 Meeting Report:
Styling Tables

At the June meeting, we worked on styling tables, first reviewing the basics of HTML tables, and then using CSS to style horizontal segments using the THEAD, TFOOT, and TBODY tags. We started on vertical styling using the COL and COLGROUP tags, but there is more to do. I uploaded the two demo pages to a new Tables section in Sample Pages.

We will pick up on columns and then move on to borders when we meet again on September 15. We will also spend a little time with the examples that I showed at the Web Design SIG. They were taken from a new book called The Art & Science of CSS. If you were at the Web Design meeting, you know that one of the samples, using a transparent PNG to alternate background colors on rows, did not work correctly in IE6. I wrote to the author who responded by pointing out an error in the sample code. If you get the book, drop me a line, and I will show you the fix, if it is not posted on the publisher's website by then.

Between meetings, I will blog items of interest about CSS that I find. You can check back here at the website to see if there is anything new, or subscribe to either email notifications or RSS feeds. Just look in the sidebar of the site for instructions.

June 11, 2007

New Browsers from Apple and Netscape

It is only a beta, but this is good news for those of us who always wonder what our pages look like on the Apple Safari browser: Apple Introduces Safari for Windows. It is a free download, and it does seem to render pages very quickly, even though it is still beta software. Safari has tabbed browsing, but I do not see any indication that it supports extensions.

Also just released in beta is version 9 of the Netscape browser, available at the Netscape download page. I think it is slicker and faster than version 8. It no longer allows users to toggle between the Firefox and the Internet Explorer engines, but that function is available with the IE Tab plug-in which works in Navigator as well as Firefox.

June 09, 2007

June 16 Meeting Announcement

The next meeting of the PACS CSS Workshop will be next Saturday, June 16, at the usual 9-10 am time slot.

Last month, we finished talking about background images just as the clock struck 10. With this month's meeting being the last until September, I picked a topic that I think we can cover at one session--styling tables.

You heard right. We have been dissing tables as a means to lay out a webpage. But tables are not gone. They have a purpose, and CSS gives us a great tools for making tables do what they are supposed to do--convey information. Along the way, we will attack the concept of "div-itis", or more generally, the over-use of CSS and the corresponding non-use of HTML tags in designing pages.

There is no cafeteria service this month, so pack a lunch, and we'll see you Saturday.