Style Sheets: Ready for Prime Time?
By Lynda Weinman
Since I'm a designer, you'd think I'd be more excited about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) than I am. Frankly, the idea of style sheets excites me very much, but their implementation leaves me underwhelmed. It's the old cross-browser incompatibility thing that gets me every time; if something can't work the same way in Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer then I'm not fond of using it. Some HTML editors (Macromedia's Dreamweaver and GoLive's CyberStudio) figure out how to write the code workarounds for nonprogrammers like me, but frankly, style sheets seem like a whole lot of hassle for a marginal payback.
In addition to the lack of consistent browser support, there's also the issue of older browser support. If I create a style-sheet based site today, it can only be viewed by a 4.0 browser. I would still have to figure out the workarounds for older browsers in my HTML. So now I'm juggling three concerns: compatibility in Navigator, compatibility in Explorer, and compatibility in older browsers. This is not a task for faint-hearted pixel pushers like me, I'm afraid.
The Promise
In principle, the promise of style sheets is a wonderful thing. Designers want pixel-precise control, better layout options, and more extensive typographic power. HTML purists believe the structure of a document should be separated from the presentation, so that HTML pages can be accessed by anyone, by any device, or on any browser. Style sheets separate the display properties of an HTML document from the structure, which would seemingly give everyone what they wanted.
