Here’s my 2-cents (which is always free)…
I’m a big-time proponent of web standards, and using CSS for layout instead of tables, valid code, blah, blah, blah.
However, I just don’t see the purpose of a CSS-based calendar. A calendar is tabular data…exactly what the HTML/XHTML table tags are meant to display. Now, a properly constructed calendar table, with appropriate headers, scope, summary, and nicely styled with CSS to make it “pretty”, that’s just fine and dandy.
-Tony
Ooops, I only gave a penny and a half. Here’s the other half-cent:
If a visitor is browsing with a non-CSS browser (or if you’re CSS layout is incompatible with ver. 4 browsers so you’re loading your style sheets using @import), a CSS calendar will make absolutely no sense whatsoever. In fact, it’ll be quite a mess…Try it…turn off your CSS and see what it looks like.
BTW, if you use Moz/Firebird/NS7, you can install the PNH Developer’s Toolbar, which is a super-duper, fine and dandy plugin. It gives you simple toolbar access to toggling CSS on/off, images on/off, outlining block level elements, outlining table cells, submitting any web page to the different validators, and more. I use it TONS when trying out new designs, and it’s kinda fun to see if other people’s sites validate, and what they look like with styles turned off…
-Tony
Anonymous
re: http://archivist.incutio.com/viewlist/css-discuss/35082
My sentiments, exactly!
BTW, the example calendars from that article (used to illustrate why it’s not a good idea), look like this without the style sheet:
February 2003
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
March 2003
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Not too pretty, huh?
Yes, I had already read Myers comments about six weeks ago. I actually did this without referring back his example — wanted to see if I had picked up enough of CSS and various browser bugs to make it work… 😉
And yes, tables have their use. However, my site probably dies horribly with non-css browsers in the first place. I’m making some basic assumptions about my potential readership. 🙂 So, having the calendar as CSS doesn’t hurt in the slightest, where everything else about the site would have broken…
There is already a side discussion about the usefulness of the calendar as it exists. I guess I am likely to dump it at some point, but as I continue to expand my CSS knowledge and familiarity with the guts of WP, this was a great new task.
The only thing I don’t like about it is I was unable to get a larger block size around the days, so that those that are links are full-cell-sized like the table version. I think the solution is either to add a span to force the size (a’s don’t seem to take width/height css), or change to spans exclusively like Myer uses, rather than the list elements I used (a list makes sense, as a month is a structured list… actually, in a sense, I should have used an ol instead of ul…).
Anyway, it’s up on my site if people want to check it out. Just reverified xhtml, but css verify is failing (hate that!) with no useful message. And it’s not the calendar! 😉
=d
David,
Have you worked on your CSS since your last post? Your site verifies CSS now!
Craig.
Yep. It was a copyright symbol pasted in instead of the ampersand-ed construct. I wish the verifier(s) would tell the exact non-UTF8 character that is problematic…
=d
The only thing I don’t like about it is I was unable to get a larger block size around the days, so that those that are links are full-cell-sized like the table version. I think the solution is either to add a span to force the size (a’s don’t seem to take width/height css)
Did you try setting the CSS for your a tags to display: block?
I thought I had, but I’ll definitely try again when I get home tonight. I think that’s the only missing ‘feature’ of my CSS implementation… Well, I don’t know that for a fact — but since I’m hooked in through the normal calendar php function(s), I should generate whatever the old code could. 😉
=d
