Re: shr - span elements with title attribute, tooltip?

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:39:58 +0200 Richard Riley <rileyrg@googlemail.com> wrote: 

RR> Nightmare times. What was "broken" was the reality level of many CSS
RR> advocates a couple of years ago who somewhat smugly informed everyone to
RR> use CSS rather than tables for "simple" layouts and point blankly
RR> refused any help to those trying to use tables for cross browser layout
RR> "working solutions".

<rant> 

I think 99% of things about HTML, CSS, and web browsers are
either ridiculous or broken.  The good bits (in SGML's domain) are
basically Lisp without `eval'.

Specifically regarding layouts, it's sad that the only layout management
in HTML (without Javascript) is the equivalent of Java's FlowLayout.
Tables are sort of a GridBagLayout, but the idiocy inherent in the
inability (in the early days of HTML) to design and implement a sensible
layout manager for HTML is simply staggering.  Now, of course, it's too
late to make HTML anything but a presentation layer for Javascript.

And then we have CSS, the out-of-band, braindead solution that can
either go inline or separately and which uses selectors and multiple
classes to achieve amazing complexity.  Where HTML is at least a data
language, CSS is a crazy mish-mash of direct instructions, inheritance,
browser hacks, and unmodifiable stylesheets you hope will work but
usually don't.

</rant>

Ted

p.s. Yes, I realize the irony of using SGML tags above.