Confused!

CSS layout is confusing at best. I've been reading books lately on using web standard solutions. I read a book that states that floated layouts are an acceptable and standard solution for layout.

I read another book that says don't use floated layouts because they are inconsistent in browsers. This book says that positioned layouts are the standard. In the same paragraph it tells me that I need a special javascript snippet to make a footer stay below positioned column and content areas.

That doesn't seem real standard to me?

What's a guy to do? Floated layouts are easy. Positioned require me to use this script to make it look right. Any thoughts on this?

I read another book that says don't use floated layouts because they are inconsistent in browsers.

What book would that be and how old was it ?? Floated layouts are rendered pretty consistently across all the CURRENT crop of browsers. Positioned layouts are NOT the standard at all, and you can run into some major problems with them.

You don't need a javascript snippet to keep a footer at the bottom - you need a proper layout - that's NOT positioned.

Answer ? Don't use positioned layouts, floats are pretty much the norm.

Sounds like a book on Dreamweaver.

www.w3schools.com // Great!

Originally Posted by LadynRed

What book would that be and how old was it ??

It's a fairly new book by a well known designer. I will definitely re-read the chapter, but from what the author said, floats are bad - positioning is the best method.

Originally Posted by LadynRed

You don't need a javascript snippet to keep a footer at the bottom - you need a proper layout - that's NOT positioned.

Inman Position Clearing - That's what I was thinking. What if a browser has JS turned off? Won't that break your layout?

Originally Posted by LadynRed

Answer ? Don't use positioned layouts, floats are pretty much the norm.

I will. Thanks for the insight. I definitely see the benefit in writing semantic code, so I wanted to make sure I was doing my layouts properly.

Well, that article by Shaun was written 2 years ago. Eric Meyer weighed in and seemed to find it interesting. Floats may not be perfect, but I'm not comfortable relying on javascript to make sure my pages render properly.

You don't need javascript for layout. Do a google search for
css layouts
or look at the sticky threads at the top of this Forum.