Overlapping text on some sites

[Grafiti4u]

I noticed in some websites, the text seems to overlap each other, or it runs over a picture or image. If you veiw this page in Mozzilla, you will see what I mean under the "Product Details" title:

http://www.pixelmill.com/(qoksdcl34...aspx?PID=4f8054f7-06ac-40d0-aaa7-9e517622e48e

If you view this page in IE, the words "Product Type: FrontPage" seem to run underneath the "Product Details" blue bar.

My question is, what is causing this? Are they using layers or CSS tables? I opened a 2 column layout CSS template posted on the About site to see how it was built. It looked like layers, and they didn't move when the page was scaled. Is this what causes the overlappeing text issue?

I have used CSS for font sizing and colors, but never for layouts. Is this somethng that would be valuable to learn? What would the advantages be to using CSS for table layout design?

THanks for any insight!

KRisti

 

[zkiller]

Both dhtml layers as well as CSS are displayed differently in IE and Firefox. To avoid such issues you would create individual CSS files for IE and Firefox which would be loaded depending on the users browser.

As for the advantages of doing your layouts/positioning with CSS instead of conventional tables. To be honest, I don't really know, but the recent trend seems to be to avoid using tables all together.

Personally, I don't use CSS for positioning. I guess I am rather old fashioned in my methods and like my tables just as they are. If it ain't broke, why fix it.

 

[Grafiti4u]

I'm with you, ZKiller! I love to use tables. I am curious why the recent trend is to avoid tables - what is the problem with using them? I have been a designer for about 8 years now. Sometimes I feel I am not up on the latest things, that maybe I could be doing something better or easier - that is why I asked about using CSS in layouts.

But I agree with you on your last point - if it ain't broke don't fix it! And I know if I started using some fancy CSS layouts - I would be on this board asking everyone "My CSS table is broken - how do I fix it??"

But if you know why the trend is to avoid tables - I sure would be interested to know why. THanks!

Kristi

 

[StephanieCordray]

Personally, I don't use CSS for positioning. I guess I am rather old fashioned in my methods and like my tables just as they are. If it ain't broke, why fix it.

I don't think it's old fashioned. I think it's just plain common sense. Just because something's new doesn't mean it's better and the fact that they can't seem to get it together for cross browser compatibility proves that.

What's wrong with using tables and css for the rest of it? divs aren't any cleaner for search engines. often you still put tables in the divs so sometimes you add more tags than you take away.


But then, I am old so maybe it is old fashioned.

 

[DLPerry]

Someone once said something like:

"The only people who care about the source code of a design are other designers."

IMHO - you can be a 'designers designer', or a 'clients designer'.
It has been my experience that the latter pays better.

I know I used to hear a lot of talk about how using CSS for layout, etc. would help with SEO by getting the non-content type 'code' off the page. However, at SES Chicago - Vanessa Fox (Google) indicated otherwise - stating that Google doesn't care whether you have a lot of 'code' in your page or not - their spiders and crawls will get the info they want - regardless.

 

[StephanieCordray]

Someone once said something like:

IMHO - you can be a 'designers designer', or a 'clients designer'.
It has been my experience that the latter pays better.

Google doesn't care whether you have a lot of 'code' in your page or not - their spiders and crawls will get the info they want - regardless.

That's about the size of it.

Sometimes I do wonder how they grab content. I know on a couple of sites, I've had referrals for search terms that have absolutely nothing to do with the sites and are not in my keywords, either.

 

[zkiller]

IMHO - you can be a 'designers designer', or a 'clients designer'.
It has been my experience that the latter pays better.

very well put.