Limitations of CSS
There are a few areas that CSS1 does not address, and therefore are not covered in detail in this book; some of these topics are touched upon in Chapter 10. Of course, even a full-blown CSS implementation, covering all of CSS1 and CSS2, would not meet every request from every page designer in the world. It’s worth going through some of the boundaries of CSS.
Limited Initial Scope
When you get right down to it, CSS1 is not an overly complicated specification. The entire thing can be printed out in less than 100 pages, and it contains about 70 properties. It is still a very sophisticated and subtle engine, but some areas of web design were omitted from CSS1.
In the first place, CSS1 had almost nothing to say about tables. You might think that you can set margins on table cells, for example—and a web browser might even let you do so—but margins should not be applied to table cells under any circumstances. CSS2 introduced a new set of properties and behaviors for dealing with tables, but as of this writing, few if any of these are supported.
Tip
To a certain degree, the omission of tables from CSS1 says a great deal about the feeling many have that tables should never be used to lay out pages. It is felt that floated and positioned elements should do all of the work tables used to do, and more. Whether this premise can be supported is not a discussion I intend to undertake here.
In a similar way, CSS1 contains nothing in the way of positioning. Sure, it’s possible to ...