I’m still struggling with CSS. I use it lots, the vast majority of problems that I have with are due to browser implementations of the standards, particularly in doing different things for IE PC and the rest of the world. However, there are some things that CSS makes too tricky. I believe that most of them are tricky because CSS is a document language and many of the sites I’m trying to build are application interfaces. I’ve been told this by members of the www-style list. I don’t think it’s enough to just have a document language for making web sites. I think that the reason that CSS layout is being adopted so slowly is that it fails to give designers the toolkit they need to make their jobs easier.

To this end I’m trying to put together a plan of action. I’d like to make friends who feel similarly and are eloquent and informed enough to argue the point on the lists and come up with alternatives (this doesn’t include me yet :-). At the moment, I’d like to put together a list of 5 layouts that are essential to the web and hard to do in CSS. So far I have the 3-col layout with content above and flowed properly below (e.g. Hype) and the content block centered to the browser window (e.g. Hype’s front page). If you have more please send them in.

I wrote to www-style I mentioned these two layouts and said that I thought that CSS’s toolbox was off-kilter. I got two replies. One discussed a method of centering in CSS which is tricksy and has bugs, the other suggested using CSS table properties like display:table;, which seems to be back at square one. The second reply also said “CSS *is* a document language”. This is fair enough, but I think that’s the problem. OK CSS can’t do what I want, fine, but I need something that can.