With the new Relative Layout for pages, is the box model dead? I was using the box model for one of my sites, with great success. But I just re-did it using the relative page layout feature, and I can get valid XHTML 1.0 code and everything pretty much pixel-perfect.
There are some issues I’ve seen with the relative layout feature, such as if you are overlapping objects, but there are workarounds such as using the box model for just those items (boxes within boxes).
I’m really surprised at how well it works, and as I said, I can get XHTML 1.0 valid code using the W3C validator. I think this just made the old drag and drop that much more powerful.
I wouldn’t bank on the process being dead at all. Try using the RPL Action when there is lots of overlapping in a more complicated design.
Plus, I hope you understand what you’re doing with the Action. Meaning the actual process and being able to visually see how the items relate on the screen or else you haven’t developed as a designer but rather have gotten lazy as a developer.
Dan- I started hand-coding back in 1995 when AOL offered web site space for their customers. Yes, I hate to admit it, I had AOL once.
Anyway, I bought Freeway a couple years ago, and spent time with it, loved it, and got to learn a lot about CSS in the process. I then moved on to learn the box model techniques, and they helped me learn even more about design, and all the cool things you could after spending some time on your layout.
Then, 5.5 gave us the relative page layout. Pretty much everything I did with the box model (as I was using it) I was able to do with the RPL… only faster. As you have said, overlapping objects can get tricky at times, but for the most part, I don’t have to sacrifice design for the feature.
About being lazy, and I don’t take it as you personally are calling me lazy, but I’d welcome an action called “build entire site” and just click a button and have it design the site as I envisioned. Not that I expect that any time soon… But you could say someone is lazy for downloading a Freeway action, rather than designing something themselves. Same with classes and libraries if you are a programmer. Most times it isn’t cost effective or smart to reinvent the wheel. Most times, people have spent years building up libraries for you to use, so why not take advantage. That doesn’t mean you don’t know what is going on, it just means that you spend less time getting your desired results.
For people who want to learn the process of how all this stuff works, I would say don’t jump to RPL and call yourself a web designer. If you don’t know your DIV from your SPAN, you probably couldn’t solve real-world problems outside of Freeway.
Before RPL I actually went back to doing hand-code for a bit. But I really love the RPL feature and I’m going to use it whenever possible now.
Yes, you are. The RPL Action will ignore any items that are already relative positioned (such as inflow items in a box model layout) and convert any absolute positioned items to use relative positioning.
Joe
On 6 Dec 2010, at 13:38, John-Paul Kernot wrote:
As I understand it, the RPL feature and box model can co exist on a page. Am I understanding this correctly?
@Bryan Los - I wasn’t saying that anyone was lazy and I do agree with what you said. Often times people mix lazy with convenience (perhaps what my thoughts were at the time) and I always encourage people to understand what you’re doing before you say you’ve done it and then put yourself in a situation where you can’t.
The RPL action is great when it works out and I commend Softpress for making such a wonderful action.