Which style to choose?

[yurikhan]

Hello everybody. I’m in need of an advice choosing a style.

I will try to summarize what I’m looking for.

• It shall produce semantic HTML. The journal title in , post titles in , no tables in sight whatsoever. Structural
  s where applicable, with a rich assortment of classes available for styling via CSS.
• Ideally, XHTML 1.0 Strict or HTML 4.01 Strict

Comments

[dandelion]

Very, very few of the system styles, if any at all, serve a Strict doctype- I can't actually think of any offhand. I am going to make a guess that there are no styles which do all three of the following:
- have a Strict doctype
- produce headings as you specify them (why should a header be h2 when it can be better defined through a class, simply because semantically h2 follows h1?)
- have no tables.

Your best bets are probably Tranquility II (which I know the LJ user team do change things on, because I wrote the last code fix for it), and Variable Flow. Both are Transitional, with the former XHTML 1.0 and the latter HTML 4.01, and both favour divs.

[yurikhan]

why should a header be h2 when it can be better defined through a class

Because they are, umm… headers? And whatever style rules can be defined for a class, can also be defined for h2.

Until users stop using deprecated transitional markup in posts, it will not be feasible to declare strict doctypes. But I’m fine with transitional, as long as (1) the declaration is present and valid, so as to trigger the standard compliance mode in browsers, and (2) presentational markup in the templates is kept to minimum.

I have looked at Tranquility II and the code looks good. Variable Flow uses tables for userpic positioning, though.

[ephi]

why should a header be h2 when it can be better defined through a class, simply because semantically h2 follows h1?

I agree with yurikhan. Semantic is to provide meanings, not just a matter of h2 follows h1.

If it's a heading we should wrap it with header tags. This also helps search engines index your blog better. And any style rules that applied to a class can also be defined for any header tags. (And it saves a few bytes if you reduce alot of classes here and there, especially for the bandwidth deprived users like me.)

And when you wait for the page to load, CSS usually slower, while waiting, it's hard to look for which one is header and which one is entry. ;)

For better application on semantics:
http://www.simplebits.com/bits/simplequiz/

[masterslacker]

I'd say try Smooth Sailing. The only thing it doesn't do on your list is use h1 and h2 tags, but otherwise I know it does complete CSS replacement as well as custom date/time formats through the custom options wizard, which is free to anyone using it. Try it out. Let me know what you think.

[kunzite1]

i second the use of SS for this. it's definitely the closest.

it has css handles for everything.

[ephi]

I think you're out of luck, so far, there are none that would satisfy all in your list.

#1: Tables will still be needed especially for calendar and form. Calendar is a tabular data, so it's natural for it to be in a table, but the way some layouts output the calendar itself is questionable. The form for posting comment is not editable, even if you got a paid account. :(

#2: None has Strict declaration, because your friends page will be filled with unstandard tags, anyways. And tag is using ^^;

#3: Flexible Squares (too many divs and sidebar first-entries later), Tranquility 2 (too many divs and sidebar first-entries later), Bloggish (too many divs and heaps of unnecessary classes), Smooth Sailing (too many divs and still using table in the userpic area), and Expressive (too many divs and weird use of definition list).

#4: I do not remember any style that can do this. But it's programmable if you have paid account.

I've been in your shoe, but I've come to term with what LJ offers. But, if you want to go further, next week it's

[av8rmike]

#4: [s2 Layouts by Feature] Changing Time Format.

I agree with you on the Expressive problems, which I blame on Vox's developers. ;) Trouble is, the elements are tied to the style sheets. With 175+ themes, any change to the elements necessitates changing 250-300 stylesheets, which I don't see happening anytime soon. Bloggish has the same problem, only not as many themes.

[ephi]

I cannot blame Vox developers because the tag was actually used over there.