Summary

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Designers desperately want pixel-level layout control of Web pages and support for fonts. Although HTML does not provide a great deal of support for layout, it really wasn't meant to. While it is easy to say that people shouldn't use HTML or even XHTML to lay out pages, the fact of the matter is that they wanted, and needed, to do so. In the past, there was no other possibility: CSS simply wasn't available and even now that it is, old habits die hard. The need for improved page design gave rise to the occasional abuse of HTML elements, "hacks" like the invisible pixel trick, and the rise of proprietary tags such as <spacer> .

Fortunately, today most of these tricks are no longer necessary and CSS can generally be used for simple layout improvements. However, despite the improvement in layout capabilities, fonts are still an open issue in HTML. Downloadable fonts still haven't hit the mainstream, but hopefully someday better fonts will become a reality on the Web. The next chapter presents tables that make it possible to create fairly precise layouts using HTML. However, it will also reveal that many of the problems raised in this chapter continue with tables, and will only diminish as style sheets continue to become more prevalent .

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