ugly and slow

There are ways to cut down on insults while still being tactful and respectful. That is what I meant by the customer service agent idea -- not that you should just sit by and let things happen, necessarily.

My point about valid code is that if your HTML is properly semantic, centered around content with all presentational markup removed to a CSS file, it makes it easier for Google to determine the structure of your page, and thus give proper weight to the content. Where did I get this from? I probably read a blog post somewhere about it at some point, but it's really just common sense.

I understood what you are saying. What happens is that the aggressive tone that some users are employing did not start here. They started being rude many months ago in threads related with the design contest. Until then I was being tactful as you suggest. Unfortunately it seems it did not help.

People continue to be aggressive and offensive because they are not getting it that will not change things. So, I decided to intervene here to prevent continued insults.

As for using semantic HTML, that is not quite viable. The problem is HTML was not meant for that since the beginning. Browsers also do not implement CSS 3, which would eventually solve some of the problems.

For instance, if you want to make the navigation bar be a row of blocks all with the same height regardless of the content, there is no way of achieving that with CSS 2.1. You can set the height to a fixed value, but that would not make it independent of the content. That is why tables are used to layout the navigation bars.

Another example is the use of center tag to center the content in the page. According to the current theme designer, the center tag had to be used to make it look the same in all browsers.

Regarding part 1: Ah, ok.

part 2: I'm not sure I agree about semantic HTML not being viable. Many sites do it quite successfully. WordPress, with a well-written theme, is very semantic.

I know that without CSS 3, sometimes you have to add a little extra markup to achieve the design effect you want. So maybe 100% semantic is an unreasonable goal -- but I think it's possible to get fairly close.

Regarding the navigation bar: what would happen if you set "overflow:hidden" on each block? Would that not make them independent of the content?

Regarding the center tag: the designer says it was needed to look the same in "all browsers". What exactly does he mean by that? Is he still testing sites on IE 5.5 or something?? As far as I know, all the current major browsers support wrapping the whole page in a <div> with "margin: 0 auto;" set on it.

The point is not whether being semantic or not possible or is it a good idea. The point is whether certain layout constructs are feasible with CSS 2.1.

If I got you right overflow: hidden would make the content be clipped if it exceeds a given height. In that case that was not the purpose.

The purpose is that all navigation bar cells have the same height, keeping the content of all of them visible.

Tables solve the problem because the height of each row will be adjusted according to the height of the tallest cell.

As for the use of the center tag, I am just telling you what the designer told me. I am not definding her point. I did not test it myself to see what browsers supported it or not. If you want to know, you may ask her directly using the e-mail she provided in this blog article.