On 6/13/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Myself, I never understood the point in it at all. Why do you ever want to clear floating elements? It creates ugly stretches of empty space. If you feel that you need it in some particular situation, then surely that is an indication that the floating elements are positioned badly, and using "clear:both" only adds to it by also positioning the section headers badly.
I use it frequently. The "ugly stretches of empty space" are often better than images crossing headings, images piling up on each other etc. And hell, that empty space might just inspire someone to fill it in :)
If there are too many images on the page, surely the page would look better if they were turned into a gallery or removed entirely, instead of stacking floating elements left and right.
As far as layout goes, to me an image gallery is a total abdication: "There's some text up there. There are some images down here". Images carefully chosen and well spaced out and laid out throughout the text is vastly preferable. Some principles I tend to follow, which obviously conflict:
- No images on the same level as a heading - Don't start paragraphs with images on the left - Alternate images on the left and right sides - Don't centre images except for large panoramas - Make high-quality, important images, bigger. Make diagrams smaller. - Make all image widths multiples of 50px. - Attempt to align images vertically. - Place images close to the most relevant text. - Start the article with a large (300px) image on the right hand side.
I would love some formal guidelines for the layout of images. Hell, some more formal guidelines for layout in general wouldn't go astray.
Steve