By Anonymous (not verified) on

In the theme "adc" the blocks, both left and right load first and the contents then. This is very good if the article is very long, it renders beatifully.

In the excellent xtemplate theme the the contents loads after the left block whereafter the right block is loaded, doesn't look good if the node is long and the right block is missing for the time it takes for the page to load, them wham.

Comments

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented

Or wait a minute, if Xtemplate is built with tables I guess you can't do anything about it?

al’s picture

al commented

Most people go to a page to read the content, not look at the blocks and things. It's therefore considered good practice, especially when doing CSS-compliant div-based layout, to have your content *first* and all your navigation, etc. last. This is particularly relevant when viewing the page on less capable browsers, which don't support the CSS formatting required to move the divs about, make them float: right, etc.,etc. E.g. in Lynx, not having to scroll to the bottom of the page to read the content is usually a Good Thing. (Apart from when you're trying to delve through six levels of navigation menus, at which point it's a Very Bad Thing.)

The ADC theme breaks this rule because the CSS is easier to not do that, and because I was lazy with it. :)

So anyway, I'm inclined to say that with div-based things, the content *should* be first. As you point out, xtemplate being a table-based theme, there's not much you can do about that sort of thing anyway.