18 comments

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  Brett Terpstra

  2 years ago

  There are more than just purist reasons for demanding separation of presentation and content layers. Accessibility demands that the markup remain purely semantic. The web is too littered with sites that use tables to hold together layouts that could be accomplished just fine with proper knowledge of CSS. The biggest obstacle to overcome is inconsistent rendering between browsers, which does take some tweaking but is worth the effort, in my opinion. I've skinned most of my sites several times in the last year, and I just overhauled my blog for fun, and I did it in half an hour. On the other hand, I struggled through setting up a design for a CRELoaded site that used an excess of tables and put 10 hours into making a terrible design that could have been prevented if the software put out semantic markup to begin with. The arguments for standards are pretty strong.
  
  Tables should be relegated to holding tabular data. We need to learn to design without them. CSS Beauty, Zengarden, CSS-website and others contain plenty of proof that the web no longer needs table based designs to produce beautiful layouts.
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  Brett Terpstra

  2 years ago

  Sorry, my address was submitted wrong on the last post... just in case you were going to follow it ;-).
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  Ross Johnson

  2 years ago

  I agree with Brett Completely -
  
  Most arguements I see for tables simply come back to the fact that they are "easier." However, as you learn the techniques and methods for using CSS layout you find that not only is it quicker and easier to develop sites in CSS (that render properly in all browsers), you can also achive several other very important results as well.
  
  Try making a table based layout that can be switched between one and two collumn's for easier reading and visibilty.
  
  Try creating a site that has the content structured for screen reading/search engines in terms of code, but visually is arranged astheticly.
  
  I have yet to run into a situation where I wanted to develop a design that I could do in tables but not in CSS. You simply need to learn the methods and techniques.
  
  CSS-P Does work if you take the time to learn it, and it will only get more and more adopted. Those who have already been using it will have a significant advantage over those who will have to adapt when tables are finally, and absolutely put to rest.
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  Cyberlogi

  2 years ago

  Horizontal alignment is easy in css, however vertical alignment is not. I use tables to handle vertical alignment. I've seen a couple of work arounds, but none that are very elegant.
  
  Display tables in the css for non-IE browsers and playing with the padding/margins in IE.
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  Myrddin Emrys

  2 years ago

  For complex layouts that do not work well cross browser (like the dreaded three column layout), I see nothing at all wrong with a table to force the columns left and right.
  
  I use CSS for everything else, including all layout within a page. But when I need to look up a painstakingly researched HACK to get a column layout working in CSS across multiple browsers, then it no longer becomes a solution... it's part of the problem. Tables work in more browsers, are far easier to get working correctly without hacks, and do not need to be 'researched' prior to using.
  
  I use CSS for all in-column formatting, because it does this well and without requiring hacks. But for column layout CSS is not yet mature enough to do this easily. It requires too many hoops for me to be comfortable with it. When CSS3 comes out, perhaps with better column layout features (and hopefully with better browser compatibility), I'll look again.
  
  Myrddin
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  Fred Brunel

  2 years ago

  I can only agreed Myrddin.
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  Brett Terpstra

  2 years ago

  Actually, it's generally IE that's not mature enough for CSS. Anyway, I certainly didn't expect to convince Frederic to change his ways after one comment, nor did I expect him to agree with me. I will simply cite the dozens of coroporate sites that are having the good sense to switch over to pure CSS layouts (3 columns and all) as shining examples of good, clean web design. Personally, I don't care if a site validates or not, I just like semantic markup, completely free of design elements.
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  YodaYid

  2 years ago

  I think we're at a stage where a growing percentage of designers will dismiss your work if they see tables used in the source code. Table proponents generally don't care one way or another - if anything, they're impressed by pure CSS layouts. So for the sake of job security, if nothing else, I recommend moving away from tables ASAP.
  
  That said, I still use them (I'm not a designer, though) ;-)
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  Fred Brunel

  2 years ago

  Job security? I'm not a designer either... And I don't think using table is a sign of bad skills at all... I would tend to prefer hiring people working in a pragmatic way rather than people spending a lot of time in tuning a CSS.
  
  Since most clients change their mind often in the early stage of a project -- it's very likely that the site will have to change drastically -- I prefer to be pragmatic and reach my goal as fast as possible. After that, I agree to spend some time to rework on the site...
  
  Actually, your view change quickly as soon as you have a business site in production... Better have to most pragmatic tools under your hands.
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  YodaYid

  2 years ago

  I didn't say using tables was a sign of bad skills - simply that the trend is moving away from tables, and it could eventually be seen as a liability. I'm thinking of less of clients (who, in my experience, have no idea what's going on behind the scenes anyway), and more of contractors who make the sites (and hire the designers).
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  Mike

  2 years ago

  >> will simply cite the dozens of coroporate sites that are having the good sense to switch over to pure CSS
  
  So those people that don't switch have poor sensibilities? Interesting. And here I thought struggling through hack after hack and conditional after conditional to get a 3 column layout working in CSS without having it cave in on itself under anything but pristine laboratory conditions didn't make sense. Guess I need to start getting more sleep at night.
  
  CSS - great for flexible application of style. Tables - great for dependable global framing. It's hard to argue real-world results, no matter how hard the CSS Jihadists try.
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  Mike

  2 years ago

  Also... it's interesting to note that you have no reservations using Joomla, which utilizes tables at length to create predictable cross-browser interiors for the modules.
  
  There *must* be a CMS out there that satisfies your lust for table-less layouts, even from what's generated by the engine itself... no? I wonder why not.. hmmm...
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  john

  2 years ago

  Okay, so maybe I'm just being anecdotal, but I did a quick search and found a hell of a lot of sites using tables.
  
  Amazon.com
  Ebay.com
  Linux.org
  Apple.com
  CNN.com
  NYTimes.com
  Google.com
  
  Maybe we should boycott these companies for supporting such terrible web design standards.
  
  Kudos to Fred for speaking up.
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  document management

  3 months ago

  well for me having a simply layout is great, specially google =), but if you visit my site you will see that it really has its own layout.
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  Fred Brunel

  2 years ago

  Most commercial web sites are using table because it's easy to maintain coherency between browsers and because efforts and costs of development are low.
  
  That's what we call constraints. It tooks years for browsers vendor to stabilize tables rendering and it will take years to do the same for CSS. In the meantime, we can still make sites with standards in mind but with embracing production constraints.
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  Charlie

  2 years ago

  As someone who has just put a toe in the water of web design using tables and CSS in Dreamweaver (gulp), I must confess that I find the puritanical tone of the ultra CSS fundamentalists quite scary. So, it's quite nice to find someone suggesting a little flexibility of attitude.
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  Jeff

  6 months ago

  boo! youre evil too! :)
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  Roland Pater

  5 days ago

  "Float elements are not about layout, their primary use is for a block to float inside a text paragraph — like for images in a word processor document."
  
  There you hit the nail on the head.
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