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Tables or Css?


ben3001

Tables or Css  

39 members have voted

  1. 1. Tables or Css

    • Tables
      6
    • Css
      33


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Having said all that, I think a more appropriate poll would have been to ask it in this manner:What do you prefer:a.) Creating sites in CSS and writing CSS hacks to accommodate browsers and operating systemsb.) Creating Sites with tables and be ostersized by fellow coding extremists.c.) With an emphasis more on CSS and less on tables, using them both can be more effective than either one alone.I tend to fit more in the [c] group of people.:)

i definately agree with you there. a page should not consist of just tables, the basic design can be the tables, but the css used for the theme/style of the page.i know its not very often but i remember reading somewhere you can disable style sheets. just say someone did disable viewing style sheets in there browser, your site would not look the same.however if the sites frame work was bulit up via tables your site would always look how you want it no matter what style sheet you use.
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i know its not very often but i remember reading somewhere you can disable style sheets. just say someone did disable viewing style sheets in there browser, your site would not look the same.however if  the sites frame work was bulit up via tables your site would always look how you want it no matter what style sheet you use.

Firefox and IE could do this with either a Web Developer plug-in (like I do), or use user's stylesheet specified manually.For IE, go to Tools>Internet Options...>Accessability...There, checking the proper checkboxes, a user could make a change for CSS's settings.For FF... I don't know how without extension actually.Opera has such built-in and easy to find functionality. Just click on the glasses on the right of the google bar and you'll open up accessability options. The user is allowed to zoom the page and to turn between Author Mode and User Mode. User Mode of course defines a way to apply your own stylesheet or use predefined such.And damn, no. The fact that your page looks exactly the same with or without stylesheet is exactly the reason why table design are bad (had another word in mind, but was censored), and CSS layouts are better. The user is allowed to adjust the presentation to serve his needs.One more thing... we are talking about CSS layouts, not the overall usage of CSS. Everyone agrees that CSS is good for fonts and styles, but not everyone agrees about it being used for layout purposes. Of course, if you're in a hurry and don't care for CSS Layouts' advantages, of course you'll use table layouts, but to use or not use CSS at all is not the point here.
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OK, notwithstanding the fact that both of you apparently automatically assume that I'm completely incompetent and have no clue what I'm talking about, no, I do not have an example right now. My post was in response to a site I was looking at, and I can't recall what that was. I will be sure to let you know the next time I run across such a site.The reason that the sites render slowly is because developers don't take the time to develop a decent layout, they just throw floating divs all over the place and call it a layout. At least using tables to lay out the structure of the page forces the developer to think about the layout and make choices, instead of simply throwing 10 divs on top of each other. Is that the fault of CSS? No, it's not. Is it the fault of incompetent developers? Yes, it is. Does CSS make it easier to be incompetent? Yes, it does.On the topic of CSS positioning - CSS has never had good support for this. Before the align attribute was deprecated, I had very few problems getting a page to look exactly like the image that the designer gave me. Granted, it wasn't all that easy to update, these were the early days, but that's the way it was done and it worked just fine. It seems that the W3C is having fun saying that 1) now everyone has to use CSS to be in compliance and 2) CSS is not going to support everything that it's supposed to replace.What I mean by footer positioning - the goal is to have a footer either 1) appear at the bottom of the screen, if there is not not enough content to fill up the screen or 2) appear at the end of the content, if the content takes up more than one screen. Regardless of whether or not this is *possible* to do, it is not as easy as it should be. I don't know what the W3C thinks people make web sites for, but there are some very basic things that they left out, including things like that, vertical alignment, etc. It's like the W3C totally ignored them. Case in point: horizontal alignment. Sure, there's a 'text-align' property. But I think the argument goes, at least with tables, that they should only be used for specifically what they are intended for (tabular data, etc). So clearly 'text-align' only applies to text (or else why qualify it with 'text'), so where is the normal horizontal alignment property? Are we expected not to align anything but text? That is what I mean when I'm saying that CSS leaves things out, like we are all supposed to have our pages conform to what the W3C thinks a web page should be.

What are you talking about??? Absolute positioning??? Absolute positioning is not what is meant by a CSS layout.
I'm glad we agree. I'll leave it up to you to explain that to the legion of web developers who are doing exactly that.
You need to face facts...someday you will have to change your code...why not now? W3C has laid out there guidelines for web standards and modern browsers are working toward full support of them.You won't be able to ignore them forever.
That's completely arrogant, I'm not ignoring anything. Quite the opposite, I'm trying to figure out how to do what I want to do using the 'new rules', and when it turns out that the new rules don't support what I want to do, what choice do I have? The W3C has always laid out their guidelines, and browser vendors have always chosen what to support, what not to support, and what to add of their own. Vendors are getting better about not doing that so much, but there's still a long way to go.As for why not change everything now? That's an easy answer. What if a year from now the 'next big thing' comes out, what then, do I change everything again, and wait another year? The fact is that browsers, IE in particular, don't even support CSS to a decent degree, and I'm not going to go scrambling about to change everything when people are going to be using the exact same browser they were in 2001 to look at the damn page. I've got better things to do than to update my codebase every time the W3C decides to publish a document. I don't work for the W3C. Once CSS has attained a satisfactory degree of market penetration and actually has good support behind it, I will be much less reluctant to depend on my clients having the necessary software to look at their intranet, but I'm not going to use some newer technology and expect software from 2001 to be able to use it. I don't think that IE6 got the W3C's memo about tableless layouts, and I'm not going to sit around and field support calls from clueless users because of CSS. All of my pages validate, all of my pages look the way I want them to, and all of my pages work. What's the problem?
Nicely put fella I am tired of people squeeling about CSS layouts just cos they carnt be bothered to learn something new.Makes you wonder why they are even in this trade really as things in this trade are changing all the time.I am supprised people with this opinion even use computers, I mean what was wrong with the type writer A?
Are you really that ignorant? Do you think you know me? Apparently you do, because you are implying I don't belong in this industry. You think the issue here is because I don't want to learn about CSS? You are right about one thing though - things are changing all the time. Excuse me if I'm too busy to jump on the newest bandwagon as soon as it rolls up.I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I just get a little irritated when people younger than myself accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about, when the irony is that you do not know what you are talking about (since you're talking about my qualifications).
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a good start would be to stop calling everyone ignorant, and chances are if you have to say "im not trying to start a flame war" than your post is to agressive."What if a year from now the 'next big thing' comes out,"something new wont come out to replace css simply because css was designed for exactly what it does. the only reason its a new "rule" to use css for layouts is because tables were NEVER designed to be used to make layouts. Even more to the root is the fact that HTML was never designed to make sites look good. Its a structural language <h1> welcome to some site</h1><p>some info</p><h2>a content section</h2>etc etcit was never suppose to be used to create pretty sites its a barebones language for displaying information, not styling it. Learn the new standard, if you already know it then stop complaining and get back to work

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I'm not calling everyone ignorant, I'm calling the one guy who made assumptions about my qualifications arrogant.Hey man, I'm not complaining, I'm defending my position, which is that tables and CSS both deserve to be used. Neither is an all-encompassing standard. CSS began as a "style" specification, for easy manipulation of colors, fonts, etc, and all of sudden it is the medium of choice for structure? That's fine, but I'm going to wait until there is across-the-board support in my client base before I start requiring my users to use a browser that supports the latest spec. I can't tell some CEO that however many thousand employees he has need to upgrade their software because of reasons he will never understand. That's just not what I want to do with my time.The fact is that browsers are behind the times, and that's the way things go. Browser vendors are scrambling to implement CSS2 or CSS2.1 (IE7 will have full support for CSS2? Really? And Vista will have a revolutionary new file structure too, right?) while the W3C is soliciting input on CSS3. I don't expect the vendors and the W3C to hold eachother's hands and produce everything at the same time, but just the same, web developers can't be expected to jump on every bandwagon as soon as the W3C says jump, because the fact is that the browsers that people are using are so much older than the current specs, that it doesn't really matter if we follow the current spec or the last spec.And yes, my posts get a little agressive sometimes, but only when someone starts personally insulting me. Excuse me, but I have a problem with that.

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On the topic of CSS positioning - CSS has never had good support for this.  Before the align attribute was deprecated, I had very few problems getting a page to look exactly like the image that the designer gave me.  Granted, it wasn't all that easy to update, these were the early days, but that's the way it was done and it worked just fine.  It seems that the W3C is having fun saying that 1) now everyone has to use CSS to be in compliance and 2) CSS is not going to support everything that it's supposed to replace.

The margin property has existed scince the birth of CSS. To centerly align an element, you simply use margin: 0 auto; and for the sake of old browsers compatability use text-align:center;. And the float property (also part of CSS1 specs) is most widely used for left and right aligning, though it isn't exactly meant for that.
What I mean by footer positioning - the goal is to have a footer either 1) appear at the bottom of the screen, if there is not not enough content to fill up the screen or 2) appear at the end of the content, if the content takes up more than one screen.  Regardless of whether or not this is *possible* to do, it is not as easy as it should be.  I don't know what the W3C thinks people make web sites for, but there are some very basic things that they left out, including things like that, vertical alignment, etc.  It's like the W3C totally ignored them.

Yeah, right... there is a vertical alignment in CSS. You just didn't looked for it. Here is what O'REILLY CSS reference says:
  vertical-align                                                                                                                                                                            NN 6  IE4  CSS  1                                                                                                                                                                                              Inherited: No  There are two sets of values for this attribute, and they affect different characteristics of the inline element to which they are applied. The major point of reference is that an inline  element has its own line box to hold its content. Two values,       top  and  bottom , affect how the text is rendered within the line box. The settings bring the text flush with the top or  bottom of the box, respectively.  Application of this attribute is not limited to inline spans of text. Images and tables can use this style attribute. All other settings for         vertical-align   affect how the entire element  box is vertically positioned relative to text content of the parent element. The default value,         baseline , means that the line box is positioned such that the baselines of both the line  box's text (or very bottom of an element such as an        img ) and the parent text are even. That's how an       em element can be its own line box element but still look as though it flows on  the same baseline as its containing     p element. The rest of the attribute's constant values (and percentage or length) determine where the element's line box is set with respect to   Percentages are calculated with respect to the line height.   vertical-align:       vertAlignType      |  length    |  percentage  Value  Two constant values apply to alignment of text within the element itself:        bottom   |top .   bottom  |text-top  . A value of  baseline  keeps the baseline of the element and parent element line even. A value of            middle   aligns the vertical midpoint of the element  with the baseline plus one-half the x-height of the parent element's font. Values of          sub and  super  shift the element into position for subscript and superscript but do   the element with the bottom of the font line of the parent element text; a value of          text-top   does the same with the tops of the element and parent.   baseline   span.sup {vertical-align: super; text-size: smaller}  Applies To  Inline elements only.  Object Model Reference  [window.]document.getElementById(             "elementID    ").style.verticalAlign
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I'm asking that all posts on this topic begin to take a little less personal position. Please do not make me read every line to figure out who said what to whom and who needs a slap on the wrist.Just be cordial and respectful - make your points and support them with facts. Any more personal attacks will have to be dealt with. This means PREVIEW YOUR POST and try to consider how it might be interpreted - by anyone.Thanks.

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And yes, my posts get a little agressive sometimes, but only when someone starts personally insulting me. Excuse me, but I have a problem with that.
Well I think you are misunderstanding as I certainly was not insulting you...I can't speak for anyone else's intentions, I was as you put it, defending my position. Personally I have made my views known as have you and we clearly disagree so, that is that.You make it sound like their is a different verison of CSS every 6 months. I takes years to develope the specs and then present them. And no they are not ment to be used the second they are available. They are provided as a standard for browser developers to live upto.And yes IE6 has major issues, it does not support CSS2, thats because it was released 6 or 7 years ago...of course there is a lot that it is behind on (I don't know why MS waited so long for a new versoin) but htey are releaing IE7...the betas have proved that it will handle CSS2...beyond that I am not sure if it will be as good as FF (probably not) but it is a good start to help devlopers write standards compliant code.As for your bandwagon comments...it is a matter of the technology fitting your needs or making your job easier, thats what I look for in each technology. You have clearly jumped on the MS haters bandwagon. No, I don't think they are the best but they have some great products and windows is a good OS. There are plenty I hate about Linux and Mac too and I don't like everything about windows but that doesn't mean it is useless.If you can show me I can play Cod2 and all the new games on Linux or MAc, or that I can write .Net code on anything but Windows, I'll ditch windows now
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Are you really that ignorant?  Do you think you know me?  Apparently you do, because you are implying I don't belong in this industry.  You think the issue here is because I don't want to learn about CSS?  You are right about one thing though - things are changing all the time.  Excuse me if I'm too busy to jump on the newest bandwagon as soon as it rolls up.I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I just get a little irritated when people younger than myself accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about, when the irony is that you do not know what you are talking about (since you're talking about my qualifications).

I never knocked your qualifications how could I when I dont even have any, what I did say was most people who moan about using CSS for layouts havent even learnt how to do it basicly.And went further to say I am supprised people who have this opinion are even in this trade as it is a trade that is changing all the time.At no point there was there any direct attack at you or your skills.What I was trying to get accross is if you have not learnt how to do something how can you knock its method?Which you even just admited too (The fact you dont have a good standard of CSS).But as I have mentioned before in this thread somewhere if you want to use tables for layout then that is your choice. But dont make out like we are in the wrong for learning new methods just cos you have not learnt them yet.Whats age got to do with out?If anything it is I who should be unhappy for you saying I am ignorant and dont know what I am talking about. (Though I am first to admit I dont) :) Chill out anyways fella what does it matter what others think? :)Especially young people. :)
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You have clearly jumped on the MS haters bandwagon.
I don't know where you got that from. Every computer I use runs Windows, I tried installing Debian on a really old set of hardware without a bootable CD-ROM drive and that basically spoiled my experience with Linux. Linux has major usability problems, once the community gets over itself and makes Linux accessible to people who don't want to spend days reading technical documentation or compiling their own drivers, then maybe I'll give it another look, but there's nothing driving me that direction. Macs seem to emphasize cuteness over everything else, something just turns me off about Macs. No offense to any Mac fanboys out there, I just don't really like using them.What I do hate about Microsoft is their project management. Vista hasn't even come out yet and it's already a failure, it's not going to live up to any of the hype that MS PR was spouting years ago. IE is just a dismal failure, it solidifed the MS monopoly, which is what they wanted it for (it succeeded there), but then they just decided to stop all development of it. And then they decided to pick it back up again. And they refuse to break backward compatibility on it. Usually I'm all for backward compatibility, but when the old version is already broken it doesn't make a lot of sense to make sure the new version is compatible with all the same bugs (or 'quirks', as the IE folk say). I'm just not holding out high hope for the Trident engine, full CSS2 support would be great, but I'll be impressed if they manage to support 60% of CSS2. They already stated that IE7 would not pass Acid2, and they stated that they are working on bugfixes first, and then making a list of the things people wants most from CSS second. They aren't on a rampage to make it all compliant, they are just starting to hear the screams of all the web developers out there and are taking notice. They can see a time when IE is not the major browser, so that's what kicked them in the pants and made them restart development on it. They aren't trying to make IE7 compliant, they are trying to stop the slide of IE marketshare. A new version every 6 years isn't really a great way to approach that, that is where Opera and Firefox destroy IE. Opera has a bittorrent client, an email client, an IRC client, and the IE team is trying to fix 6 year old bugs. I would like nothing better than to see IE go down in a ball of flame, it's the worst thing that's happened to web developers. Of course, one could also argue it's the best thing that's happened, but that's neither here nor there..
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I think how we got here was the arguement that not all browsers fully support CSS2 and that is one reason not to completely stop using tables.I think we are still, sort of, on topic, just focusing on one point at the moment.

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wo wo wo wo woooohey people i didnt mean to start a war... ill respond to one point i can particullary answer

And damn, no. The fact that your page looks exactly the same with or without stylesheet is exactly the reason why table design are bad (had another word in mind, but was censored), and CSS layouts are better. The user is allowed to adjust the presentation to serve his needs.
the point i making is not to design the whole site without using style sheets.Here is my example: http://medussa3.atspace.comAs you can see the site has been designed with tables, HOWEVER, the styles are being loaded from an external style sheet, everything from the font to the tables border colour.the point im trying to make is that, say someone did disable stylesheets or used there own. The layout will still be the same no matter what style sheet you use for the reason that the site is made in tables and will always have that default layout. Now for example if i created divs and had their properties inside the style sheet and someone used there own one, my site would look completly different. I dont mind if they use there own background colour, font, or text colour, as long as there viewing the site how i would prefer it viewed.I think you must agree that i have a fair point here
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And what if you want to have the same XHTML for both PCs and cellphones and/or if you wanted to have different position in printing? And why forbid the user to change the position of the site? What if I would prefer see the left colums below everything else? It shouldn't concern you how the user adjusts the page if he's going to get the same content, so why not provide him/her with as most possibilities as possible? There's always the !important rule if something is crutual to the design.

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I don't think this has ever really been a problem. Do you really go around changing the way websites look when you are surfing, or do you just read the content and move on? If a site has a terrible layout, I'm not going to sit there and adjust a CSS sheet so that I have the privelage of using that site. Instead I'll go back to Google and click on the next one. If someone has bad taste, I'm not going to sit there and try to fix it. But with Opera at least (I'm sure there are Firefox extensions to do the same), I can turn off a lot of things that people use for annoying purposes, like Flash, javascript, or java. That's about as far as I'm willing to go to fix someone's mistakes before I move on.As for cellphones or portable devices, personally I'm not on a big kick to make everything I do accessible on a cellphone. I've seen plenty of devices with VGA screens, and they show existing sites well, it's just a smaller screen. If someone has a text phone, and the client specifically requests that their content be viewable on a cell phone, then I will use PHP to detect the user agent as best I can and send different content to the device. All of the page content comes out of a database anyway, so it's trivial to set up a white layout with no styling at all and organize the content using <h#> and <p> tags instead of loading the normal HTML template.And if someone really wanted to see the website, they wouldn't be surfing on a text phone anyway. My roommate already has a VGA phone, it's a matter of time until the price point reaches a certain level and VGA devices become commonplace. When that happens, you won't need an alternate layout, they can view the same thing.

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I don't think this has ever really been a problem.  Do you really go around changing the way websites look when you are surfing, or do you just read the content and move on?  If a site has a terrible layout, I'm not going to sit there and adjust a CSS sheet so that I have the privelage of using that site.  Instead I'll go back to Google and click on the next one.  If someone has bad taste, I'm not going to sit there and try to fix it.  But with Opera at least (I'm sure there are Firefox extensions to do the same), I can turn off a lot of things that people use for annoying purposes, like Flash, javascript, or java.  That's about as far as I'm willing to go to fix someone's mistakes before I move on.

Point 1.This would not be for your privelage of using that site but for other users for example the visually impaired. There are style sheets which would allow them to see things exactly how they want on sites. I.e bigger fonts and the correct font colour and background colour.
As for cellphones or portable devices, personally I'm not on a big kick to make everything I do accessible on a cellphone. I've seen plenty of devices with VGA screens, and they show existing sites well, it's just a smaller screen. If someone has a text phone, and the client specifically requests that their content be viewable on a cell phone, then I will use PHP to detect the user agent as best I can and send different content to the device. All of the page content comes out of a database anyway, so it's trivial to set up a white layout with no styling at all and organize the content using <h#> and <p> tags instead of loading the normal HTML template.

Point 2.I agree with. This point is for my site specfically, its not the biggest club in the world nor is it the popular. Its a little local club, I can garuntee that no one will be viewing this on any hand held advice of any kind.
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Well, I did said earlier that if you don't care for CSS layout's features and don't care for accesability, you could use table layouts. I don't edit site's mistakes either. What I meant was exactly what ben3001 mentioned- certain users need their own styles everywhere.Cellphones are just a plus I mentioned. I know it's not anything to really take into consideration, especially on shops, where a user is expected to have a credit card, thus have a browser with SSL support and most(all?) phones don't have SSL support yet.I also know it's possible to use PHP to select different XHTML. But that's exactly the point. Why maintain two or more XHTML files (one for each platform), when you could maintain one? Or if you don't have a server side scripting even (hipothetically... I realize all of your clients have one).

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Well, one of the templates wouldn't require any maintaining. You want the print copy as barren as possible probably, so it would be something like this:

{template loop start}<h1>{title}</h1><p>{body}</p>{template loop end}

It's just not a big deal to maintain that.I understand the reasons, my point is that it's not enough of a reason to justify the trouble of CSS.The only beef I have with CSS now is the same beef I had with javascript in 1998. It starts out and everyone is really excited by it, but it turns out that every browser does something different. So it requires all these hacks to try to make it do the same thing in every browser. I had enough fun programming javascript for Netscrape version 4.79 (anyone? anyone?) that I realized that I'm not going to spend my time hacking for browsers anymore, I'm just going to use what I know works everywhere and move on. In a year, or two, or three or whatever I'm sure CSS support will mature a lot and it will be fine to use the way javascript is fine today, I just don't think it's there yet. That's why I got all excited about tables, I just don't think there's any reason to throw them out yet. A table+CSS layout works great for me everywhere I use it. The day will come when it will be easier to do pure CSS and have it work right everywhere, but that day is not today. Firefox, Opera, and Safari are all on the right track, but MS really needs to set up a permanent IE department with 3 divisions: engine feature upgrades, standards compliance, and bug fixing, and they need to put out patches and new releases at the same rate as everyone else is. And in order for that to happen, they really need to separate IE from the OS (I heard they were going to.. we'll see). IE wouldn't matter if 85% of users weren't using it, but that's not going to change overnight.

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'The layout will still be the same no matter what style sheet you use for the reason that the site is made in tables and will always have that default layout. "the WHOLE point of css is to seperate content from design. By using tables to create a basic layout you break the most basic rule of web development. When no styles are applied your site should display as a basic text only page with content after content. go to a fully css xhtml compliant site and disable style sheets and you will see what i mean

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Firefox, Opera, and Safari are all on the right track, but MS really needs to set up a permanent IE department with 3 divisions: engine feature upgrades, standards compliance, and bug fixing, and they need to put out patches and new releases at the same rate as everyone else is.  And in order for that to happen, they really need to separate IE from the OS (I heard they were going to.. we'll see).  IE wouldn't matter if 85% of users weren't using it, but that's not going to change overnight.

what are you talking about? :) I have IE6 and it does css layouts just fine.????????LG
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