Safari's "minimal tables approach"

[Guest FirefoxRocks]

Please tell me what you think of the minimal tables layout described here: http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcon...bestwebdev.htmlAccording to the article, a simple four-block navigation layout is achieved by this code:

<table>	<tr>		<td colspan="2">			<div class="header">			Header			</div>		</td>	</tr>	<tr>		<td>			<div class="navigation">			Navigation			</div>		</td>		<td>			<div class="content">			Content			</div>		</td>	</tr>	<tr>		<td colspan="2" style="vertical-align: bottom">			<div class="footer">			Footer			</div>		</td>	</tr></table>

Is this efficient HTML or is <div> and CSS better?

[newseed]

It would seem that the person of that article has not mastered using divs layouts. Secondly, the article is probably a few years old because some of the problems he has mentioned have been solved using pure CSS and divs.To answer your questions, it's really not a problem but why add more codes than you need to?

[justsomeguy]

It would seem that the person of that article has not mastered using divs layouts.

Very few people will "master" using divs and CSS to the point that they don't need a reference to create a layout. The vast majority of websites are started by someone copying and pasting something they found online to do what they want and then going from there. Table layouts are easy to create without a reference.

To answer your questions, it's really not a problem but why add more codes than you need to?

I believe the equivalent code to create that same layout using divs and CSS would be larger then the table markup.

[jlhaslip]

<div id="menu"><ul><li><a href="home" class="current"  title="Take me Home"  >Home</a>		<a href="consulting" class="top_menu_class"  title="Consulting Page"  >Consulting</a>		<a href="articles" class="top_menu_class"  title="Articles of Interest"  >Articles</a>		<a href="publications" class="top_menu_class"  title="List of Publications"  >Publications</a>		</li></ul></div>

Now add a little on-hover action via css.

[justsomeguy]

Where did that come from?

[jlhaslip]

My bad!Next time I'll read the article first ...

[Guest FirefoxRocks]

Any other opinions on this?

[jeffman]

One of the beauties of web pages is that it has always been, and remains, possible for the total novice to make something happen in an afternoon.I think of do-it-yourself carpentry or plumbing. The total novice may not have the expertise or tools to fix his pipes the way a professional would. But he doesn't care. He just wants the water to stop leaking. Fast and without a lot of pain and expense.The do-it-yourself webmaster may have the same attitude. One thing you can say about tables is that they're easy. And no other element has the same resizability in its default configuration. That's a big selling point too.So if a basic table layout is good enough for Joe Blow, I'm happy.I take it for granted, however, that someone who comes here is a little beyond that. I am probably mistaken. But here, I always (almost) recommend getting up to speed and using divs.Maybe I'd be happier if Safari or whoever also had a copy/paste div layout, complete with appropriate CSS to make it work right, and maybe comments in document saying what to change if you need something to be bigger, etc.

[jlhaslip]

Did a "find" on that page for the term "semantic" and it didn't appear once.Point being: are tables semantically correct for page layout? Not according to the Web developers that target meeting standards based on acceptable coding techniques. Tables are for presenting Tablar Data, not for layout of pages. IMHO.