Tables vs. CSS Layout
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- ********
Had a discussion with a designer/coder friend last night who heads coding for a huge (fortune 25) financial institution - he's says he insists that everything is done in tables and that CSS layout sucks and is so unreliable no serious business would use it - yet.
I do alot of my layout work in CSS now - but now I am rethinking this and sticking with tables as this guy is a top guy in corporate web work.
Thoughts?
- imakedesign0
good in the short term, bad in the long term.
- ********0
"Top Guy"?
Who says? He?
I now use CSS over tables and I'm not going back. Ultimatly I think you get much more control.
- ********0
He's been my friend for twenty years and has been doing web development sine '90 at lleast. Trust me - he was headhunted for six figures. He knows his sh*t.
He oversees online banking/stock trades etc. and WILL not touch CSS for layout. He says it's far too unreliable for the user.
- function820
i've been doing web design since the 90's too... its not that css is bad, but it took a lot of convincing to get me to learn it because tables work well too. css for layout is fine if your audience has updated browsers, and you're conscious about how it looks on different platforms.
- fifty500
It's true that CSS is still to unreliable at this point thanks to browsers (especially Internet Exploiter) not displaying things the way they have been designed to look.
Basically CSS can *potentially* give you more control over a site's layout, but since it's not reliable enough yet then we'll have to wait until all browsers display things the same.
This can also be said about PNG files. I'd love to be able to use them instead of GIFs for my sites but Microsoft STILL hasn't gotten it right yet!
- ********0
nothing like a Fortune 500 company that can not have their website show on PDA's, cost the company more money with bandwidth cost, cause a user on dial up to wait for the tables to load, rank lower in search engines.... more reasons:
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publ…
no fortune 500 company would dare make sure all users can read their content...
ABC news:
http://abcnews.go.com/Sprint:
http://www.meryl.net/css/cat_big…about 50 on these lists:
http://www.meryl.net/css/cat_big…
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/red…
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Not all these sites validate- but most realize the potential of using standards and CSS...Your fortune 500 friend will eventually be obsolete with his ignorance..
- airey0
it's worth raising the fact that the web technology is constantly in a state of flux and therefore he may have put some time into understanding css a year ago and would be right for then but in 6mths css may be the best decision to go with. everytime xp has a service pack added (every 2 minutes it seems) or a new version of firefox / opera / safari gets released it changes the battlefield.
tables are great for many things but css positioning is also amazing once you can get your head around it. hybrid sites are a good idea (in my uneducated point of view).
i go with 'imakedesign' earlier:
good in the short term, bad in the long term.
imakedesign(Feb 13 05, 12:23)
- shaft0
IMO quirksmode+css is a very nice environment. xhtml? allright, but only if really necessary. Tableless? No. So far, tables give me more control over layout. CSS positioning could have been a great tool if it were invented by designers, not nerds who didn't understand the basic need of centering the content in the middle of the screen and came up with dumb ideas like that an empty div without height attribute shouldn't be visible. They also fucked up the box model which was naturally intuitive in microsoft's version.
They do everything to get flash out of the picture.The more I learn about css positioning, the more I'm convinced in my observations. I'm still learning it, and will see if I change my mind before css4 or 5
- YourClient0
The only way companies switch to CSS is because of hype, employers like to get every penny from employees, and employees are always eager to play with this new shit that makes only sense on the head of Zeldman, and everybody eats his shit. CSS is for what it is, a separator of styling for pages.
You all punks are breaking your head over something that's too complicated to spent time with.
Even w3c are a bunch of morons that cannot get their stuff right, just a bunch of stupid geeks trying to get paid of design, which they don't know about, just to make everybody's work more dificult.
The day people browse with a fully compliant browser that's the day I will switch.
FLOAT and CLEAR this bitch!
- ********0
dude-
THEN DONT SWITCH- DONT USE CSS!!
how much simpler can that be- just don't do it.
Stick to your tables, your FONT tags, image slicing, IE 4- hell party like it's 1995 bro- code on...
Think of all the money you can make updating a 230 page website with all the pretty-
's line after line... think of all the wonderful hours of pure positioning bliss- smile as you designs shine off your beige CRT-rock out.
You dont like CSS... we get the point..
next.
- sparker0
the tragic thing about stupidity is that the stupid don't realize their stupidity.
people unwilling to accept change for the better are failures...no matter what their bank account says.
there is enough proof of correct, standards based semantic web design today that the tired, idiotic argument for antiquated design and development concepts is moot.
it's unfortunate people are so afraid to update their skills.
imagine if architectects and engineers were complacent with using outdated, ancient technologies.
- ********0
Here here sparker.
- shaft0
I don't argue that it's new, it's the future and so on. I just say it's a pity it came out of coder visionaries heads rather than designers. IMO it's a wonderful idea in general, just badly executed. But it should get better in future css versions.
And I'm talking about positioning vs. tables here, nobody wants font tag back.And don't you think that a website of 230 identically styled pages not coming from a database driven template is retarded too?
- normal0
Shhhhh.... boys don't be telling these kids they're wrong when they are totally right (wink wink) you know the competition is pretty thick out there and we wouldn't want everyone evolving at the same pace so keep your well thought out and intelligent diatribes to yourself.
Obviously yourClient's mental padding is set a bit too high and isn't properly rendering in Firefox, doesn't appear to be a workaround for it at this time. Perhaps it's not a bug but a feature. I mean you can't have right without wrong.
- ********0
" just a bunch of stupid geeks trying to get paid of design, which they don't know about, just to make everybody's work more dificult.
YourClient
(Feb 13 05, 15:48)"Coding CSS is always going to be difficult if you can't string a sentence together.
- imakedesign0
its funny how people talk about css like its some mystic coding language that only geeks in poorly lit rooms can do. Try it, its not that hard.
the only problem i have with css/ xml only design is that it could hinder what made the interweb great in the 1st place the face that anyone could make a website.
- sparker0
not so. blog services have replaced geocities editors. normal users no longer need to learn even basic html in order to create a clean, information driven site.
if a normal user wants a site to post pictures and information to, they simply fill out a form.
what could be easier.
and, since most blog services adhere to standards, they are easily delivered across a wide array of clients.
plus, because templating engines and standards we need not fear the geocities-esque design of the 90s any longer.
- Blofeldt0
until last summer i was still using tables, but i'm pretty good with CSS now and i wouldn't go back. You do have a lot more freedom and control with CSS
- CBSTHLM0
As someone mentioned it isnt really that hard. If you wanna give it a try I recommend reading this old article:
http://www.alistapart.com/articl…
And for the PNG-compability:
http://www.alistapart.com/articl…So go ahead and start using those dropshadows now :)
btw. I still mix tables and css. Why go just for one of those two?
/Robert
- shaft0
Blofeldt..
table width="100%" height="100%" border="0"
What keeps you from going css? :)