Everything you know about CSS is Wrong - The changes tables layout will bring

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/everything_you_know_about_CSS_Is_wrong/

by jwilliams • 18 years ago

56 46 18 years ago

digital-web.com

rlm• 18 years ago

This will be good.

I'm really looking forward to the day that IE6/7 doesn't need to be supported anymore.

nocivus3• 18 years ago

About time. Maybe now a lot of people will stop using tables to define the site layout :)

I know it can be a pain to style a website with divs, but putting presentation inside HTML is definitely worse.

axod2• 18 years ago

Users don't care if you use tables for layout. Sure, if you're nesting tables deeply then maybe it's an issue, but this "avoid tables at all costs" is a bit silly. Especially when the equivalent css is longer, more complex and far less compatible. Try doing some complex colspan/rowspan type things in css, with unknown cell widths etc.

There are more important things to work on :)

nocivus3• 18 years ago

True also, of course, no point in being fundamentalist :). In the end it basically depends on what you want; If you want flexibility to change everything in your site in regular intervals, then I wouldn't advise relying on tables a lot :)

JoelSutherland• 18 years ago

My major complaint with a table based layout isn't a semantic one, it is a pragmatic one.

Put a colspan or rowspan in your html and you've coupled your design/layout to your markup. Still though, it is often easier to make this compromise.

The hope here is that we ultimately get the best of all worlds. Easy grid layouts AND markup/presendation decoupling AND strong semantics.

jQuery's John Ressig may speed up the day that comes: http://github.com/jeresig/sizzle/tree/master http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/10/22/javascript-will...

Jasber2• 18 years ago

Initially switching to table-less design is harder. CSS has its own quirks in every browser that can drive a developer mad.

That being said there's a few very good reasons to use a pure CSS design.

More accessible: Specifically I'm thinking mobile phones and alternative stylesheets where "turning off" a table cell completely breaks the design. This is a breeze with pure CSS

Smaller File Size: Generally speaking, a site designed with CSS is smaller than a site designed with tables

Efficient Caching: External stylesheets will cache speeding up response time for the user. For an eCommerce site every second is key.

SEO: Some may argue with this, but presenting important content first is just one of the many factors involved with on-page SEO. This is accomplished quite easy with CSS and absolute positioning.

Faster Updates: I find updating a CSS design to be much quicker than a design nested with tables. Want to completely change the look of your site? Modifying only the CSS you can get some impressive results (http://www.csszengarden.com/).

For a programmer the time spent ironing out the initial kinks can be spent better elsewhere. But for designers its necessary in this day and age to use and understand table-less designs.

gills• 18 years ago

Table layouts are tougher on users with screen readers. Aside from that I can't disagree with your points.

zitterbewegung• 18 years ago

Yea like arc . Oh wait.

Retric• 18 years ago

putting presentation inside HTML is definitely worse

I think of HTML like I do assembler it's something for computers to read. I write code that generates HTML, but I don't work at that level. Data, Presentation, Layout, and Binding are all separate parts of the code base.

PS: Some of our site was generating images that users clicked on we then mapped that click back to a location and sent a new image. We updated the Presentation code and it's now using Tables and nothing else changed.

markbao• 18 years ago

And it'll be six years before IE somewhat supports it. And another five for the majority to upgrade.

arockwell3• 18 years ago

The point is that IE 8 does support this. But, it will be at least 5 years before a majority of users have IE 8 :(

briansmith• 18 years ago

That seems to be an overly pessimistic estimate.

IE7 Was released almost exactly two years ago and it already has 45% market share (compared to 25% for IE6). Next year it is likely that over 50% of users will have either IE7 or IE8. I think a slight majority of users will probably have IE8 in 2010, and a significant majority will have it in 2011. I expect Microsoft to push IE8 more vigorously than IE7 because IE8 is significantly more secure (on paper, at least) than IE6 and IE7.

arockwell3• 18 years ago

I like this, because I always thought that tables for layout were a lot more intuitive than the mind bending stuff I have to do with css to get a layout to look right. Semantic markup is nice for the flexibility, but I have always struggled to understand css.

thedob• 18 years ago

Great, now we just have to wait until every IE6 and IE7 user has upgraded to IE8. By then, we'll be on to new browser technologies completely.

josefresco2• 18 years ago

Browser standards, like traditional industry (cars for example) move pretty slowly. To say that somehow we're going to suddenly leapfrog this tech after years of slow progress would be unlikely.

jamesjyu• 18 years ago

Yeah, maybe my kids will have the luxury of coding with CSS tables.

Think of the kids!

pg4• 18 years ago

Or you could just use html tables.

staunch• 18 years ago

You could but that would clearly be a very big mistake! Sure it will work perfectly in every browser and it's really simple and easy to work with. But it's a big mistake! You'll have to deal with the fact that it's not trendy and cool. You will be looked down upon by those who are flogging themselves at the altar of cargo cult methodology. Come to think of it, quite similar to the situation those of us who still think Perl is awesome face. Try using Perl and HTML tables in 2008! You won't get invited to any of the cool parties...

sant0sk1• 18 years ago

It would go a long way if MS would retro this into IE7 via a browser update. IE6 is slowly being moved from, but IE7 will be around for years to come.

STHayden• 18 years ago

IE6 has been phased out fairly quickly for IE7 and I'm sure IE8 will come in just as fast.

CSS seems like it's here to stay and it will still be around when it's finally fully implemented.

This is good news for web designers everywhere.

elai• 18 years ago

Lots of corporations still stick to IE6, and the fact that they put it under the "genuine advantage" wall made it that upgrading to IE7 wasn't as easy & automatic as it should of been, much to the dismay of the internet.

jdavid• 18 years ago

i think the best thing about tables design is that you can design something to work on multiple platforms and to flow better.

when using tables you are stuck to the resolution you are designing for, but in a good table-less design you can accommodate a number of form factors, which is important in the emerging mobile device platform.

yesimahuman• 18 years ago

Thank God. I think CSS wastes a lot of good behavioral design time with the way it's implemented right now. Hopefully these upgrades will change that.

Everything you know about CSS is Wrong - The changes tables layout will bring

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