Re: Seybold column: Why Tables for Layout Is Stupid

["Sean Hower" <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com>]

> Ned Bedinger wrote:
> BTW, do distributed CSS files load more reliably than nested HTML tables?

I don't know if I would say load more reliably. I know that there can be rendering issues with table-based layouts because of the way that browsers render tables......it's been a while since I've looked into this, so I'm not entirely sure this still holds true.

Really, the benefit is in the code....easier to update, easier to maintain, easier for user agents to translate, smaller page sizes that save bandwidth and improve load time.

For example, a simple table layout might look like this (sans any content):

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
  <tr>
    <td id="header" colspan="2">
      header content
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td id="left-pane">
      left-pane content
    </td>
    <td id="right-pane">
      right-pane content
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td id="footer" colspan="2">
      footer content
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

Using CSS and valid XHTML, the same layout would look like this:

<div id="header">
  header content
</div>
<div id="left-pane">
  left-pane content
</div>
<div id="right-pane">
  right-pane content
</div>
<div id="footer">
  footer content
</div>

Additionally, you can really put these divs in any order you want because their positioning would be taken care of in the CSS. Any other formatting put on the table layout would go in as a style attribute on the table, tr, or td tags. The thing to note here is that all of that formatting information would have to go into EVERY SINGLE PAGE with table layouts (unless you are using CSS to format the table layout). This means that if you had a site with 1000 pages, you would have to update 1000 pages. With CSS, you update one page, the CSS file.


> Al Geist wrote:
> There are a few websites that I know of which rely totally on CSS for layout rather
> than tables( www.vermont.com <http://www.vermont.com> comes to mind).  
Mine is another. CSS Zen Garden and Jeffrey Zeldman's home page are others. The output from Apache Forrest also uses CSS rather than tables......I think. I'd have to check on that to make sure.



********************************************
Sean Hower - communications specialist
http://www.seanhower.com










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