Tables vs. CSS
Comments: 7
Today’s scripting.com has a bunch of links to predictably opinionated pundits debating the merits of HTML tables for layout versus CSS.
I’m not sure if some of the things Winer says are to be taken at face value or are just designed to rile people up and turbocharge the discussion. For example:
Finally, those of us who use tables are part of a mass of people who learned to develop websites that way. It’s impossible to get us to change. If that’s your cause I’m not on board.
I’m not sure how far “We Fear Change” gets you in the exciting fast-paced world of the web (and I don’t mean to put words into anyone’s mouth by phrasing it this way). I started making web sites before the <img> tag came along (summer of ‘93) and from my humble point of view, change has been one of the things that has kept me interested in what, it must be said, is a limited and restrictive medium. (Yes, yes; “Restriction shows the master’s hand,” as my old pal Goethe used to tell me over beers, but you still get cheesed off sometimes that it’s not a piece of paper. Let’s be honest.)
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Posted to Computers • 2002.02.14 (Thu) • 19:40
Comments
Posted by resonance 2002.02.25, 04:09
I plan on going the CSS layout route someday. I’m not, however, a fan of designing websites that pretty much only function on microsoft browsers, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of people use IE. The subtle differences in CSS positioning between IE and NS, not to mention the non-positioning that often occurs when using Opera, iCab, and OmniWeb are enough to keep me in tables for now.
In other words, I think CSS layout is a great idea and I’m very much looking forward to the day that all the browsers support it properly. Until then, though, I’m not going to design a site that forces someone to download and launch IE. Tables—which are a pain in the ass to design with—at least work across browsers (the term “work” being loosely employed here).
[I posted a hyperbolic rant about this debate on my site a few days ago. It’s meant as humor, not as soapbox.]
Posted by Sanserif 2002.12.13, 03:49
It would be nice to just change the format of text in a huge table by applying a class to the TABLE tag or something and not having to cut and paste formatting into every freakin’ cell.
Posted by jh 2002.12.13, 12:27
You can assign styles to table elements just fine (theoretically: not sure about various browser implementations, bugs and whatnot). The main point here was about avoiding tables for layout purposes.
Of course, tables should be used for tabular data, and could then be styled appropriately via CSS.
Posted by Sanserif 2002.12.13, 23:00
Yes, I understand the wisdom of laying out with CSS rather than tables, but when you want to display tabular data and use a font that works with your site’s formatting I have not had much luck using an external style sheet to assign text formatting to an entire table, only individual cells, but I may be missing something.
Posted by Anonymous 2003.09.19, 11:08
fsdfsd
Posted by anon 2003.10.21, 05:32
Here is a web page on Tables vs CSS.
It seems to have generated a quite a bit of interest at this forum as it provide a different point of view.
[Edited to tidy up the links. -jh]
Posted by John 2007.01.30, 14:35
Css positioning seems a bit harder to learn but I’m sure there are benefits to using it.
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