I believe this is the proper place to post this as it is a debate between CSS and the use of Tables in a website, but if not feel free to move it.

I understand that many people believe it to be bad practice to use tables to get a website skin to look like they want it to, I am fine with that. What I don't understnad is how people can expect website skins to look the smae without the use of tables in them. Table a look at most div based 2+ column websites. They have the content (or perhaps the menu) column longer than the others with a solid color bachground and think it looks nice?

Perhaps I am mistaken, but I don't think there is a way to easily get all the columns to be the same height without using tables (and if anyone has a quick example of how to make the divs work like that I would be more than happy to take a look at it).

So, now onto the debate.

Do you think it is better to use HTML tags whenever possible (including things like <center> and tables)? Or do you think it is best to try and go for the pure CSS approach? Why?

This post has been edited by BetaWar: 26 Jul, 2008 - 09:24 PM

I find that balancing the two is the perfect solution at this current stage. I typically use a table to create the basic framework and then fill it with CSS items. The table holds up the structure of the page very well across the browsers and then the CSS does the individual layout of items fantastic.

Allows me to build some nice flexible content with a bit of sturdiness to it.

My understanding is that the use of DIV tags & css will allow your page to load faster than tables.

Plus with tables the images & alignment will shift all around as the page loads. Again, it is my understanding that this doesn't happen with DIV tags & css, because the content will load in the specified area.

Just like Martyr2 said, I'll use both, as I can get the project done faster with tables. Then I can fine tune it as must as I care to with Div tags & css. It's usually a work in progress for me.

Same with me (though I tend to use span tags more thna divs as of late) Tables for the basic lyout and divs/spans for most everything else. It makes it stay clean and everything while allowing control over various objects.

Thanks for the replies guys, I have just seen a lot of things asking specifically about Div 2+ column layouts on this and other forums and was wondering why people were so into them. It makes me happy(ier) to see that I am not the only one to use tables for main layout design.

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<BACKWARDS QUOTE>


Is it IE bugs, or do all the other browsers in the world have the smae bugs???

Sorry, thought that would be funnier than it turned out to be, and either way I didn't think it was worth a new post.
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This post has been edited by BetaWar: 26 Jul, 2008 - 09:56 PM

Well there is a lot of buzz about them because like already mentioned they do tend to load a little faster, they are great for SEO and it can give you some very specific pixel level control.

Personally I don't think the browsers have come far enough to implement CSS in a standard way with one another so you find yourself fighting IE CSS bugs etc.

are we talking about creating a whole site using tables or just information that you believe should be outputted in tabulated form, for instance a tariff for a hotel. something like this i would layout in a table apart from that its all divs and css.

mainly due to the fact that i was told i should learn how to do it this way if i want to work in a web dev/design firm, so thats what i did, i have also heared along the lines that it also helps with SEO, but im not 100% sure about this, maybe someone here could elaborate. i bet martyr2 will know.

and i do wholy agree with martyr2 comment about browsers not being compatible enough/ or standard enough with each other, i would say that i spend about 30-40% of the time ironing out little bugs or tweeks for specific browsers. as for some strange reason a lot of the clients i seem to be getting are using ie 6 or safari version 1 or 2. and these seem to cause no end of trouble and its not like i can be rude and tell them to just update as they are paying, and they could always come up with "what if the market im aiming at is all using the same browser"

BetaWar what do you mean make the colums the same height with Divs, cant u just the height in css


or am i thinking the wrong thing here?

Dan

That would generally work, but if you don't know how large the div will be (like it is holding your page content adn that content length changes from page to page) it wouldn't look the same/right depending on the page you are viewing. I may be wrong here, but I don't think setting a static height will do the trick.

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Okay, digdy I found a way to do what I was thinking of, but it requires you to use javascript (and thus javascript needs to be enabled).

Here it is (I also posted it in the snippets section)



But I am still looking for a way t do this without js if possible.

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This post has been edited by BetaWar: 28 Jul, 2008 - 03:42 PM

im not sure if this is along the lines you are looking for

http://www.girendra.com/index.php/2008/03/...umns-using-css/

but they are creating equal colum divs in here without setting heights.
and no js

I work with html/css a lot as I am one of the web managers here building/maintaining lot of small to medium sites and a few larger ones where I work.
I was taught web design using divs and css so thats how I do it. But I do admit that there are a lot of little style bugs you have to overcome , especially in IE, and it takes time to fix them all but in the end you get a better split of design and content especially if you intend using the same design over more than 1 website or on other web applications etc.
Just recently though my company has had to rework a lot of our emails into tables as Outlook 2007 doesn't support css properly which really feels like a step backwards from Microsoft
But we do use 2 and sometimes 3 column designs with pure css/xhtml although of course we have .NET sites so we have masterpages etc to help since it makes no sense to reinvent the wheel

Various places on the Web demonstrate how it’s possible to get the multi‐column appearance in cross‐browser‐compatible ways without using HTML/XHTML table elements.

See above. If Web browser vendors would implement CSS2.1 properly, creating table‐less three column layouts would be a piece of cake:





The latter: code clarity and neatness, ease of maintenance, accessibility, professionalism, and standards‐compliance.

Divs seem to be the way to go today. But really the debate lies with the coder. I know a profesional who swears by tables. I my self am an advocate of the mixing of tables/divs. Divs for large chunks and tables for the fine frames.

You can make fixed height divs. That javascript is overengineering a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Look into the min-height, max-height and overflow css properties.

Using css divs can make it a lot easier to separate the layout from the presentation than with tables. Tables are of course still very useful for tabular data. If you find yourself mixing and matching colspan and rowspans to get your table to not look like a table, you should probably be using divs.