6 ms·

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

56 points by jwilliams 18y ago

jdavid 18y 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 18y 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.
rlm 18y ago
This will be good. I'm really looking forward to the day that IE6/7 doesn't need to be supported anymore.
nocivus 18y 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.
- zitterbewegung 18y ago
  Yea like arc . Oh wait.
- axod 18y 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 :)
  - nocivus 18y 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 :)
    - axod 18y ago
      Well it also depends on wether your write all your layout by hand and do all that nesting, or if it's just the end product of your code executing. For example say you're doing something in PHP and you have a function that spits out a table, then for one of the cells it calls another function that spits out a table. That is pretty manageable in terms of maintainability, and ease of changing things.
      - nocivus 18y ago
        Agreed, but if you want a designer to take that layout and change it to something else, I'm betting that he will have a really hard time dealing with PHP ;)
  - JoelSutherland 18y 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://github.com/jeresig/sizzle/tree/master http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/10/22/javascript-will-save-us-all/ http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/10/22/javascript-will...
    - tomjen 18y ago
      It may be true that you mix semantics when you mix tables and html, but you lose little if you do it while you use RoR/Django or any other of the frameworks where there is a central template because you still only need to make changes in _one_ file to affect the hole site.
- Retric 18y 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 18y ago
And it'll be six years before IE somewhat supports it. And another five for the majority to upgrade.
- arockwell 18y 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 18y 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.
    - arockwell 18y ago
      You're probably right. What I really meant to say was that it will be at least 5 years before the numbers of IE6/IE7 are low enough that anyone can afford to drop support for them. We're going on 7 years of having to support IE6 (although some sites are starting to drop support for it finally).
arockwell 18y 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 18y 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.
- josefresco 18y 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 18y ago
  Yeah, maybe my kids will have the luxury of coding with CSS tables. Think of the kids!
- pg 18y ago
  Or you could just use html tables.
  - staunch 18y 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...
    - benbeltran 18y ago
      no, it's a mistake because it's semantically incorrect.
      - pg 18y ago
        It's no more meaningful to talk about the semantics of html generated by programs than it is to talk about the semantics of machine code output by a compiler. Complaining about using tables for layout on semantic grounds is like complaining about using shift instructions for multiplication. Semantics applies at the level of abstraction where humans look at something. That's the fundamental mistake of CSS zealots. Without consciously realizing it, they have a model of the world in which one is editing web pages by hand, or at least editing templates that are only a thin layer of abstraction above web pages. Which is actually quite backward.
sant0sk1 18y 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 18y 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 18y 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.

56 points by jwilliams 18y 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 18y 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.

rlm 18y ago

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

nocivus 18y 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.

zitterbewegung 18y ago
Yea like arc . Oh wait.
axod 18y 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 :)
- nocivus 18y 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 :)
  - axod 18y ago
    Well it also depends on wether your write all your layout by hand and do all that nesting, or if it's just the end product of your code executing. For example say you're doing something in PHP and you have a function that spits out a table, then for one of the cells it calls another function that spits out a table. That is pretty manageable in terms of maintainability, and ease of changing things.
    - nocivus 18y ago
      Agreed, but if you want a designer to take that layout and change it to something else, I'm betting that he will have a really hard time dealing with PHP ;)
- JoelSutherland 18y 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://github.com/jeresig/sizzle/tree/master http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/10/22/javascript-will-save-us-all/ http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/10/22/javascript-will...
  - tomjen 18y ago
    It may be true that you mix semantics when you mix tables and html, but you lose little if you do it while you use RoR/Django or any other of the frameworks where there is a central template because you still only need to make changes in _one_ file to affect the hole site.
Retric 18y 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 18y ago

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

arockwell 18y 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 18y 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.
  - arockwell 18y ago
    You're probably right. What I really meant to say was that it will be at least 5 years before the numbers of IE6/IE7 are low enough that anyone can afford to drop support for them. We're going on 7 years of having to support IE6 (although some sites are starting to drop support for it finally).

arockwell 18y 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 18y 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.

josefresco 18y 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 18y ago
Yeah, maybe my kids will have the luxury of coding with CSS tables. Think of the kids!
pg 18y ago
Or you could just use html tables.
- staunch 18y 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...
  - benbeltran 18y ago
    no, it's a mistake because it's semantically incorrect.
    - pg 18y ago
      It's no more meaningful to talk about the semantics of html generated by programs than it is to talk about the semantics of machine code output by a compiler. Complaining about using tables for layout on semantic grounds is like complaining about using shift instructions for multiplication. Semantics applies at the level of abstraction where humans look at something. That's the fundamental mistake of CSS zealots. Without consciously realizing it, they have a model of the world in which one is editing web pages by hand, or at least editing templates that are only a thin layer of abstraction above web pages. Which is actually quite backward.

sant0sk1 18y 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 18y 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 18y 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.