6 ms·

It still burns that HTML Tables had this simple layout issue almost solved. CSS v1 could have just codified that behavior, and worked on improving it later. Thi

It still burns that HTML Tables had this simple layout issue almost solved. CSS v1 could have just codified that behavior, and worked on improving it later. This is just emphasized by the "holy grail" example of the 3 column layout. That is a decade of lost productivity thanks to the people who said "tables for layout is stupid"[1]. It is too bad that GiveUpAndUseTables[2] is no longer working, because I would still send it to people. [1] http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/everything.html http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/everything.html [2] http://giveupandusetables.com/ http://giveupandusetables.com/

andyhmltn 13y ago
I never actually saw that giveupandusetables website but found this: http://ajaxian.com/wp-content/images/giveupandusetables.png http://ajaxian.com/wp-content/images/giveupandusetables.png Is that the page?
- jared314 13y ago
  Yes. The timer was set to 47 mins for you to attempt your pure CSS layout, and would count down to your inevitable failure. Someone also built an opposing "Use CSS" timer, but I cannot find that one.
ubernostrum 13y ago
The thing that's less often remembered is that tables had their own, completely different set of quirks which had to be learned and worked around, such that people eventually internalized all of it and figured that since they were no longer conscious of the problems, there must not be any and so "tables are so much easier".
arcosdev 13y ago
Let's not start this flame war again please.
babby 13y ago
display: table-cell, table-row, table sounds like it would be quite viable for an entire sites layout. I've never tried it but I'm tempted to blanket style all section tags as tables, article tags as rows, divs as cells - or some variant of that. Still, the use of existing tags is perhaps a silly limitation when we can choose to use a non-strict html spec. Anyone know of examples of this, like a boilerplate called fuck-me-just-use-tables?

andyhmltn 13y ago

I never actually saw that giveupandusetables website but found this: http://ajaxian.com/wp-content/images/giveupandusetables.png http://ajaxian.com/wp-content/images/giveupandusetables.png Is that the page?

jared314 13y ago
Yes. The timer was set to 47 mins for you to attempt your pure CSS layout, and would count down to your inevitable failure. Someone also built an opposing "Use CSS" timer, but I cannot find that one.

ubernostrum 13y ago

The thing that's less often remembered is that tables had their own, completely different set of quirks which had to be learned and worked around, such that people eventually internalized all of it and figured that since they were no longer conscious of the problems, there must not be any and so "tables are so much easier".

arcosdev 13y ago

Let's not start this flame war again please.

babby 13y ago

display: table-cell, table-row, table sounds like it would be quite viable for an entire sites layout. I've never tried it but I'm tempted to blanket style all section tags as tables, article tags as rows, divs as cells - or some variant of that. Still, the use of existing tags is perhaps a silly limitation when we can choose to use a non-strict html spec. Anyone know of examples of this, like a boilerplate called fuck-me-just-use-tables?