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The comment you're replying to already contains answers to your points. The complainer mentions his credentials as a programmer, and points out an alternative t

The comment you're replying to already contains answers to your points. The complainer mentions his credentials as a programmer, and points out an alternative that exists. You can see that alternative at work by viewing the source of this page.

blowski 12y ago
It's 2014, and you want to discuss tables vs CSS layouts? Maybe next week we can discuss whether anyone will ever need a hard drive bigger than 2MB.
- cousin_it 12y ago
  Well, Paul Graham became popular by writing online essays about Lisp, which was invented in 1960 and went out of vogue during the AI winter of the 1970s. Then he started Y Combinator and wrote Hacker News in a dialect of Lisp. If you think old tech is bad, why are you here? ;-) More to the point, I think the discussion of tables vs CSS is worth reopening, because the original arguments in favor of CSS focused on having clean semantic HTML, and we all see how that turned out. Just go to http://reddit.com/ http://reddit.com/ and view the source, you'll see <div class="spacer"> staring you in the face. So that argument is a wash. As for the specific drawbacks of CSS compared to tables, I think the original comment covered them well.
  - blowski 12y ago
    1. It's pretty easy to find stories of somebody having success using an old technology, but it's even easier to find examples of old technologies being replaced by something better. 2. Finding somebody successfully bashing a nail into a wall with a shoe doesn't mean we should all throw away our hammers. 3. If we get into the drawbacks of CSS vs tables, tables are going to lose. I can think of two situations where tables will win - lack of developer skill (yes, tables are easier to learn quickly), and needing to support old browsers more than new ones. Whereas CSS will win on responsiveness, performance, workflow, third-party tools, features, maintenance, accessibility, flexibility, semantics, and just about every other area of front-end development you care to mention. EDIT: Here's an article from 2003 (!) that makes the same points. As CSS has improved, the arguments have become stronger. https://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/03overview.html https://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/03overview.html
  - debaserab2 12y ago
    I wouldn't really use reddit as an example of quality CSS styling. Yes, it can be used improperly. It can also be used to create clean semantic HTML. Table-as-layout cannot.
wodenokoto 12y ago
If you viewed this on a phone, you'd see that the table based layout is not up for the task either.

blowski 12y ago

It's 2014, and you want to discuss tables vs CSS layouts? Maybe next week we can discuss whether anyone will ever need a hard drive bigger than 2MB.

cousin_it 12y ago
Well, Paul Graham became popular by writing online essays about Lisp, which was invented in 1960 and went out of vogue during the AI winter of the 1970s. Then he started Y Combinator and wrote Hacker News in a dialect of Lisp. If you think old tech is bad, why are you here? ;-) More to the point, I think the discussion of tables vs CSS is worth reopening, because the original arguments in favor of CSS focused on having clean semantic HTML, and we all see how that turned out. Just go to http://reddit.com/ http://reddit.com/ and view the source, you'll see <div class="spacer"> staring you in the face. So that argument is a wash. As for the specific drawbacks of CSS compared to tables, I think the original comment covered them well.
- blowski 12y ago
  1. It's pretty easy to find stories of somebody having success using an old technology, but it's even easier to find examples of old technologies being replaced by something better. 2. Finding somebody successfully bashing a nail into a wall with a shoe doesn't mean we should all throw away our hammers. 3. If we get into the drawbacks of CSS vs tables, tables are going to lose. I can think of two situations where tables will win - lack of developer skill (yes, tables are easier to learn quickly), and needing to support old browsers more than new ones. Whereas CSS will win on responsiveness, performance, workflow, third-party tools, features, maintenance, accessibility, flexibility, semantics, and just about every other area of front-end development you care to mention. EDIT: Here's an article from 2003 (!) that makes the same points. As CSS has improved, the arguments have become stronger. https://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/03overview.html https://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/03overview.html
- debaserab2 12y ago
  I wouldn't really use reddit as an example of quality CSS styling. Yes, it can be used improperly. It can also be used to create clean semantic HTML. Table-as-layout cannot.

wodenokoto 12y ago

If you viewed this on a phone, you'd see that the table based layout is not up for the task either.