Home. I feel the same about maintain tables-based sites. To suggest that the purpose of divs is to use block rendering contradicts the argument that tags should have semantic meaning and not display meaning. You also made my exact point as to where tables shine the most, and it has nothing to do with semantics. This topic often leads to discussions that arent this thought out. Browser support for most of css is as consistent as it is for tables. bootstrap requires a container, row, and something equal to a td but I cant recall which. After a week of wandering around the interwebs I still cant figure out, nor have I found any tutorials, on how to create a header like the one I have, one where there are three colums where the middle expands to fit a wider browser. The complicated css wasnt a requirement. Ive looked at the page you linked to before and have it bookmarked. Also, Ive found no help in trying to figure out how to replicate the effect of a table layout where certain cells are merged. You make good points. CSS changes are device friendly. Lets see if we can dispel a few myths from each side. At most the html would require a single class or id extra. A div is a more generic container that doesnt impose any structure on the content within. Maybe I just havent searched the web enough. This post isnt a tutorial so I would need to know which one or ones youre referring to as well. Im sure there are a few out there already, but one more wont hurt. I dont think the choice is about shape though. If the human eye cant tell any difference, then whats the point? LOL, Im not advocating tables b/c they are infintesimally slower then divs. Great debate. Your 2-column layout example could easily be accomplished with a .Net master page. I thought the debate was or should have been dead a few years ago. But I guess when all you have lying around is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail. John all 3 of the sites you list can definitely be developed using css for the layout instead of tables. 1. I know there are workarounds. Perhaps its a matter of experience, but if you know what youre doing you never need to use any kind of hack. Early on you had to use tables to layout a site well. It was easy to do, and it looks great in Opera, Firefox, and Chrome, but guess what?! WebCSS is clearly preferable in cases where presentational markup and CSS support the same kind of design, no one in their right mind would argue that font-tags are better than Is there a way I can pay someone to turn this same homepage design into a total CSS design? If tables confuse you, I think you are a lost soul. CSS is a standard across the board. Justin, apparently I named this post well, since the debate never seems to die. Sure if in some Mexican sweat shop, 5 year olds were parsing pages for Google that may be true, but parsing text is as basic as programming gets other than typing hello world on the screenI really doubt thats an issue for Google, or Yahoo spider programmers. Ive been coding on and off since the mid 90s and have been hearing about tables are only for tabular data blah blah blah for years. I typed along with all the code samples and it helped me a lot. I do think more code means more chances of making a show stopping kind of error. I REALLY dont have any desire to fight that battle again. At first its confusing since its such a different approach, but once you make it through the learning curve its obvious that the div/css combination is a much better and more flexible approach to building sites. I certainly havent seen anything to support the validity of these remarks. Theres simply less code to create a div than there is a table with a row and cell. (Dont laugh, my skills probably saved my job.) I hope that helps answer some of the questions. I dont care what anybody says. If youre having to spend the vast majority of your time finding workarounds for IE then youve probably been doing something wrong. 3. The only time I ever use tables anymore is to quickly horizontally and -vertically- oppose an image or something else on a temporary coming soon type page. So if you feel strong emotions regarding CSS layout, dont respond. Now, select the Table tab > click the Options button > uncheck the Automatically Resize to Fit Contents check box. Eventually it works, but at what cost? Web designers needs to use few lines of programming for every page improving site speed. It helps to form spontaneous and consistent changes. If I misinterpreted that I apologize. The limiting factors isnt the language, its my ability to use the language. My point about flexibility isnt simply flipping columns. This can be very expensive. I never broke any of your layouts or created display bugs in whatever you produced. Dont worry Im not taking your questions as a need to defend css. Learn more about Teams Like I said the debate the wont die. You are here: Menu. I have used table-based layouts for a few years and have started using css to mainly style text. All you really need to do float the customer service phone number and search form to the right. Im not sure why people think it takes a lot of time to get things working cross browser. How to check which tab is active using Material UI ? Ive offered tutorials on the basic layout and Ive offered tutorials on things that can go inside that layout, but never all the code for an entire site. The secret is you have to use < and > for the angle brackets or it gets interpreted as actual code. Table cells cooperate very well with each other, the way everyone expects things works. IE is a lot more standards compliant than youre giving it credit for. designing since 1999 started with dreamweaver, handcoding is a pain and for programmers. In this case, it is almost impossible to get CSS only to render this as desired, either the width or the height of the side banner will be wrong, or the background image will appear to disappear or not be long enough, or be too long, or the content will bleed over into the side banner if you change the width of the browser. The best things in life are not necessarily easy or easy to learn. I think there are appropriate uses for tables, but I dont think the overall layout of a page is one of those appropriate uses. I find it hard to believe that anyone who honestly knows how to develop a site well with both tables and divs would ever choose to use tables. With CSS, what works with one browser might not always work with another. As for formatting and style, you should use a clear and descriptive title that reflects the main topic and keywords of your paper. Im surprised this debate continues, though admittedly Im continuing it right now after the question was raised on my small business forum. If I throw out a website which has no padding or un symetrial or miss-aligned text I would be asked to start over. The main advantage of CSS is that style is applied consistently across variety of sites. Covering popular subjects like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Java, and many, many more. And yes it is true that you dont much need extra code to get things to work for IE. I agree that youve made a case for flexibility, but I dont think your post demonstrates that divs/css are the best way to attain this flexibility. I understand people have old code and sometimes they just need to fix it. With tables you know exactly where you are placing your content, exactly!!! (Remember, I DO use CSS for formatting.) Your probably right about round pegs and square holes, and I am sorry if you took offence, but the fact that countless people have these issues with css must indicate a lack of continuety with css. One example, is to have a banner across the top, a side banner down the left, with a background image that must align with the top banner in the corner, and then content within the area below the top banner and to the right of the side banner. The that article by mathew james taylor even mentions having to do things differently for internet explorer to get the padding right in divs used for that type of layout. Ive been using divs for a decade now and never once had to guess where the content would be. WebWriting down the advantages and disadvantages makes the deciding process less subjective. As you mentioned, pages built in tables have to load twice (something I didnt know until reading this post) add to this that the example you showed: clearly illustrates how much extra code is required for tables. I didnt create the overall frame to the conversation. Were not quite there yet with what wed like to do where design is concerned. There are many things you can say I do, but hype isnt one of them. 2. Once to understand the structure and another time to present it. Thanks! Youre mainly proving my point that those who argue in favor of tables usually havent spent the time to learn to use block level elements like divs and css well. Many divs require way too much css to make it worth your while. Incidentially you do provide 100% of the code because you show it in your examples, in the source. Much of using css for layout is realizing that you dont need to do as much as you think. My primary UI guy is a CSS ideologue and spends half his time fighting with stylesheets to make it work in every browser. How to identify unused CSS definitions from multiple CSS files in a project ? I still dont see where Im hyping anything. Well, today a few colleagues of mine got freaked out when they saw me using a table to display data. May be my knowledge, however tables work great! Its a great way to learn. Why css layout over table layout? By using our site, you Thats why theres more than one method in the post. To me it seems so obvious that using divs over tables is the better approach that I have a hard time understanding how someone would argue otherwise. The easiest way to create a table of contents is to use the built-in So, if thats the structure it uses the same amount of code. If table tags were called tags, nobody would be complaining, and there would be no ongoing debate. I hope I wasnt coming across as bashing tables. CSS based design is unquestionably superior to table layout, but due to sheer laziness the practice of table design has held on. This forces me to go and adjust the width and height and modify margins and padding in EACH div. By the way sorry the code in your comment didnt display. You do have to put in a little time to learn how to layout a site with css, but once learned its not hard to do. That should tell you something. more flexible since one div is not dependent on the other divs on the page it allows for more freedom in your design, quicker to load blocks of code can be presented right away instead of the browser requiring an extra pass. In the best case scenario youd be adding at least another table cell to get another block of information compared to adding another div for another block of information, which would grow our code equally. 5) Greater Consistency If you use template files and CSS, where is there inconsistency? It permits online videos to be seen without using third-party plug-ins. If youre constantly having to fix old code though, I would recommend looking into the feasibility of redeveloping the site. The industry is now moving again toward a responsive design workflow. However, know that the industry has moved on. Maybe its because I learned with tables when I was getting started but Divs are complicated and they absolutely do require more code most of the time when you consider practically each object needs to be assigned an ID and go along with a class . I also kept all my university textbooks just in case I would need them guess what? Learning to write CSS layouts bucket be tricky, especially if you are usual with using tables, but here's why CSS is your best programming bet. If you are a Mac user who recently bought a hard disk, you might be wondering which storage format you should use. Feel free to email me if you want. The conclusion isnt that it takes a long time to communicate in Spanish. However. You can either explicitly set the values when browsers are behaving differently or use a css reset file like the ones from Eric Meyer or Yahoo. In its simplest form were comparing: Even in the simplest case above you can see tables are already a more complex structure than divs. You can probably also wrap the code in a blockquote. The form on the bottom left of the homepage is an html feedback form through http://www.freedback.com. Im not going to tell you that youre doing anything wrong or evil or that the world is going to come to an end. The argument is about how to structure a web page. Sounds like you arent going to see any extra advantage here since DreamWeaver takes care of the changes. 1) Inconsistent Browser Support Different browsers will render CSS layout differently as a result of browser bugs or lack of support for various CSS features. When people are having trouble getting a css layout to look the same across browsers its usually more to do with the skills of the designer than with css itself. 2. There are a few downsides while using CSS. I think theres more potential for errors with tables, but I know there are people who can code a search friendly site thats still table-driven. IE sucks and makes my page look a pile of crap. Thats crazy. 5. element: Notice that the table in the examples above have double borders. WebSome of the advantages and disadvantages of database forms are as follows: Advantages Data entry is less error-prone A number of predefined formats are available for use Usually, all the data fields for a single record appears in one screen Forms are customizable (compared to data sheet views) Forms can include instructions for data entry Good Article and a lot of gold in these comments. What Im saying though is the problem isnt css itself. 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