At 02:20 PM 1/14/2009 -0500, Bill Brown wrote: >Well, tables and CSS are not mutually exclusive. That is, they can be >used together, though using them for layout is generally frowned upon by >the CSS Overlords.
I'm not sure who these Overlords are, but I presume they're the ones referred to when people say that "They say..." or "They think...", without actually specifically naming who it is that "they" are. ;) I am intrigued by that comment, though -- that is, the sentiment behind it -- if only because it does apply directly to where I'm currently at with regard to web design (including, of course, CSS). I started learning/doing web design back in the early 1990s, around the time when the capability of framed web sites had just been "invented", and animated GIFs were all the rage -- CSS was, in fact, still years away at that point. I enthusiastically took part in various discussion lists for quite a few years in an effort to learn more and keep up with the changing technology, but for a variety of reasons I dropped out of them all about 7 years ago, and as a result I guess I'm now quite a bit "behind". With that said, however, I do like to think that I'm a pretty good web designer (URLs in my sig, below, if you're curious), but all of my sites are still created using tables for layout. I do use CSS, but mainly for typographic purposes (specifying font sizes, etc.) but only very rarely for positioning things (like images, etc.) around the page. I'm curious: why is this approach "frowned upon"? Please don't get me wrong, because I do fully understand that the *goal* of CSS is for the purpose of layout, etc., and tables were never really meant for that, but at the same time I can *easily* create a site using tables and have *no* cross-browser/platform problems at all -- on the other hand, I've attempted to create sites with CSS layouts, and have only ended up with a thoroughly buggy site. Perhaps I just don't know CSS well enough to know what I'm doing, but having now been on this list for a few months now (since last July), it seems like practically everyone has innumerable, sometimes insurmountable, problems in attempting to do so -- when quite often many of these problems would simply "disappear" if a table had been used for layout instead of CSS. I do embrace CSS, and really would like to update my knowledge (and my sites), but at the same time one (anyone) can only acknowledge that all of this CSS stuff is still very, very young -- the simple fact that different browsers interpret so-called "standards" in different ways is certainly proof of that -- and no doubt anything that I might endeavour to do now (with a zillion "fixes" and "hacks" to make it work) will all change, all over again, within the next 5 or 10 years. So if tables *work* (for layout), and work *easily* and *perfectly*, without any bugs/problems at all, even it's technically the "wrong" use for them, what's so bad about using them anyway? I do look forward with great enthusiasm to the future, once "they" get their act together and things aren't so incredibly full of bugs, but in the meantime... - Table layouts are supposed to be inelegant, because they're the wrong, inappropriate use for them -- and yet, nevertheless they're extremely simple and easy to manage, and thus they *are*, in fact, extremely elegant, like a beautiful castle made out of stone. - CSS layouts are supposed to be elegant, because that's the purpose (amongst others) that it was designed for -- and yet it seems to be an absolute nightmare of problems and bugs and hacks (as evidenced, as I mentioned, by innumerable posts on this list), and thus they *are* in fact, extremely inelegant, like a house of cards, teetering on collapse. I signed up on this list back in July because I do have some typographic issues that I want to resolve. As a matter of course, and out of respect, I chose to wait a bit before posting my question, if only to get a "feel" for this list and what kinds of questions/answers came through. I've since read almost every post, and have checked out many of the various URLs that have come up (not only links relating to peoples' problems, but also those in peoples' email sigs), and I must say that I am *deeply* impressed with the efforts of those of you who do create your sites using CSS for layouts (among so many other purposes). It's rather intimidating, though, for a poor old "behind-the-times" sod like me, and if only because of that apparent perspective of "them" (the aforementioned invisible "Overlords"), it has only left me feeling rather shy and timid to post my questions to this list, even half a year later (and still with my problems unresolved). Just some thoughts -- I'm certainly interested, of course, in how others feel about these things. Ron :) PS. Assuming I get the nerve up to post the problems I have, they're all typographically related, but each relate to differing problems I'm having. They all came to my attention because of one page that I'm working on (but which relates to how I've done things on virtually all of my sites), but should I post all my questions -- relating to this one page -- in one post here, or should I submit separate posts for each separate issue? Woof?... http://www.Psymon.com Ach, du Leni!... http://www.Riefenstahl.org Hmm... http://www.Imaginary-Friend.ca ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
