Hi Stephen,
Is peer judgement one of the reasons for the defensiveness about
using tables? How many of these arguments were written with the
intention of convincing clients that CSS layouts are not all they
are made out to be? .....On the whole these kind of specifics
are not as high on our clients list as page load speed,
bandwidth, etc.
Clients do not care about whether you use a CSS layout or a print
layout. If they know that much they could probably create their own
web site. They want a web site that looks good and brings in
business (and works on their browser lol - they may well be
oblivious to the fact that it might look different to someone else).
Tables are not necessarily going to affect page load speed any,
unless you using old style multiple nested tables which is not what
I am suggesting.
Actually you seem to be agreeing with me while arguing with me. My
point there was exactly that clients on the whole initially don't
care whether you use table based or CSS based layouts as money
sapping considerations like page load speed, bandwidth etc take
precedence. I wasn't trying to suggest otherwise.
What I was suggesting was that by discussing table v's CSS based
layouts the article is therefore directed at developers not clients.
Since it is directed at developers it's argument should present a
clearer picture of the reasons you may chose to use a "hybrid layout"
over a pure CSS one. As I mentioned, Jeffrey Zeldman has already done
it in one of the holy books of the web standards crusade and that
fact alone should allow people afraid for their reputation to relax a
bit.
With regards to peer judgement, what annoys me is the attitude that
if you dare to suggest that tables are suitable for layout at
certain times then you must be incapable of using CSS and not a
good web designer. Maybe people who make this choice, such as the
person writing the article in question, have weighed up all the
options and decided that they do not want to go down the route of
multiple hacks to make sure their web site works properly and does
not break.
Or perhaps they have a layout situation that they want or need to
implement, where again to do it with CSS is a hundreds time more
complicated than using a simple table layout, and so they decide
that the most efficient way to go is to use a simple table. IE6 is
a reality for the majority of web users and we cannot escape that
fact. CSS also has a fair way to go to mature.
"You should be doing it another way" is also a fairly well used
answer to the argument for using tables in certain situations, but
it is not fair to use this argument unless you know what the person
is trying to implement or what restrictions they are under.
I agree with you and have already said that the important thing is
for educated designer/developers to make their own judgement
depending on the circumstances. However I'd ask you this ...would you
rather (and/or recommend others) read "Designing with Web Standards"
which includes varying angles of page layout from hybrid to fully CSS
in a non-partisan way, or, would you rather see more articles (like
this one) ranting from one or other side of the fence?
On that last note I noticed that sadly many of the comments added to
that article are swinging from one side of the fence to the other.
Arguments I find most laughable are the ones branding CSS "purists"
as somehow lacking business sense, as if the reason more and more of
the largest sites on the internet are adopting CSS based layouts is
somehow a purely academic indulgence! People making those kind of
comments really need to look at the reasoning behind eg the
smh.com.au changeover to CSS layouts which was discussed on this very
mailing list a while back.
Nick
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