Rob Marscher wrote:
Usually if you avoid using tables for layout, you can drastically
change the layout of your page without altering the html. If you keep
to the indended use of the html tags, then the page should look
somewhat ok if you turn off your styles altogether (which is maybe how
it would look for someone using Netscape 4 or some other ancient
browser). You can also supply different layouts for other uses like
printing or for mobile devices without changing the html. I think
screen readers for visually impaired people read table html elements
expecting it to be some type of data. I can't say that from
experience though. So if you don't really care about those things,
I'm not sure there's anything else wrong with using tables for layout
except you'll have young "know-it-alls" who just got out of their html
development class saying that you have really bad code (happened to me
before). You also can't put those cool xhtml/css compliant badges on
your page ;)
Rob, this is actually one of the more persuasive arguments I've heard
for the DIV/CSS model. You hear a lot of dogma about CSS, which has led
me to this conclusion:
CSS is to HTML Tables as Java is to PHP
In other words, one of them was designed by a committee of thought
police, while the other lets me get my job done.
Another argument I would have put against your reasoning is that I don't
drastically change my layout, once its delivered to the customer, that's
it. However, your post led me to an Aha! moment, I do in fact change
layout drastically a lot, during *development*. Until it is finalized
we are forever tweaking it. This makes it worthwhile to experiment a
little with CSS during layout of specialized data screens, I'll let you
know how it turns out.
So what is the proper use of HTML Tables? A form of INPUTs, with
caption on the left and inputs on the right, are table anointed for this
task, or Divs looking to do this one also?
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