Thanks for the sanity check everyone :) I was worried that I'd missed something.
I'd seen the YUI table module, thanks Ted, and I know of at least two jQuery plugins that do the same thing so yeah, I'm not sure why they wouldn't use one of those. They're saying it's faster to use divs compared to just tables, Hassan, but with the amount of extra code required it seems counter-productive. I'll see if I can get you an example. The grid is mostly hard-coded, but each row/cell is created dynamically so i'm not sure what the advantage is -- more investigation required! And no laughing please, this is serious <giggle /> On 06/12/2011, at 4:14 AM, Ted Drake wrote: > I remember seeing this for the first time. I was asked by a backend engineer > to help them fix a layout issue in a data table. When I looked at the source > code, the page was a jumble of absolutely positioned cells to look like a > data table. I shook my head and said he was on his own. I wasn't about to > wade into that mess. > > Positioned divs would be completely inaccessible. It would be a string of > numbers with no context to what they mean. > > YUI makes a great data table module. > http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/datatable/ > You can easily make your data table sortable, generate charts, make it super > accessible and more. You can't do the same with positioned divs. > > ted > > > On 12/5/11 8:44 AM, "Hassan Schroeder" <has...@webtuitive.com> wrote: > >> On 12/4/11 11:22 PM, David McKinnon wrote: >>> OK, so I'm working on a project in which the developers are laying out >>> tabular data using divs. >> >>> They say this is good because: >>> >>> 1. It's fast >> >> Compared to what? >> >>> 2. They can manipulate the resulting DOM much more easily than they could >>> with a table >> >> Would love to see examples. >> >>> 3. Developers find it easier to, say, add or remove columns from the tables, >>> without having to >>> edit the code all the way down the table (no wysiwyg editors here!) >> >> ?"all the way down the table"? So, a hard-coded data table, rather >> than a set of rows populated by looping through a data source? >> >> That's just sad. Perhaps you can gently hint that it's now the 21st >> Century. And these people call themselves "developers"? >> >>> What do you think? Are tables too hard for the real world ... >> >> Stop! My sides!! :-) >> >> FWIW, > > > > ******************************************************************* > List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm > Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org > ******************************************************************* > ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
