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261 Comments
- rotundo, on 04/08/2009, -42/+570This is cool, but now I'm going to offend everyone:
The fact that getting a 3 column layout in CSS is a feat of wonder is an indication that something is terribly wrong with the standard. Building this layout should be obvious, intuitive, and in no need of discussion. This is absolutely trivial with tables -- the only difficulty being that CSS zealots are going to crucify you when you put it together 10x faster than they can.
I'm all for the semantic web, but the fact that people still can't admit that CSS lacks a grid positioning system (allowing you to align content to other parts of the document tree) is why it still lacks such a system. Get off your high horse. Admit that CSS layout is inferior to tables in some cases and needs some revision, and maybe someday life will actually be easier.
Fully aware I'll be dugg down for speaking the obvious truth... - andregriffin, on 04/08/2009, -7/+171CSS3 will allow table-like control, yet without the ridiculous markup of actual tables. Therefore, this is a non-issue with CSS. The issue is waiting for browsers to catch up.
- Rutje, on 04/08/2009, -22/+157quicker:
<table><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></table> - timdorr, on 04/08/2009, -8/+77What it comes down to is this:
- Tables are easier to conceptualize.
- CSS is easier to implement and maintain.
Tables might get off the starting line faster, but it's going to catch up with you later on down the line. Learn the latest CSS techniques and things like this article will be second nature to you, and therefore you can implement scalable code faster. - Matt2k, on 04/08/2009, -17/+83Because that extra <tr> tag is *so* more ridiculous than nesting DIV tags
- ERICwithanH, on 04/08/2009, -12/+77I don't develop for IE6 anymore. Instead, I include a script in every website I create that detects whether or not they are using IE6 and, if they are, tells them to upgrade to competent browser such as Safari or Firefox. And, if a client is like, "It doesn't work in IE6?" I respond, "No, IE6 is a nearly nine year old browser." ...just doing my part to end the tragedy that is IE6.
- r3zonance, on 04/08/2009, -6/+57"The fact that getting a 3 column layout in CSS is a feat of wonder is an indication that something is terribly wrong with the standard."
No, that's an indication that there is something terribly wrong with web browsers, as they don't follow the standards (particularly IE). - Xsecrets, on 04/08/2009, -3/+54well actually he does have a header and footer, so
<table><tr><td colspan=3></td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan=3></td></tr></table> - Bombfrog, on 04/08/2009, -6/+48So 20% of internet users can't use your website. Well done.
I assume your website is not a successful commercial website otherwise you'd be throwing away a large chunk of money there.
If we told any of our clients that we'd deliberately done soemthing that would wipe out 20% of their turnover they'd be pretty pissed. - GothAlice, on 04/08/2009, -17/+55In the last 6 years I have used tables for nothing but legitimate tabular data, as in a spreadsheet. I have used CSS layouts for an amazing variety of column styles, and even managed to take customer-provided Photoshop designs and optimize them down to far simpler code than my co-workers would believe was possible.
I'm not burying you for speaking the truth. I'm burying you for being a blind git.
Realize that the onus is on both the browsers to support, and the developers to code based on actual, ratified standards. And that some standards supersede others. - beermad, on 04/08/2009, -1/+37It wouldn't be if it wasn't for bloody Internet Explorer.
- Nanobe, on 04/08/2009, -5/+39*CSS 2* allows table-like layouts without the need for table elements. Yes, CSS 2, from 1998! And every major browser has supported them for ages, with the sole exception being Internet Explorer. IE 8 is the first version of IE to finally support CSS table layouts.
So it's really Microsoft's fault that certain CSS layouts haven't been as easy as HTML table layouts. - rabbitmo, on 04/08/2009, -7/+38quicker, smaller, cleaner, works everywhere and you don't have to worry that your whole site breaks with a browser update.
- cesig, on 04/08/2009, -3/+34I hate that these layouts are called 'liquid.' It's a web page, not a liquid. This layout is FLUID.
- Sixteh, on 04/08/2009, -0/+31Nice job viewing source on the digg bar--you're smart!
- hazard, on 04/08/2009, -1/+29Geocities & Angelfire were so much easier...
- agbullet, on 04/08/2009, -4/+30"CSS just took design out of the hands of common folk"
I'm kinda grateful for that, actually.
Have you seen MySpace? THAT'S "design in the hands of the common folk". - Nitrodist88, on 04/08/2009, -0/+23Sometimes websites aren't created just for advertising.
Granted, a better solution would be a redirection to a plain site without any styling (old HTML for the win) and a message at the top advising the person to install a IE7 (at least)/Safari/Opera/Firefox. - scarwars, on 04/08/2009, -2/+24"the iPhone is driving more than 50% of mobile web traffic"
Maybe in America.. but not in the rest of the world.. - Jibberwalk, on 04/08/2009, -0/+21At least stuff like this still gets on the homepage. It's nice to see something even remotely related to anything code-based make the front page of Digg still. What, considering the massive amount of douche-units that have swarmed Digg.
- guinpen, on 04/08/2009, -3/+24Well, looking at websites from 'the good old days,' and looking at modern websites...
- z1freeride, on 04/08/2009, -1/+20There's a difference between "internet users" and "EricwithanH users." What if your target market is largely firefox users and only 1% are IE6 users? Are you still going to accommodate that 1%?
- takua108, on 04/08/2009, -10/+29What, *another* one?
- xsmasher, on 04/08/2009, -9/+26Either I'm a moron, or tables are not easier to implement. They're more likely to work cross-browser, too.
I can't afford to ignore IE6, even at this late date - not with corporate clients - and that's where the trouble comes in. If I only had to support firefox and Safari, sure, I could use CSS for columns all day and night. But if I want a layout with a grid, I'm not going to spend 2 days hashing out a workable css solution when I can write the table in 5 minutes.
Don't get me wrong, I use CSS extensively - but if I need columns I'm writing a table, end of discussion. Why wouldn't I? - inactive, on 04/08/2009, -1/+18Prepare for y2k people!
- blatantly, on 04/08/2009, -9/+23Web page layout shouldn't be so hard
- novalux, on 04/09/2009, -0/+13This isn't just about some insane design standards people! This is about the fact that when the Google bot runs across a <table> tag, it should be able to reasonably assume that some sort of important data is being presented in a... table!
You know how you can search definitions of words on Google? That's because of the <dl> definition list tag and it's associations. Imagine someday we can type "population new york city" in Google and it can find a properly marked up data table and can display the answer clearly, like with definitions, instead of wondering whether this table is actually some piss poor 3-column layout and the number it finds is the number of registered users on a forum or another equally non-useful piece of data.
Browser support for CSS needs to get better so it's as trivial to make a fluid n-column, m-row layout with proper markup and CSS as it is to use a table. And eventually, we front-end developers are going to need to stop being pussies and make non-compliant browsers stop working on our websites. You can't play an MP3 in a record player, people. - Ablerank, on 04/08/2009, -0/+13Dude, ever hear of "View Source"?
- Nanobe, on 04/08/2009, -1/+14Pragmatism for whom? Realize that not everyone who browses the Web does so in a visual, graphical web browser. Web technologies were designed to accommodate people with disabilities, automated data mining programs like Google, people using text-only clients, etc. For all of those groups, HTML table layouts are usually noticeably worse than semantic markup. And for typical users of visual web browsers, HTML table layouts offer no benefit over semantic markup and CSS presentation. So really, the only person that HTML table layouts benefit is the lazy web designer who only cares about making the page without having to think.
CSS layouts aren't *that hard*. You just need to learn the tools you're working with. You know, like any professional. - tobiasproject, on 04/07/2009, -4/+16i love wioning
- acroyear2, on 04/08/2009, -0/+12Standards development is about the long haul. CSS is going through baby-steps but we all should strive for standards for the long term. Of course tables are easier but that isn't the point of web development. Hell, this is easier:
<html>
<body><b><p>hello world</b>
</body>
And most browsers will read that but the technology won't improve if we just settled for the code above. - seanmc303, on 04/08/2009, -0/+12I have been using this layout for a long time now on a couple projects, and it works really well. The CSS is pretty tricky but it accomplishes two goals very well. One, the columns will adjust to the height of the tallest column. Two, it is more search engine friendly because it positions the content before a left side nav (that is if you are using a left side nav).
- Matt2k, on 04/08/2009, -6/+17> Matt2k, you've never designed a real site.
I can guarantee I've worked on more "real sites" than most people here, and I'm telling you that the idea of semantic tags is nonsense. You might like to think that nesting floating divs with relative widths and margins is somehow more meaningful than simply defining a grid, I'm not going to argue with you. But I invite you to actually look at the source for this "Holy grail" and tell me with a serious face that it's not absolutely absurd. CSS is terrible for laying out columns. It's totally unsuited to the task. - dgtljunglist, on 04/08/2009, -0/+11This isn't what I expected. There still aren't any clean ways to take a single block of text and styling into columns without script. If you know in advance what should be in column, as with this sample, it's easy: just use floats. It's the automagic columns that are the real holy grail.
- BoneheadFarker, on 04/08/2009, -1/+11@sensor
...or you've already coded around all of IE's bugs which get fixed in the update... - blackinthmiddle, on 04/08/2009, -0/+10Clients may not care. That doesn't mean you shouldn't. I've been a slow convert, but as GothAlice said, using css for layout is the way to go, especially when you're dealing with people who are constantly changing their mind regarding how a page should look. Tables with rowspans and colspans and spacer gifs and such take much more effort to modify than divs that just need to be repositioned. And again, once the css file gets downloaded, it's cached and is much easier on a browser than having to constantly interpret inline table styles.
- tgc1, on 04/08/2009, -1/+11I support this idea. Been in the industry over 10 years. I'm sick of IE6. ***** IE6.
Yes, corporate clients might bitch. But more than likely, if you explain this issue to them they will see it your way. You're the expert. You're supposed to recommend things like this to them. No sense in catering to idiots. They're holding us back. Innovate or die, as they say. - blackinthmiddle, on 04/08/2009, -0/+9@FredFredrickson
o Tables are much harder for browsers to render. I've actually seen this in my own experience. They're simply slower to load.
o You get no benefit for initially rendering a page based on tabular layout. In other words, if I download a page with a layout based on divs and css, the css gets cached and my other pages benefit from this caching. With tabular layout, the page has to be reprocessed every time. And when I go to another page, I again have to process the entire page. If I refresh said page, it again has to be completely processed.
o Tabular pages are simply difficult to maintain. Things like firebug and tidy make it a ton easier, but if you've got a complicated layout and you have nested tables with colspans and rowspans and somebody asks you to *change* that, ugh, you'll be crying. I've worked with many people who thought what I was doing was just drag and drop and therefore changed their mind at the drop of a hat. Said people were usually pretty powerful people, so trying to tell them what to do simply wasn't happening. It's simply easier to reposition divs, as opposed to redesigning a table layout.
o You may not care about html readers, but they have a much more difficult time going through table layouts.
o Same with bots and ad algorithms
Again, for *tabular* data, tables are the way to go, so they definitely have their place. But for a host of reasons, css is the way to go. - GothAlice, on 04/08/2009, -1/+10@xsmasher: Accessibility. In a three-column layout (or left-handed two-column), I want my content to appear first in the stream.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/ - toastmonster, on 04/08/2009, -0/+9Well I for one welcome any layout that doesn't require any IE skullhackery, nice one!
- quantax, on 04/08/2009, -0/+9At our design/dev shop, we will code a site to be IE6 compliant but the client has to pay extra for it. We support IE7+/Firefox/Webkit, anything else costs extra. We find this is the best balance to discourage IE6 without potentially losing a client. Also, if you're doing your CSS properly, your conditional-fixes should be very minimal unless the site is doing something advanced in its layout.
To be sure, I can't wait till we can officially drop IE6 for good. - z1freeride, on 04/08/2009, -0/+9Not all sites have a 20% IE6 audience.
- hepj, on 04/08/2009, -5/+13"They are infamously difficult to style well"
Not really. You just have to use slightly different CSS attributes than with divs and spans. But I still think it's a pain more because of the organization thought process tables require for an entire site layout. That's definitely more annoying than a few divs n spans.
"Nearly impossible to replicate across browsers"
I think that is the only real argument for tables. Because they've been used in the IE6 days, they actually seem to work better cross browser. Some of the stuff that IE just doesn't support make not using tables arduous and, like rotundo said, slower.
"The code needed to make the do anything for layout is ridiculously complex"
True. In the HTML anyway. While I haven't done any tests or anything, I'm willing to wager that the amount of CSS it takes to make something cross browser friendly at least partially makes up for this. HOWEVER, maybe in a few years when no one uses IE6 anymore ... and 7 even ... the CSS will be as simple as it should be.
Also. CSS3 and most of CSS2 is worthless until you can use them and reach 95+% of the audience. - tjr88, on 04/08/2009, -4/+12It's not
- Heretushi, on 04/08/2009, -1/+9Nice way to post a completely off topic answer in a CSS discussion.
- Berkana, on 04/08/2009, -2/+10This is nice, but after doing a few layouts in 960, even this seems like too much work. 960 is flexible, fast, and covers just about any common layout need. In 960, you just add a few classes; the class names activate pre-set layout patterns. It's light weight too.
See this about 960:
http://nettuts.com/videos/screencasts/a-detailed-l ... - winmywii, on 04/08/2009, -0/+8Why would you have to stay up all night to create a 3 column layout using CSS? I think you are exaggerating a little bit. I hope you are.
- inactive, on 04/08/2009, -3/+11Me too, to put it in perspective, developing for IE6 is the equivalent of someone in 1999 developing something designed to work in Tim Berners-Lee's 1991 NeXT web browser. It's just a shame IE6 is bundled with XP...
- agbullet, on 04/08/2009, -2/+9Sigh. I thought Japan's notoriously nippon-philic market was pretty common knowledge, and that I could get away with not giving it a mention. Apparently not.
http://www.twine.com/item/1238vcx56-295/why-japan- ...
"After selling around 200,000 iPhones in the first couple of months sales have plummeted in Japan to the point where the mobile carrier is now giving away the 8gb iPhone."
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/02/why-the-ipho ...
"Apple’s iPhone has wowed most of the globe — but not Japan, where the handset is selling so poorly it’s being offered for free."
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080 ...
"Survey: 91% of Japanese Will Not Buy 'iPhone'"
It's the same reason why western tech brands like the Xbox 360, EA etc have traditionally had a hard time breaking into the Jap market. No one's saying they don't have a foothold, just that they're not at the top of the charts if a Japanese substitute is available. My apologies for the list of blogs as support. I tried to find something on Wikipedia but no market data there... maybe I suck at teh Google.
//I've looked at your commenting history, and it seems you're the kinda guy who prob hugs his iPhone to sleep, but this isn't an attack on your beloved phone. All i'm saying is it isn't as popular in the land of the Rising Sun as you think. - madk, on 04/08/2009, -1/+8The end user doesn't care. Period.
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