icant.co.uk— A nice site with 70+ different designs you can do for your html tables. Click on the design name on the left to change the appearance. All are free to download and use on your own sites.
Mar 16, 2006View in Crawl 4
tables are just finethey're a tool in your toolbox, your goal is to fill your developer toolbox with as many tools as you can so you have the best tool for the job. If someone tells you "never use tables" then they're taking a tool out of your box and just decreased your net worth. Its all about the right tool for the job.
i see tables as more beneficial in data presentation and div's are more of an aesthetic tool. you can make prettier things with divs. both useful though.
@jiminocclient: "I need this project done by 5pm"you: "sorry can't do it, gotta fix this css that doesn't work in opera, gotta be w3c yo!"client: "you're fired"------------After you slice it all up and deliver it to the client at 4:45pm and they say they need to change the width, or a graphic you have to go back and RE-slice the entire site... and miss your deadline... all I have to do is change the stylesheet.And yes, I can do a 3 column website in XHTMl/CSS faster or equally as fast as I used to do table websites 2 years ago.
I'm a bit late in the game here... but I'll make a deal with you "never use tables" junkies. You show me a way how to center a DIV into the middle of the browser window *without using javascript* and i'll never touch a table for designing a site again.Oh, and the div must be centered with a variable height and width. I already know about the DeadCentre technique so dont link that. DeadCentre is cool, but you still need to define the width and the height for it to work.
You'd think that a centred DIV wouldn't be such a hard thing to do wouldn't you? This bugs me too. I also don't like all of the hacks that reside in CSS, regardless of how good they are. They're still hacks. I prefer DIVs to tables any day, but tables do have their uses.And as for site-wide changes regarding the width of a table or something similar...there's always find/replace? ...and that's a joke by the way...well, kind of.
anagoge: It's not that it's hard... its *impossible* to do. The problem is doing so vertically, but even centering a div horizontally creates the need for a container element so it'll work in IE.google.com? tables.yahoo.com? tables.ask.com? tables.microsoft.com? tables.These are some of the biggest companies that founded some of the greatest technologies in our world wide web. MS has millions upon millions to spend on their site's design. Google's entire business plan was founded on the concept of the entire world using google. Even your grandmothers know what Yahoo is.These companies are huge, yet they use tables. Why? Because although CSS may *seem* like the right thing to do, many browsers still do not implement it properly.Some complex layouts made with tables will not work cross-browser with CSS, whether you fools like it or not.Just to humor myself, I decided to start a few projects with CSS only layouts. The timeframe on the projects was large, so I had the flexibility to learn as I work. After trying to do this about 10 times, each time I stumbled upon a new issue with CSS that wouldn't work cross-browser.Each time I tried to start a project, I remembered to avoid certain layout techniques because I knew CSS would not support them (ie: have a very clean error handler that would display a back trace of application code with a centered div... yet the centered div was impossible as mentioned above).At some point, I realized that formulating my layouts *to fit CSS* was freaking stupid. Then I tried to really think of the benefits of CSS and whether or not they need to be solved. Let's go:1) What about accessibility? What about blind people? And the deaf?Oddly enough, these people were not in the target audience of any project I have ever worked on. A handicap is a handicap for a reason. You can give them parking spacings, but changing the look and feel of your product and consuming tons of man hours to make sure things work for them is not worth it if they are not your target audience.2) Tables are so much slower in loading!An excuse to use CSS. If tables were such a performance hit as you claim, why aren't the most trafficked sites on the net using all CSS layouts? I'm sure a few are, like Digg, but this layout is very simple (and it still doesnt display the same in FF and IE). Tables do not slow down the loading of a page at all, and they absolutely do not consume more bandwidth. If anything CSS will consume more bandwidth.Another little bit that the CSS folks dont like mentioning is that under certain circumstances IE6 refuses to cache images that were loaded via CSS. One of the sites I had to debug had that exact problem and racked up an extra 10 gigs of bandwidth for a month (it was a high volume site). 10 gigs is a big number for IE/CSS f**kup.3) What about seperation of style and content?I wrote my own template engine -- a very powerful one for that matter. I do not use a single instance of HTML in the business logic. That's right, not a single piece of HTML (except in the error handler). I was very strict about that and it worked out great in the end. So it goes like:Database -> (stores values) -> Application Logic -> (generates values) -> Template Engine -> (replaces placeholders with values) -> Output -> (displays templates)If I want to switch a stylesheet, all I need to do is add the stylesheet and write about 4 lines in the Application Logic. For that, no Javascript will be required for automatic style switching and since HTTP is stateless, going through another page load to switch the look of the page is trivial and not a good enough excuse to endure the pain of CSS.4) Table fanboys amaze me.That's great, but you seem to think we're all idiots. We know the difference between CSS and tables. We know that the markup looks cleaner and is easier to modify down the road.You take too much credit for your "expertise". CSS is nothing but a set of little declarations. It's not complicated. Try writing a web application framework or a very complex algorithm then come back to the "complexity" of CSS.We know tables suck, we just dont have any reason to change our workflow for something that isn't supported by older browsers and is not standard in the current browsers.===And that's it. Any other reasons to use CSS?The fact of the matter is, the things that make CSS strong are the features -- and we all wish we could use those features because they are great. If CSS was like the flash plugin, that works the same despite the browser implementation (because it's a plugin that is actually released by the company that developed it) I would have no problem utilizing it.And thats it.. I cant rant anymore.PS: The guys posting their websites and telling everyone they make money off of design... wow... those are some pretty crappy designs.. haha. "Thats what the client wanted" only means that the client didnt trust you with the design, thus it was a low paying project for a small company who could care less. Try some great designs like:<a class="user" href="http://www.fantasyinteractive.com/">http://www.fantasyinteractive.com/</a><a class="user" href="http://www.stylegala.com/">http://www.stylegala.com/</a>.. and so on.
1200 diggs for a page with some table colours/borders?And 115 comments arguing about CSS Vs Tables when the actual link is just on about tabular data tables anyway.....Once again I'm astounded at the group intelligence of the digg community..... I'm tempted to take it off my rss list after this.
jiminocMar 16, 2006Submitter
tables are just finethey're a tool in your toolbox, your goal is to fill your developer toolbox with as many tools as you can so you have the best tool for the job. If someone tells you "never use tables" then they're taking a tool out of your box and just decreased your net worth. Its all about the right tool for the job.
smarusichMar 17, 2006
i see tables as more beneficial in data presentation and div's are more of an aesthetic tool. you can make prettier things with divs. both useful though.
ryan_merketMar 17, 2006
@jiminocclient: "I need this project done by 5pm"you: "sorry can't do it, gotta fix this css that doesn't work in opera, gotta be w3c yo!"client: "you're fired"------------After you slice it all up and deliver it to the client at 4:45pm and they say they need to change the width, or a graphic you have to go back and RE-slice the entire site... and miss your deadline... all I have to do is change the stylesheet.And yes, I can do a 3 column website in XHTMl/CSS faster or equally as fast as I used to do table websites 2 years ago.
Closed AccountMar 17, 2006
I'm a bit late in the game here... but I'll make a deal with you "never use tables" junkies. You show me a way how to center a DIV into the middle of the browser window *without using javascript* and i'll never touch a table for designing a site again.Oh, and the div must be centered with a variable height and width. I already know about the DeadCentre technique so dont link that. DeadCentre is cool, but you still need to define the width and the height for it to work.
anagogeMar 17, 2006
You'd think that a centred DIV wouldn't be such a hard thing to do wouldn't you? This bugs me too. I also don't like all of the hacks that reside in CSS, regardless of how good they are. They're still hacks. I prefer DIVs to tables any day, but tables do have their uses.And as for site-wide changes regarding the width of a table or something similar...there's always find/replace? ...and that's a joke by the way...well, kind of.
anagogeMar 17, 2006
leoburnett.com is a really nice site.
Closed AccountMar 17, 2006
anagoge: It's not that it's hard... its *impossible* to do. The problem is doing so vertically, but even centering a div horizontally creates the need for a container element so it'll work in IE.google.com? tables.yahoo.com? tables.ask.com? tables.microsoft.com? tables.These are some of the biggest companies that founded some of the greatest technologies in our world wide web. MS has millions upon millions to spend on their site's design. Google's entire business plan was founded on the concept of the entire world using google. Even your grandmothers know what Yahoo is.These companies are huge, yet they use tables. Why? Because although CSS may *seem* like the right thing to do, many browsers still do not implement it properly.Some complex layouts made with tables will not work cross-browser with CSS, whether you fools like it or not.Just to humor myself, I decided to start a few projects with CSS only layouts. The timeframe on the projects was large, so I had the flexibility to learn as I work. After trying to do this about 10 times, each time I stumbled upon a new issue with CSS that wouldn't work cross-browser.Each time I tried to start a project, I remembered to avoid certain layout techniques because I knew CSS would not support them (ie: have a very clean error handler that would display a back trace of application code with a centered div... yet the centered div was impossible as mentioned above).At some point, I realized that formulating my layouts *to fit CSS* was freaking stupid. Then I tried to really think of the benefits of CSS and whether or not they need to be solved. Let's go:1) What about accessibility? What about blind people? And the deaf?Oddly enough, these people were not in the target audience of any project I have ever worked on. A handicap is a handicap for a reason. You can give them parking spacings, but changing the look and feel of your product and consuming tons of man hours to make sure things work for them is not worth it if they are not your target audience.2) Tables are so much slower in loading!An excuse to use CSS. If tables were such a performance hit as you claim, why aren't the most trafficked sites on the net using all CSS layouts? I'm sure a few are, like Digg, but this layout is very simple (and it still doesnt display the same in FF and IE). Tables do not slow down the loading of a page at all, and they absolutely do not consume more bandwidth. If anything CSS will consume more bandwidth.Another little bit that the CSS folks dont like mentioning is that under certain circumstances IE6 refuses to cache images that were loaded via CSS. One of the sites I had to debug had that exact problem and racked up an extra 10 gigs of bandwidth for a month (it was a high volume site). 10 gigs is a big number for IE/CSS f**kup.3) What about seperation of style and content?I wrote my own template engine -- a very powerful one for that matter. I do not use a single instance of HTML in the business logic. That's right, not a single piece of HTML (except in the error handler). I was very strict about that and it worked out great in the end. So it goes like:Database -> (stores values) -> Application Logic -> (generates values) -> Template Engine -> (replaces placeholders with values) -> Output -> (displays templates)If I want to switch a stylesheet, all I need to do is add the stylesheet and write about 4 lines in the Application Logic. For that, no Javascript will be required for automatic style switching and since HTTP is stateless, going through another page load to switch the look of the page is trivial and not a good enough excuse to endure the pain of CSS.4) Table fanboys amaze me.That's great, but you seem to think we're all idiots. We know the difference between CSS and tables. We know that the markup looks cleaner and is easier to modify down the road.You take too much credit for your "expertise". CSS is nothing but a set of little declarations. It's not complicated. Try writing a web application framework or a very complex algorithm then come back to the "complexity" of CSS.We know tables suck, we just dont have any reason to change our workflow for something that isn't supported by older browsers and is not standard in the current browsers.===And that's it. Any other reasons to use CSS?The fact of the matter is, the things that make CSS strong are the features -- and we all wish we could use those features because they are great. If CSS was like the flash plugin, that works the same despite the browser implementation (because it's a plugin that is actually released by the company that developed it) I would have no problem utilizing it.And thats it.. I cant rant anymore.PS: The guys posting their websites and telling everyone they make money off of design... wow... those are some pretty crappy designs.. haha. "Thats what the client wanted" only means that the client didnt trust you with the design, thus it was a low paying project for a small company who could care less. Try some great designs like:<a class="user" href="http://www.fantasyinteractive.com/">http://www.fantasyinteractive.com/</a><a class="user" href="http://www.stylegala.com/">http://www.stylegala.com/</a>.. and so on.
topcatajMar 17, 2006
1200 diggs for a page with some table colours/borders?And 115 comments arguing about CSS Vs Tables when the actual link is just on about tabular data tables anyway.....Once again I'm astounded at the group intelligence of the digg community..... I'm tempted to take it off my rss list after this.
johnbinarystarMar 19, 2006
A firefox fanboy circle jerk, woo, guess they havn't seen MS filters.
minorgodMay 30, 2006
As a 10+ year veteran of web design, I can honestly say (after extensive research and testing) that there is NO GOOD REASON to use CSS for layout until it works right in ALL major browsers. Please read my more exhaustive post on the subject:<a class="user" href="http://electrongun.blogspot.com/2006/05/plea-to-c**ksucking-browser-makers.html">http://electrongun.blogspot.com/2006/05/plea-to-c**ksucking-browser-makers.html</a>CSS is a broken pile of s**t and that's a fact! Join the CSS rebellion and go back to using tables because they WORK!