Brian Tozer wrote:
>> http://dorward.me.uk/www/nested/
>
> I I was using nested tables to achieve a visually attractive fluid
> page with many ornamental borders, and using CSS as much as possible,
> is there still a case for making it tableless?
> Can it be done similarly with nested divs?
> The only "content" inside the inner table would be an image.
How to judge? Let's have a go.
The objectives of a web site presumably include communicating with the target
audience, within various constraints of development and maintenance costs. The
primary judgement must therefore be how well the web site achieves these. So -
how do you think you were doing there?
Judgement of techniques (etc) can only sensibly be made according to how well
they help or hinder the achievement of these objectives and constraints. Do
you believe you could have communicated better with your target audience, or
done so with less cost, and/or less maintenance effort, some other way?
Mark-up techniques, layout tables, CSS positioning, etc, are simply means to
an end. They are not the end. Web sites are about communication with people,
not about gaining points for technique. If you use "approved" techniques, but
fail to communicate - you have *failed*. If you use terrible technique, but
have satisfied users - you have *succeeded* (at least for the moment).
A few facts, to help you think about this:
- From 1993, more than a year before the first browser supported tables,
tables were proposed as a way of laying out complex material in rows and
columns. They are still being proposed for this in the very latest W3C (XHTML)
standards. They are part of both the past and the future of the web. (W3C has
never said that tables were intended to handle data such as you'd find in a
spreadsheet).
- Layout tables are not a barrier to accessibility, as long as they linearise.
This has been recognised and published since about 1999/2000. (The key
resolutions occurred in April 1999).
- CSS1 was stated by W3C not to be a layout language. CSS2 has well recognised
& publicised weaknesses with its positioning features. It will be several
years before most users are using browers that fully support even this limited
CSS2 standard. Future CSS3 standards are being proposed to put in some
recognised requirements, such as columns, etc. But they will not come to the
rescue for several years.
- An overwhelming majority of web pages, already published, and being
published every day, use layout tables. (I suspect it is about 99%). My guess
is that layout tables will still be used in a decade. This is the world that
all new browsers, and new versions of existing browsers, have to handle to
become accepted.
I use table-layouts and tableless-layouts, depending on what I judge will be
the best way to build pages to communicate with my target users. They are very
different, imperfect, schemes. I don't know of a good reason to restrict
myself to just one imperfect scheme.
http://www.barry.pearson.name/articles/layout_tables/
http://www.barry.pearson.name/articl..._presentation/
It's only mark-up; it isn't sin!
"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Traditional
"If all you have is a screwdriver, everything may get screwed up."
Barry Pearson, 2004
--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/
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