The reset files basically set many things back to 0. Neither is true. The key issue is not to use tables for the layout of your site template. Tables seem, at least to me, to be much more intuitive. Thats always going to be better done using css. I also kept all my university textbooks just in case I would need them guess what? I agree that there will always be some people that cling on to tables, but I dont think we will have to suffer too much for much longer. biscotools.com. Personally I think until we get to the point where we can load a page before someone finishes clicking the link to that page theres room to improve. I fought this very same battle using tables back in the 90s. This is one of the reasons why there are people who prefer tables instead of using this kind of trickery and black magic to fake the appearance of what tables can do without all the extreme measures. Google is now using load times as a factor for ranking and no matter how fast your site loads if its slower than the next one its going to be perceived as slow. Learning at write CSS layouts can be tricky, especially if you become familiar with usage tables, but here's why CSS is your best programming bet. I dont agree with their reasoning, but it is there. Is it possible that there are errors in my tutorials? How to Turn a Design Image Into a Working Web Page: Part 1, How to Turn a Design Image Into a Working Web Page: Part 2. No technique is designed to be used in isolation. Mark your site would be very easy to code with a css layout. I make a change to the template file and boom, it changes on all pages. Again I do agree that grid shape is a good one. I dont care what anybody says. Years ago it moved away from tables and towards divs and css for layout.
element: Notice that the table in the examples above have double borders. Easy to learn: JavaScript is easy to learn. Maybe Ill have to write a post on styling tables. The main advantage of CSS is that style is applied consistently across variety of sites. Web3. If you are designing using CSS for layout, cool! Cant be done, we have faux columns but thats really just green screen trickery in doing so. Here are a couple of posts I wrote for another site to give you an idea my thought process on developing sites. One debate Im honestly curious about is the best way to go about table type content with CSS, such as using the actual table properties, using display: inline, using float: left, etc wheres that write up? The conclusion isnt that it takes a long time to communicate in Spanish. Im amazed that in 2013 people are still defending table-based layouts, but whatever. Could you send me a link to the page? Your text should reflow with changes. Nice post. I feel the same about maintain tables-based sites. No one is going to stop you. Choosing the right storage format is crucial as it affects your disks I speak English fluently. Yes, but you can get it done just as quickly with css. I believe Whats best in a given scenario depends mostly on the skill set of the person doing the job. (Dont laugh, my skills probably saved my job.) Here are my questions. The columns of a newspaper are used to guide the reader along the layout. The times when floating blocks are more appropriate to use, besides its original intended use of having text wrap around images, is specifically when the blocks are meant to be independent from one another. All you really need to do float the customer service phone number and search form to the right. The same isnt true if youre using divs. http://www.taylor-graphics.net/eye_clinic/. A 10 MS difference is meaningless. My process doesnt involve spending hours resolving cross-browser compatibility issues by the way. When using CSS for layout, browsers can cache CSS or cascading sheet may be a text-based coding language that specifies the website formats and the way a site communicates with web browsers. The only way its faster is for updating, but if you read correctly, I style my tables with CSS tags (div, id, class) so I am just as quick. Tables/grids (the shape) are the holy grail of layouts. Sure if in some Mexican sweat shop, 5 year olds were parsing pages for Google that may be true, but parsing text is as basic as programming gets other than typing hello world on the screenI really doubt thats an issue for Google, or Yahoo spider programmers. Proving that the css layout loads 10ms faster (20ms when I just ran the test on your site) doesnt exactly endorse using tables instead? WebWriting down the advantages and disadvantages makes the deciding process less subjective. The whole display gets shuffled. CSS (divs) requires too many hacks to work cross browser Entirely false. It was difficult (and very confusing) at the start, but Im now completely clear on why its a better approach. Of course see load times above which now seem to be one signal Google looks at. This is one of those debates that never seems to go away and I guess Im not exactly doing my part to make it go away with this post. 4) Separation of Style and Content I guess this one is related #1, ease of updating? Sometimes they write for things called tabloids, or articles of paragraphs arranged in tabular form. Nice article. Dont worry Im not taking your questions as a need to defend css. Ive been studying the Eric Meyer CSS books, so I am picking up CSS quickly. Web designers who take the time to learn css dont have the same problems youre seeing. 1) Inconsistent Browser Support Different browsers will render CSS layout differently as a result of browser bugs or lack of support for various CSS features. CSS (divs) is hard to learn Simply not true. And I never use some software package to do it for me unless I wrote that package myself. This argument usually includes the time taken to learn to use divs, which isnt a fair comparison. Im amazed this conversation still exists yet it seems every few weeks I see another post proclaiming we should all go back to using tables for site layout. How to identify unused CSS definitions from multiple CSS files in a project ? WebDisadvantages of tables. Just change the template file. This debate is mainly from those who code by hand I would think. acknowledge that you have read and understood our, Data Structure & Algorithm Classes (Live), Data Structures & Algorithms in JavaScript, Data Structure & Algorithm-Self Paced(C++/JAVA), Full Stack Development with React & Node JS(Live), Android App Development with Kotlin(Live), Python Backend Development with Django(Live), DevOps Engineering - Planning to Production, GATE CS Original Papers and Official Keys, ISRO CS Original Papers and Official Keys, ISRO CS Syllabus for Scientist/Engineer Exam, Interview Preparation For Software Developers. CSS plays an important role, by using CSS you simply got to specify a repeated style for element once & use it multiple times as because CSS will automatically apply the required styles. And yes it is true that you dont much need extra code to get things to work for IE. The posts arent just about the code, but I do provide the basic html and css I use now for a 3 column layout. Home / Blog / CSS / CSS vs Tables: The Debate That Wont Die. HTML tables impose a more rigid structure on the content than a div. I hear you Bill. I have used table-based layouts for a few years and have started using css to mainly style text. With that in mind I prefer divs. I understand people have old code and sometimes they just need to fix it. Hopefully I can clear up a few things in this post and let you make your own decision. When I said forcing divs to act like tables I dont mean you cant arrange them in a way that looks something like a table. Saying things like, all people who use tables are quite frankly is absurd. CSS, CSS 1 up to CSS3, result in creating of confusion among web browsers. This debate has been going on for years. The greater flexibility you can create with your structure and the maintenance advantages are the more important reasons. Search engines are interested in your content, not your code.. It certainly lags behind other browsers, but for the most part IE fro version 7 on is css2 compliant. The tool emits old school attribute heavy html tables but I wrote a little javascript parser that seperates things out into clean html and css. If I had stopped my study on the first day the table would have won by an equally small margin. Eventually it works, but at what cost? The thing is, its not easier because youre using tables. Return on Investment 4. If you find yourself needing hacks then most likely you havent thought out your structure all that well. With a div-based layout you could make this change in your stylesheet alone. What Im trying to figure out is the benefits in using CSS for LAYOUT. any pretty crap i use css on those parts alone. 1. Divs can do some things table cells cant and they cant do some things well that table cells can do easily. You say that people apparently think tables are easier than css because they already know tables, but I think youre wrong there. There are a few downsides while using CSS. Notepad is for pros. Ive heard the argument that reduced code helps with SEO, with people saying that too much code makes it harder for Google to parse. If I tired to reply to your comment in Spanish it would take me hours, even days, to put together a few coherent sentences. As for your disadvantage I have to disagree. which is all fine and helpful. The whole semantics argument is nonsense. more flexible since one div is not dependent on the other divs on the page it allows for more freedom in your design, quicker to load blocks of code can be presented right away instead of the browser requiring an extra pass. Its been years since I wrote more than a few lines of code specifically for any one browser and none of that code is a hack. CSS is a standard across the board. People can build sites without using a table-based layout now and still do. My guess as to why they didnt learn it as well as you is because its actually not intuitive as you say, especially when trying to implement a grid shape with 3 independent blocks. Id have to see the css youre using to understand why youre having problems. I try making 100% css layouts and they never are cross browser effective, so I resort back to tables and I never have issues. Were not quite there yet with what wed like to do where design is concerned. Heck, even IE8 does a decent job of rendering CSS layouts. Feel free to contact me if you want me to develop the home page without tables. Im glad your process works for you, but that doesnt change my opinion. Getting back to IE, the 3rd method you used with negative margins comes close but once again special considerations need to be taken with IE for this design, and yeah its not the fault of css but IE, however when the majority of your target audience maybe using this browser its important it works properly hence the use of tables which may result in more ugly looking code unfortunately but it is just one of the requirements until microsoft clean their act up. Hopefully they can point you in the right direction with your own designs. I use it and love it. A paragraph? Some might argue that the content search engines see on the page is more important and through divs its easier to present a different order of content to visitors and search engine spiders. It helps to form spontaneous and consistent changes. In the best case scenario youd be adding at least another table cell to get another block of information compared to adding another div for another block of information, which would grow our code equally. There are many databases with different data formats to choose for an application. Im still a little inexperienced to style the whole design in CSS, though. With CSS, what works with one browser might not always work with another. Heavy image use and Flash still seem to be the biggest factors in speed. Replacing one with the other will lead to unnecessary complication. Its now moving on from the CSS methods that replaced tables and using CSS thats being written specifically to lay out sites. Im really struggling with whether to learn and use CSS for layout. The fact that different browsers and different versions of browsers look at these and other variables differently is a really pain. I have tried to learn css with online tutoring (lynda.com, http://www.w3schools.com/w3c/w3c_css.asp, etc.) Style adjustment is more convenient. Time is money. Divs cant do what tables can as simple as that. Required fields are marked *. Anyway, the real reason I wanted to comment here is because I think it is hilarious that Ive been reading people bashing table layouts and saying they cant stand any website that uses tables, then I view the source code and they are commenting on a page that uses tables! I learned through them. Justin, apparently I named this post well, since the debate never seems to die. A div-based layout is: That might not seem like a lot, but just those three things are enough to make a div based approach better to a table based approach. I need to write special code for IE? I dont want to use tables but Im finding it harder and harder to justify not using them. As far as it being easier for you to code it with a table now, thats probably true. WebCSS is clearly preferable in cases where presentational markup and CSS support the same kind of design, no one in their right mind would argue that font-tags are better than By the way if something you followed here didnt work for you, you could have chosen to ask me if Id help figure out why and I likely would have. That extra pass at the code makes table-based layouts take longer to display. My goal wasnt to bash tables, but to point out why I think css is the better approach to layout. There are SOME layouts that to use entirely CSS requires an inordinate amount of extremely messy code to represent. Theres no need for a Thats not an argument for tables in general, but it is an argument for me to continue to use tables for my small business clients who wont pay a lot for a web site, and will not get enough traffic to benefit from div based techniques. it is a pain, but theres an easy solution, which is simply to declare the padding or margin, etc. Its not going to bother me at all. Ive been coding on and off since the mid 90s and have been hearing about tables are only for tabular data blah blah blah for years. Im lucky if I can still remember 50 words in Spanish. Global changes are easier: If youre using external styles, you make a change in one place and its automatically propagated to all the pages in the system. Q&A for work. I look forward to the day when a page renders the same way in all browsers for specific CSS statements. I really like your saying Not doing something because it takes time to learn is laziness. It is easier with divs, but it can also be done with tables. Very amusing. Believe me, the clean code you talk about it gone. Maybe its because I learned with tables when I was getting started but Divs are complicated and they absolutely do require more code most of the time when you consider practically each object needs to be assigned an ID and go along with a class . It sounds like youre using tables the same way Im suggesting is fine. Every table cell is dependent on the other table cells in its row to maintain the structure. Theyre much easier to use now. I would have to say,use divs and tables for what they are designed for. Your comment suggests your commenting on the title of this post and not the content of the post. Id rather use the more forward thinking approach, but again to each their own. bootstrap requires a container, row, and something equal to a td but I cant recall which. Tables also have distinct dis advantages on mobile devices: You can only squeeze in a small number of columns before the table width causes horizontal scrolling on smaller screens. 5. The issue though was how I was using css and not css itself. 2. There is no drag and drop anymore. I think your comments re flexibility and structure have merit assuming the only tools available are html and css. In this case, it is almost impossible to get CSS only to render this as desired, either the width or the height of the side banner will be wrong, or the background image will appear to disappear or not be long enough, or be too long, or the content will bleed over into the side banner if you change the width of the browser. And that, in my view, should be the only thing that qualifies you to comment on the number of passes the browser makes when rendering a page. (801) 636-5158. This is simply not a point I am willing to debate. Otherwise, I just appreciate when someone makes the website function well enough for me to get to the content Im looking for. css vs tables WRONG! Sure you can say they just need to learn more, but sorry, they didnt. Tables are still very useful for layout given that most sites are still essentially boxes that never move, but adjust in size as needed. Eric Meyers books are good. How does it suggest we should use tables? Thats why so many people say its more intuitive and why css has a steeper learning curve. Maybe Ill apply changes to my test pages as my home page changes and track the time involved. WebUsing CSS tableless design will provide your website visitors better usability and accessibility, faster page load times with greater, more elegant design possibilities. This is CSS based design is unquestionably superior to table layout, but due to sheer laziness the practice of table design has held on. I agree that once you master css you can be very powerful with it. Youre welcome to use them to layout sites if you want. I did list the seo benefits under the heading Myths. Instead you chose to insult me and the tutorials here. Wow. (Remember, I DO use CSS for formatting.) To do this, add the following CSS to your style.css file: A table-layout value of fixed is generally a good idea to set on your table, as it makes the table behave a bit more predictably by default. If you want your page to behave like a table or part of it, use a table. After making the changes we need to confirm the compatibility if they appear. Im not going to stop you. Ive never read about this debate until now, however in the back of my mind I always knew someone(s) was debating it. plays an important role, by using CSS you simply got to specify a repeated style for element once & use it However, you can build a great site using tables and a poor site using css. Disadvantages of CSS. You also made my exact point as to where tables shine the most, and it has nothing to do with semantics. WebJavaScript advantages Fast speed: JavaScript is executed on the client side thats why it is very fast. Click OK twice to exit the Table Properties dialog box. Thats not an apples to apples comparison. Thanks Kevin. You can respectfully disagree, but Im still going to say youre wrong. As networks improve the speed advantage becomes less meaningful and for a small site its not going to be a big deal either. This is the same when using divs. My bad on missing the context of your statement. The limiting factor isnt the language itself, its your current skill with the language. You can still develop an accessible site with tables. Better Website Speed For a website to function efficiently, it should have a faster load time. Here is the CSS code, so far, through Dreamweaver: he argument is made by people comparing learning something new to learning something they already know well.. You can with a div. Advantages of tables (3) Raw data, any type of data. Most of the sites I create are for small businesses averaging around 10 60 pages. No its not rubbish. You can either explicitly set the values when browsers are behaving differently or use a css reset file like the ones from Eric Meyer or Yahoo. And heres what Im referring to you saying in your post: The problem most people have when learning to use divs is trying to force them to act like tables instead of allowing them to be what they are.. Not exactly the kind of thing thats going to make me want to help you/. This is why divs arent superior for layout coz they cant even do what tables do out-of-the-box even with all the complicated different solutions people have invented to try and get close. Each technique has its uses, advantages, and disadvantages. I think grids are great, but I dont think you should create them using html tables for the reasons I mentioned in this post. My old webpage is ugly (www.dragora.com) so I started to develop a new page (www.dragora.com/newindex1.asp). With browsers having different defaults paddings, etc. When people are having trouble getting a css layout to look the same across browsers its usually more to do with the skills of the designer than with css itself. Tables are not effective by themselves anymore I agree, it takes a lot of time updating thing manually, so CSS is a BIG help. I dont, however agree that the only way to make things work for IE is tables or even that its easier. Incidentially you do provide 100% of the code because you show it in your examples, in the source. Im not sure why people think it takes a lot of time to get things working cross browser. No matter how many times I see this question or people making an argument on behalf of their opinion, the technical answer remains the same. (Yes, I like clean code too.) To me it seems so obvious that using divs over tables is the better approach that I have a hard time understanding how someone would argue otherwise. Styles application means easy Table of Contents generation. between the 2 techniques when in truth, there is little distinction to be made. Its huge. Tables will self adjust to keep the lines aligned. WebYou can have as many rows as you like in a table; just make sure that the number of cells are the same in each row. Why does anyone really care how something is put together? Right or wrong, I LOVE spending most of my time designing. One issue is that different browsers have different deffinitions of the padding and the margin variables. I did say calling this css vs tables isnt really correct and that its really about tables and divs. This process allows me to offer fixed price websites without a lot of risk that Im going to have to eat a lot of hours resolving cross browser compatibility issues. 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