chris leeds said:
http://www.decloak.com/Products/Dreamweaver/NestedTemplates/TablesOrLayers.a
spx
don't get me wrong. I'm working hard to get myself ahead of the curve on
css but this link was sent to me and I enjoyed it ;-)
Okay, there are some "extremist CSS fanatics" who believe wholeheartedly
that tables should not be used for layout. Period. And I think that the CSS
"enthusiasts" (my term) agree as much as possible with that principle. I'm
in that camp, for sure.
I'm trying to devise a layout that is both attractive and functional and
easy to update using CSS. At the same time, I'm _expanding_ my knowledge of
CSS.
This article brings up some valid points, in between the diatribes. Yes,
you can't do everything with CSS that you can do with tables. But so what?
Is it wrong to try and make forward-looking designs?
Even Zeldman (a CSS/Standards flag waver if there ever was one) writes in
his book, Designing With Web Standards, that using XHTML 1.0 Transitional to
support table layouts is recommended because not everyone can afford to have
a CSS guru on site or they must support older browsers. This is a current
book, published in 2003.
The whole idea that browsers always change so what's the point is
preposterous. Browser vendors are being held feet first to the fire to
support standards. Designers don't want to have to build fourteen versions
of their page to support every different combination out there. They want
to write once, display anywhere. CSS gives us that.
Have you looked at a tabled layout in a PocketPC? 750px wide doesn't work
on this medium. But you can write alternative CSS layouts for this type of
device (or phones, or even more obscure stuff) and make sure the page looks
the way _you_ want it to. And any serious business designer should be
accomodating handhelds. They are the "latest kill app" (device). With WiFi
hot spots showin up everywhere, more and more users, more and more
_consumers_ are going to be looking at sites in alternative browsers.
He also makes a point about non-visual browsers. That the browsers need to
evolve to support these types of layouts, not the other way around. You
know what? Non-visual browsers aren't just for blind people. Search
engines are non-visual browsers as well. If a search engine can't make
sense of your site, how are you going to improve your rankings?
Take a look at Zeldman's book (there's a second printing with some
corrections in it, get that if you can). It's really about common sense
stuff. It addresses the concerns in this article quite well, I think.
