Table Layout
November 3rd, 2006 by ailonI’ve spent a day trying to layout SPAW2 toolbars with divs, spans and css. When it worked fine in IE and Firefox it did freaky things in Opera, in other cases it looked good in IE but a little wrong in Firefox. So I gave up and made it ok with tables in a matter of a few minutes. I know it’s considered bad taste and stuff but actually in this case I don’t understand why.
Yes, I understand that table means table and not a layout grid. So, let’s introduce a GRID tag with allowed children GR and GD. Yes, yes, I know about markup and presentation separation. But when I create a web based WYSIWYG editor it’s a whole thing - a control, not a piece of content wrapped in nice presentation layer. And with current trend for web based applications this is often the case.
Let’s take this blog as an example. Front-end is pure content wrapped in presentation (that is everything but content) but admin interface is a web application where presentation consists of colors, fonts, etc. but layout looks more like part of the content to me.
November 9th, 2006 at 3:36 am
I totally agree and had been thinking the same - we need a new layout paradigm - I understand that tables are “bad”, producing far too much code and tying presentation into layout and all that jazz, but honestly the Div tag just doesn’t do it. I have spent three days trying to lay out a simple structure for an Intranet, that would have taken an hour using tables. Cross-browser issues with divs mean days of extra work. Let’s suggest the GRID idea to w3 and see if they will take it on board.
November 9th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Yeah. Now we just need someone who can pitch it with confidence to W3C
November 16th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
I also once spent a few days working on a fairly simple (or so I thought) design with XHTML+CSS. I eventually gave up and wrote it (from scratch) in an hour or so with a lot of good old-fashioned tables!
November 20th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
I am all for it - If “pure” tableless design gives me trouble, I usually revert to simple tables before I spend much time on it, figuring I can go back later.
On the Opera issue, I have generally found that Opera is more “picky” about being precise - The firefox and IE are more forgiving about how they interpret bad code or missing tags.