Using 3rd party web templates?

AARRRGH

herya I think the issue is that many people "grew up" writing table based websites (including me - CSS was too buggy when I started making websites) so a lot of people find making table based websites a lot easier than sitting down and thinking about CSS.

herya

AARRRGH wrote: »

herya I think the issue is that many people "grew up" writing table based websites (including me - CSS was too buggy when I started making websites) so a lot of people find making table based websites a lot easier than sitting down and thinking about CSS.

Hey I used to work as an HTML coder when three level tables were all the rage so it would be easier for me too! But when I moved on to CSS/XHTML it's so much easier to have a simple well structured code you're fully in control of, going back to tables now would be like attempting calligraphy with crayola. I had to update a table based website recently - OMG what a jungle :rolleyes:

I understand that sometimes an occasional table might be quicker than fiddling with divs although I honestly can't think of that many reasons. But people who hold on to tables as their bread an butter are only hurting themselves professionally, the world has moved on.

Since the OP is a blank slate so to speak I feel that it's important to make him aware that time spent on learning table layouts would be time wasted.

AARRRGH

herya wrote: »

Since the OP is a blank slate so to speak I feel that it's important to make him aware that time spent on learning table layouts would be time wasted.

Yeah, I agree, starting with CSS is defo the way to go. It probably requires a bit more initial learning but in the long run is for the best.

ve

"I think the percentage of people with accessibility issues is much larger than you think."

Agreed, also...Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) & web accessibility

"Certainly it's not a major issue and doesn't warrant the passionate TABLES SHOULD BE BLOWN UP response we so often see on this forum."

I completely understand where you are coming from, and I agree that when you tune in to a conversation promoting web standards you will most likely hear someone complaining about people using tables outside of an appropriate context. The only reason for this is because people tend to be visual, and when we wanted to put together web presentations back in the day we all used tables. It was a way to do it, but it wasn't the best way, but we got used to it and because of that it became "a good way". Hey, this is starting to remind me why Windows users complain about Linux. Anyway, then came along style sheets and we found ourselves with a much more manageable and adaptive approach towards the presentation of web UIs and information. However, because it was new and different to the way we were accustomed, there was a fight. For me anyway, every time I thought I understood the full picture regarding standards, technologies, etc, something would catch my attention and I'd find myself back in the learning seat again. Style sheets work today, like tables worked yesterday. That is a well trodden path, because it refers to something visual, but standards do not simply mean, use CSS instead of tables to layout your web pages. It's only because it infringed upon a popular visual construct, books were devoted to the subject, helping people make the transition. The standards go well beyond that.

There are 3 factors (as you know)

1. Us the developers
2. The browser vendors
3. The standards

There has never been a point where all have been in harmony, and (most likely) we only form one part of the equation, but we have 100% control over that part. In my office I have a Mozilla poster that says "Don't hurt the web" and I believe it is our duty to do just that. At the moment the web is an absolute mess, and challenges research teams the world over to try and make sense of it. The semantic web appears promising, but because the web grew so rapidly, with so many sites, so much information (often repeated), connected to so many people/companies, it's a nightmare of a challenge to try and coordinate. It is for this reason that anything I (as a developer, not designer) have worked on, I did so in line with best practices. I do not write the standards, but I absolutely agree that with something so huge like the web (full of so much potential), standards have to exist to try and coordinate the growth and management of what it contains. As professionals it is our duty to respond to the evolution of these trends.

As eoin pointed out, validation with respect to source code does not ensure usability. To be fair though, the validators are simply identifying the Document Types of source code presented, verifying form, and validating against a suggested or inferred schema. So you are correct to point out that a table based design could still validate against the XHTML 1.1 Strict, but when you look at what pixelcraft was saying with respect to table based layouts and screen readers, it does not come out better than what we are suggesting.

For what reason are people still using table based layouts when CSS offers much greater flexibility amongst a growing list of benefits?

"Yes and css table-style layouts take 10 times longer to get working correctly in all major browsers"

I don't necessarily agree with that. Perhaps some older browsers might have difficulties at first, but for the most part I find newer browsers (regardless of vendor) seem to be much better at handling more contemporary approaches. Nowadays I have to go looking for problematic browsers as opposed to having the popular ones giving me trouble.

"Hey I used to work as an HTML coder when three level tables were all the rage so it would be easier for me too! But when I moved on to CSS/XHTML it's so much easier to have a simple well structured code you're fully in control of, going back to tables now would be like attempting calligraphy with crayola. I had to update a table based website recently - OMG what a jungle"

Absolutely. Christ anytime I am asked to revamp a site and it was previously created using table based layouts as opposed to CSS, I cringe. It would take me seconds to interpret a CSS layout, and with table based layouts I would have to fire up several tools, probably get the pen and paper out to try and make sense of some of the trash code that people have developed without them realizing it.

"Yeah, I agree, starting with CSS is defo the way to go. It probably requires a bit more initial learning but in the long run is for the best."

Is that it, "requires a bit more initial learning", is that the reason why so many people these days are defending more old fashioned approaches.

I'd love to find the muppet who said web development was easy, because they left the door open and now the industry is full of "developers" who fail to understand it is based on an evolutionary multi-dimensional set of concerns, technologies and standards.

Don't get me started on fashionable design. Those designer types are just crazy hippies :P

tricky D

Random bits:

Unfortunately table layouts aren't going to obsolete for quite a while. For anything above a 1 column html email newsletter, you pretty much have to use tables for layout. So dumping table layout skills it isn't yet an option for some. Sad but true.

Revamping or updating a tabled site to css, I wouldn't use the words revamp or update, that would be more like changing the design from one style sheet to another. Starting from nearer to scratch would be more the right description for a lot of the aspects.

Why is validation so hard for people? The tools are there. There can be some pain in the arse side-effect type things to be dealt with but how hard is it to close tags and nest them correctly be. Besides if you can't get the simple things right, you'll likely screw something much more important up.

Designing for screen readers has an element of self-fulfilling prophesy. On the whole, if you don't build for them, they won't come, if you do, they will. Also accessibility is a lot more than providing for readers e.g. there are a helluva lot of colourblind people out there. While most colourblindnesses are only a slight impairment, choosing the wrong colours can kill a few percent of sales (your margins) if you get a Buy button wrong. It's not just vision issues, what about wand users?


Web development has a very low barrier to entry so I'll be the muppet and say it is easy. I'll also unmuppet myself (must change avatar;)) and point out that it is very very very easy to do badly and most do exactly that, as they have no idea the huge scope of all the parameters that are involved. Remember that recent report about around half of european ecomm sites were doing at least one thing illegally. That's just the legal parameters, think of what else could be wrong. Another one is to figure out how many pages do you visit daily which are properly valid (lucky to get into double percentage figures there).

ve

tricky D wrote: »

Unfortunately table layouts aren't going to obsolete for quite a while. For anything above a 1 column html email newsletter, you pretty much have to use tables for layout. So dumping table layout skills it isn't yet an option for some. Sad but true.

I disagree. I can't think of a web layout that could not be achieved using CSS instead of tables. As for the opposite, I'm probably so used to CSS layouts at this stage, I'd probably trip myself up trying to do something bold with tables.

tricky D wrote: »

Web development has a very low barrier to entry so I'll be the muppet and say it is easy.

No that still means it's easy to get in to, it doesn't mean that it's easy to do right. For many and their clients, it's a false sense of success.

tricky D wrote: »

I'll also unmuppet myself (must change avatar;)) and point out that it is very very very easy to do badly and most do exactly that, as they have no idea the huge scope of all the parameters that are involved. Remember that recent report about around half of european ecomm sites were doing at least one thing illegally. That's just the legal parameters, think of what else could be wrong. Another one is to figure out how many pages do you visit daily which are properly valid (lucky to get into double percentage figures there).

I agree with every word there, apart from unmuppeting (is that even a word ) yourself. The fact that you can even identify the challenge separates you from the sort of muppets I was referring to in my post earlier.

Ignorance is bliss, but it's a false sense of success in terms of knowledge and the general progress of the web.

G-Money

I don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing but I don't actually know what "tables" are in this respect. I was reading up about web development a year or two ago and I was reading quite a bit about CSS. My impression at the time was that it was quite easy to use and seemed very handy. I'm not really sure what other way you'd go about setting the formatting of a website anyway.

I'll be heading to the north soon and my web dev books are there so I'll bring them back down with me. I think I have a book on PHP and stuff as well so I think that mixed with learning about CSS and such will be a good starting block.

I do know though that I doubt I will want to spend hours writing code that just adds a text box to a page when I could just drag and drop with some sort of GUI/WYSIWYG editor etc.

Eoin

If you look at my earlier post, you will see some HTML with a table in it. This would have been quite a common method to lay out a page before CSS. A table is just a grid with columns and rows, so should be used to display tabular data (e.g. a league table etc).

<tr> is a table row
<td> is a cell

techguy

Hey OP,

I haven't read all the other replies so sorry if somebody has a reply like this already.

I'm really interested in web development also as oppossed to web design. I find designing interfaces and all that css,photoshop business just too much atm.

I've decided to get my design templates from 3rd parties like you and concentrate on the backend coding. In the past i've wasted lots of time trying to design an interface that looked crappy and was unusable.

Have you any knowledge of web programming languages. You should maybe concentrate on PHP and MySQL and a bit of html so pages render correctly. Also look at CodeIgniter, its great for the Rapid Development but you may want to look at OOP PHP first.

Eoin

I think you'll need to know more than a little HTML if you're going web development or design. Even if you use the controls that are generated for you in visual studio (for example), you'll still end up writing at least some HTML by hand.

AARRRGH

eoin wrote: »

I think you'll need to know more than a little HTML if you're going web development or design. Even if you use the controls that are generated for you in visual studio (for example), you'll still end up writing at least some HTML by hand.

Yeah. A good book for the basics of HTML & CSS is "Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML". It's a big thick book -- mostly due to lots of images and the use of large fonts! -- but you'll fly through it in a weekend if don't want to do the examples.

Eoin

Another good book is web standard solutions by Dan Cederholm - link here. It concentrates on using tags for their correct purpose - so basically when to use what tag.

herya

AARRRGH wrote: »

Yeah. A good book for the basics of HTML & CSS is "Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML". It's a big thick book -- mostly due to lots of images and the use of large fonts! -- but you'll fly through it in a weekend if don't want to do the examples.

Agree, and another good one is "Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS", I recommended both to friends.