Tables vs. Tableless

I am a designer and coding does not come easily to me. Especially trying to figure out what to put into the CSS to make it look the way I want it to look. I agree it is a whole lot easier to read and function than tables, but many times I find myself stumped with what I am doing.
I feel I know the majority of basic CSS, but where is a good site to really show more mid-level CSS. **Remember as a designer I am more visually oriented, so I wouldn't like to go to a text only website without examples of the CSS being used.

An important note in the dabate of CSS Tableless versus tables is that CSS is read only once while tables are read twice: once to determine the structure and the second time to retrieve the data.

This is the most important reason why CSS is preferred to tabled website designs.

I personally prefer tables as of now, however I am just learning to code tableless. It isnt so much that it is hard, just very different.

Tableless scares people thinking you have to learn somting completely new, however, if you have a basic knowledge of CSS, you will pick it up pretty quickly I think.

But as of now, I prefer tables.

As i saw in someones sig, tables is for tabulated data

Simple as that really

Originally Posted by White-Line Studios As i saw in someones sig, tables is for tabulated data Simple as that really

Yeah, but the reason why I started this thread was to ask why that is..

Ye, sorry, on looking back i saw a number of people had said that. For me its mainly

- ease
-cleaner code
- and i prefer using divs from tables.

Originally Posted by AndrewR Yeah, but the reason why I started this thread was to ask why that is..

logic, in the end.

think of it like a word document, only with more control. you don't use a table in word unless you're displaying a chart of some kind. i know some people use tables to do dual/tri column arrangements (popular among resumes), but you can actually do that with margins, just like you can in html.

i'll admit, sometimes tables have their benefits, but it all boils down to the logic "morals" of the developer. when i do stuff, i want to do it right. if it costs more, or requires more effort from me, that's fine as long as the outcome is still good.

to battle a popular myth, tableless isn't always cleaner. clean code comes from the developer, not what he's developing. yes, only having to type <div> does clean up the mess required by table's many tags, but tag soup is tag soup. i've seen some designs that required something absurd like 50 wrappers (at least they reused a class instead of making ids) plus all their inner elements that made a horrible mess of tag soup that could actually have been done with 1 table. tables are a double edge sword.

to be clear i support tableless when i can, but if a table get's the job done better, i'm not ashamed to use it, but that happens very rarely.

Originally Posted by derek lapp logic, in the end. think of it like a word document, only with more control. you don't use a table in word unless you're displaying a chart of some kind. i know some people use tables to do dual/tri column arrangements (popular among resumes), but you can actually do that with margins, just like you can in html. i'll admit, sometimes tables have their benefits, but it all boils down to the logic "morals" of the developer. when i do stuff, i want to do it right. if it costs more, or requires more effort from me, that's fine as long as the outcome is still good. to battle a popular myth, tableless isn't always cleaner. clean code comes from the developer, not what he's developing. yes, only having to type <div> does clean up the mess required by table's many tags, but tag soup is tag soup. i've seen some designs that required something absurd like 50 wrappers (at least they reused a class instead of making ids) plus all their inner elements that made a horrible mess of tag soup that could actually have been done with 1 table. tables are a double edge sword. to be clear i support tableless when i can, but if a table get's the job done better, i'm not ashamed to use it, but that happens very rarely.

Yeah, that's mostly how I feel.

Hi there.

I found some info you could find interesting. Here it goes:


Why are layout tables considered harmful?

* It is semantically wrong to mark up non-tabular information as a table.
* They can cause accessibility or usability problems (especially with some assistive technologies), particularly when nested several levels deep.
* They mix presentational issues with the content, making it difficult or impossible to achieve alternate styling and output device independence.
* They bloat the document markup with lots of unnecessary HTML tags, which can be detrimental for low-bandwidth users (those using dial-up connections or mobile devices) as well as for the web server's load and bandwidth.


Should I use divs instead of layout tables?

No, we should use semantically correct element types as far as possible, and only revert to divs when there are no other options.

Abusing divs is no better than abusing tables. We can set id and class attributes on virtually any element type. We can assign CSS rules to virtually any element type, not only to divs.


Are tables deprecated?

Not at all. table is the proper, semantically correct element type to use for marking up tabular data: information that has relationships in two or more dimensions. Tables are not deprecated, but layout tables are an issue.


http://www.sitepoint.com/article/htm...erfect-markup/

Originally Posted by Brad Hallett An important note in the dabate of CSS Tableless versus tables is that CSS is read only once while tables are read twice: once to determine the structure and the second time to retrieve the data. This is the most important reason why CSS is preferred to tabled website designs.

Wow I didn't know that. Interesting.