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I've made websites before it was really used, and I've made the decision years ago to use CSS to design my webpages. It was a lot of trouble to leave the great tables and try "clearing both" instead.
The question is, after all those years I still have trouble sometimes. And everytime I run into a bad CSS situation I recall the easy way to make cols with "table".
And the more I'm thinking about it, and the less I understand why we dropped the use of table. They are great to design pages, and not every websites need to be 100% W3C conform or have hundreds of page that wouldn't support a change of design because of that.
So yeah, now I'm thinking about going back using tables. Should I do it? Do pro designers actually use tables where they shouldn't use them?
I also stumbled into a grotesque table in the google map API. If google ingeneers are taking that shortcut, why not me?
(sorry for my english I'm not fluent).
EDIT:
lot of response says it's my fault. I considered being pretty good in CSS, started with books of Eric Meyer and have been doing CSS since 2005. I know that the trick width:100%;overflow:auto; works in most case (and also that we didn't have this trick bad then), but I wonder if it would be a bad thing to use tables to quickly do the job on smalls website, like a blog.
I had the same issues when I started dropping tables and using CSS. Sometimes CSS floats can be a pain, there are a few tricky edge-cases that come up when using them for page layout, but you'll learn how to deal with them and it really is worth it. Your code will be 10% of the size and much easier to work with.
Another consideration is CSS floats can be made to work nicely with mobile devices and small screens. Tables can cause real issues with this, especially if you want to add nice touchscreen improvements.
Lots of "pro" designers use tables when they shouldn't. All over the place. But "pro" is often not the same as "good". Tables should only be used for visible tables of data.
Tables still have an important and semantically correct correct usage. That is for the display of tabular data. That is especially useful in envirnments that are DB-centric or that are process a lot of xml with ajax. For general layout they are not appropriate because the cause slow page loading because the browser has to wait for all contents before it can start rendering. CSS should not be difficult. If you are having trouble you should look at how it is being used on sites where you like the design.
The big advantage of CSS is that you can develop a master stylesheet for a site, and then where individual pages need slight variations you can apply overrides or modifications to specific elements without having to change the master sheet.
avoiding table layouts offers up a plethora of benefits but # the end of the day, browsers are still entirely too forgiving (currently) and you can get away with it. if you are wary of going back to them, read up on display:table and css3. it's practically table based layouts, minus the table.
One reason tables are avoided is that the content inside of them does not display until the HTML for the entire table has loaded. With the CSS method, this is not true.
If you really have a lot of trouble with the CSS method, you must be doing it wrong. Consider reading over other people's code to see how to do it better.
6 years later (we're now in 2017) and CSS now has grids and flexbox which should be the easiest way to build a layout without using ugly hacks and without using tables.
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What should be the top 10 CSS and HTML questions to ask an interviewee? To test his level of knowledge if interviewee mentioned 2 yrs. experience in XHTML and CSS.
Edit:
how we can know interviewee's cross browser layout making capability? My question is only related to xhtml css coding not about design ability
What is the CSS box model?
What is the difference between quirks mode, standards mode and almost standards mode?
Tell me about hasLayout.
What would be the most appropriate markup for: a navigation menu; a picture gallery; a blog post. (Why? Can you think of some alternatives? Might be good to draw these up on a whiteboard or something)
What's the difference between <p class="main_header">Foo</p> and <h1 class="main_header">Foo</h1>?
Why is this a bad idea?: <span class="red">Bar</span>
Describe how to set opacity and how will it appear in Gecko, WebKit and IE.
How can you set few properties on to textboxes as default?
A design calls for png files with alpha transparency, what issues might you encounter?
Some of these are the same as zoul's questions except from a slightly different angle - I was aiming for questions that would lead to a bit of a discussion.
Why is it a good idea to split HTML and CSS?
What is the difference between inline and block elements?
What is a doctype good for?
What is the difference between classes and ids?
What is the difference between margin and padding?
These should be more than plenty to see how much candidate knows about browsers, standards and the reasoning behind HTML and CSS. Maybe you could throw in some floats, positioning and similar stuff if you want to test detailed CSS knowledge.
Update: The point is the kind of answer you are going to get, of course. If you ask about margin and padding and you get a clean drawing of box content, added padding, border line and margin, possibly collapsing against another box, you know the guy knows what he is talking about. Same goes for all the other questions.
No amount of questions in a short interview would establish a person's skill level. And there is the question of innovative qualities of a person which may not reveal itself in an interview. Some people may be introverted and shy or suffer from interview jitters others may be smooth talkers with little substance. There is also the challenge of asking objective questions not opinions.
If I show up for an audition to join a symphonic orchestra and tell them I have been playing the violin for 20 years they will not ask me about the construction of the bridge or the best material for bow strings. They give me a music score and ask me to play.
I suggest creating a simple web page that requires the techniques mentioned in the answers above, showing it to the candidate and asking the candidate to re-produce it in 30 minutes using the notepad. This will sort out the experienced from the novice.
Apart from HTML/CSS/JS specific or problem-solving questions, I would also ask what sort of tools she/he is using to get a task done. It often gives good insights about 'how' someone works and gives good/relaxed room for discussion. Good developers always have good and sharp tools.
I've taken a number of tests over the past couple of years and in all honesty there are really no questions one can ask to judge how great someone is at coding in HTML and/or CSS.
First, if the interviewee claims to have written web pages over the past couple of years ask for a couple of examples. If possible get him/her to email you them, print them out and get the user to explain and critique everything about them. Completely tear through everything regarding their previous work and get them to explain everything they can about it.
Once this is done, the user should be given a small task involving the development of a web page. Give them a networked computer and clear the history, then give them a couple of web pages to be built over the space of n minutes. Tell them to document what they decide to do and what resources they'll be using and just let them get on with it. After a while check their references and look at the outcome. The user will never be able to perform their best work in such a short time but you'll be able to see how efficient they are by the quality of their work.
Once this is done, give them a broken web page and give them a small amount of time to fix it to the point of it being standards-compliant. This should be an easy task to perform for most given good use of their tools.
It's obviously not an exact science, but a range of these methods have always found suitable candidates for many companies and it seems that a lot of Web Design places rarely ask questions nowadays and will move onto simple practical exercises to ensure that the interviewee can do what is asked of them.
What do you see as the main differences between html and xhtml?
Are there benefits to using one over the other?
Technical
Ask the person to make a simple page with a header, a two column layout, and a footer with each column having a different background color extending to the footer. Get them to flip the columns around on completion.
A couple of questions that are tricky.
How do absolutes affect the flow?
How do floats affect the flow?
(they don't)
What are two practical difference between a relative and static?
Determine their interest in CSS and HTML with 'What is the semantic web and why is it important?' People should be able to speak with enthusiasm about bring information to the blind for example. People who really work in HTML and CSS and know their stuff tend to be quite passionate about how information is there for all.
IMO, Cross browser issues are becoming less important now as more people are using modern browsers that obey standards.
Ask about their interest in design. A good sense of design concepts tends to be important when working in a team - a programmer with a sense of design can communicate why such a design may not work well within a website and can explain better some of the limitations.
Ask: what do you think of flash :-)
Below are 40 questions you can ask a person specifically from HTML 5 perspective.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/702051/important-HTML-Interview-questions-with-answe
What is the relationship between SGML,HTML , XML and HTML ?
In HTML 5 we do not need DTD why?
If I do not put will HTML 5 work?
Which browsers support HTML 5?
How is the page structure of HTML 5 different from HTML 4 or previous HTML?
What is datalist in HTML 5 ?
What are the different new form element types in HTML 5?
What is output element in HTML 5?
What is SVG?
Can we see a simple example of SVG using HTML 5?
What is canvas in HTML 5?
So how can we draw a simple line on Canvas?
What is the difference between Canvas and SVG graphics?
How to draw rectangle using Canvas and SVG using HTML 5 ?
What are selectors in CSS?
How can you apply CSS style using ID value?
What is the use of column layout in CSS?
Can you explain CSS box model?
Can you explain some text effects in CSS 3?
What are web workers and why do we need them ?
What are the restrictions of Web Worker thread ?
So how do we create a worker thread in JavaScript?
How to terminate a web worker
Why do we need HTML 5 server-sent events?
What is local storage concept in HTML 5?
How can we add and remove data from local storage?
What is the lifetime of local storage?
What is the difference between local storage and cookies?
What is session storage and how can you create one?
What is difference between session storage and local storage?
What is WebSQL?
Is WebSQL a part of HTML 5 specification?
So how can we use WebSQL ?
What is application cache in HTML5?
So how do we implement application cache in HTML 5 ?
So how do we refresh the application cache of the browser?
What is fallback in Application cache?
What is network in application cache ?
What are different ways to apply styles to a Web page?
What is grouping in CSS?
What is the Contextual Selector?
What are the limitations in the use of CSS?
like the above there are 50+ awesome questions that are available here through
which any CSS related interview can get cracked. Top CSS interview
questions and answers
This also help to clear the concept of CSS.
Some good questions to ask are:
Describe how to set opacity.
What is the box model in CSS?
How do you add a CSS to a HTML?
Describe the difference between a class and an element.
What is the Doctype for?
Odd no one mentioned this yet...
Since the person claims to have two years of experience, they should have something to show for it - so ask to see recent works. Even if some of their work was internal or protected by NDA or such, if they are any good, they ought to have something they've done just to try out new things or such.
I believe real examples would be the best gauge for actual skill in this case. People can easily learn various details about HTML and CSS, but being able to apply them is a totally different matter. It should also demonstrate their ability to write cross-browser compatible code (Just open their examples in IE, FF, Opera, Safari/Chrome)
Do you know how to clear floats?
Write a simple nested list.
Ask them to make a simple layout (header, 2 col, footer) and include table data. See if they go div crazy, table crazy, or stick to what's correct.
What's the difference between a class and an element?
When they make a layout, look closely at what they name their classes. If they are layout-specific ("left-column", "bottom-section", "red-box") and not structure-specific ("column", "header", "footer", "navigation"), they're doing it wrong.
If the answer to 1. is "by using clearing divs", hit them across the face with a bat before you send them out the door.
The fancy button question seen here is the best question I've seen. It covers a range of topics without making it a written test. It's much more valuable to have them implement something like this on a whiteboard or paper to avoid getting bogged down in MDN-searchable details. Even if they don't come up with a perfect solution, you will find out how intelligently they can speak on a range of topics.
Remember, you want someone who can think and come up with creative and effective solutions. Not someone who has memorized the MDN.
About HTML5 and its features .
method of adding CSS to HTML.
New Features of CSS3.
Browser Compatibility of CSS3.
Different type of selector in CSS.
Different between class and id selector .
Different type of measuring unit in CSS
HTML5 form and different type of input type option.
HTML check box,select,radio ,button tags and its use.
Styling the simple page
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As web based designer who has designed web sites using tables but never with css, how can a novice get started with css?
Related SO posts
SO - Css Book & website for CSS
SO - Css blog
Get started by reading tutorial web site first. This way, he will see how to create simple CSS and see the benefits.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/
http://www.echoecho.com/css.htm
http://www.csstutorial.net/
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss
http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/css_tutorial/
Than, I suggest since he knows how to design website to check other website source and see their CSS files. Zen Garden is a good start.
If he requires more information, he can always get a book (I do not think it's necessary but if he wants a book), he could try Core-Css.
Definitely get the Firebug plugin for Firefox. Go to a site you like and check out the CSS for it. Turn some off and on, change things, just get a feel for how it all comes together. Great learning tool.
Read CSS: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition by Eric A. Meyer. It's one of the best technical books I've read.
To all the other suggestions I would add Smashing Magazine's list of CSS articles.
I recommend Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design by Andy Clarke. It's less about the technical aspects of CSS and more about the mindset switch that needs to happen when moving from tables based design to separating content from design.
When I started learning CSS, I found myself coding pretty much the same way. Instead of tables and tds, I was using divs and spans. Still working from the outside (design) inward (toward the content) and designing my markup and contents around the look of the page, locking it into the design. Transcending CSS gets into the process of going from the inside (content and markup) out (design) leaving the site's appearance flexible.
Technical info is easy enough to find. I tend to frequent W3Schools.
I'm a big fan of reading tech books, so I learned from Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional
I learned a lot from Eric Meyer on CSS and More Eric Meyer on CSS. The books take you through several examples step-by-step, starting with unstyled pages and explain the purpose for each step along the way. They would only be a starting point though, since they're a little bit dated. Sites like A List Apart will give you the most up-to-date information.
Start simple. Read a few sites like A List Apart and Position Is Everything.
Don't try to replace your whole site at once - change one piece at a time.
Keep testing it in different browsers - the earlier you find out it looks different in one (or all!) the better.
The book that got me started was Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook. by Dan Cederholm It is not a reference, but gives you a good start with real-world examples. Dan does a good job of holding your hand, taking it slow and not boring you. I bought it several years ago and still refer to it on occasion.
This is the only CSS book I own. I use the web as my CSS reference.
SitePoint have a large amount of tutorials and reference on this. They even have a book that sound like it would answer your question directly!
HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS, 2nd Edition
http://www.sitepoint.com/books/css2/
with 4 chapters available free
For French there is a good site : http://www.alsacreations.com/ there is tutorials on HTML, xHTML and CSS and many examples (how to create "pretty" menus etc...)
I learned a lot of CSS by downloading free site designs from http://www.oswd.org/ and trying to implement the same effects on my own. It also gave me some insights into ideas for site-wide design patterns in CSS.
I'm a fan of the brute-force approach. Learn a few basics then start trying to recode your HTML using pure CSS. Every time you need a new technique, google it. You may want to subscribe to the CSS-discuss mailing list or read the wiki.
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/#specs
Someone already listed a w3c link. This link goes to the specs which is how I learned what I know about css. Anyway, start with level 1 then move on to the other levels. Well, level 1 should get you most of what you'll use so you may just want to learn level 1 then google the other things you want to do as needed.
I have found that using a DreamWeaver template is a good first place to start when creating a new page. They have made some very simple templates that allow you add any formatting you want, you just need to know things like 2 or 3 columns or elastic or fixed. Before I started doing this, I was constantly trying to figure out how to position stuff, but this has helped a lot, at least giving me a start.
Also consider a reset CSS file. It really helps dealing with browser differences.
Along with this, of course read tutorials and search the net.
Have a look at the Web Design From Scratch website. It has been really useful to me.
One important concept that most references are missing is that the CSS attributes aren't independent or cumulative. The most important properties, 'display' and 'position' react to each other and even change the behavior of other attributes. They interact in such a way that any guide that tries to teach these attributes independently is fail.
Most people doing HTML/CSS don't understand this, and are stuck fiddling without a real clue.
The only book I've found that relates these attributes at all is "Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns". Eric Meyers book might... Personally I hate the style "Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns" is written in, but its still the most effective guide to CSS that I have found.
I wrote an overall intro guide including some good CSS links elsewhere (see the comments too)... might be useful.
I know that tables are for tabular data, but it's so tempting to use them for layout. I can handle DIV's to get a three column layout, but when you got 4 nested DIV's, it get tricky.
Is there a tutorial/reference out there to persuade me to use DIV's for layout?
I want to use DIV's, but I refuse to spend an hour to position my DIV/SPAN where I want it.
#GaryF: Blueprint CSS has to be the CSS's best kept secret.
Great tool - Blueprint Grid CSS Generator.
There's the Yahoo Grid CSS which can do all sorts of things.
But remember: CSS IS NOT A RELIGION. If you save hours by using tables instead of css, do so.
One of the corner cases I could never make my mind up about is forms. I'd love to do it in css, but it's just so much more complicated than tables.
You could even argue that forms are tables, in that they have headers (labels) and data (input fields).
In the UK and in US there is a legal requirement for favouring CSS layouts over Tables. Both Section 508 (US) and the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) cover accessibility standards for users with limited vision.
In the UK the legislation extends so far as to actually make it illegal to commercially produce a site that impedes the ability of a partially sighted user in the same way that it is now illegal to have a shop with a step to enter it and no way for a wheelchair user to get in - admittedly there have been no prosecutions over website accessibility yet. However I would always go with CSS as it means that your site design is so much easier to maintain in the longer term.
Investing time in learning CSS (I used W3C schools and .Net Magazine http://www.netmag.co.uk) will pay off.
Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered.
In my opinion, the bias should be in favour of CSS over IE6 - i.e. unless there's an insanely good reason (e.g. your site is only targetted at people using IE6, which would be weird), it's better to 'alienate' people using IE6 rather than people with poor vision and/or automated user agents. Usage of IE6 is decreasing; the latter group is increasing in number. Even if your site doesn't look perfect in IE6, it will probably be easy for those users to read it than a table-based layout will for those who can't see it.
This is a very general question, so it's difficult to answer with specifics. The two books that are excellent resources are:
Bulletproof Web Design, Dan Cederholm
CSS Mastery, Andy Budd
If you only have to spend an hour designing your overall site layout, that's not bad going.
CSS may not be a religion, but it is how browsers interpret HTML for layout. Like it or not, all modern browsers use (some version) of the W3C box model. To continue to rely on tables is continue to rely on a methodology that is just plain wrong in the eyes of the people who design web rendering technology.
I know CSS can seem awfully complicated at times, but I believe it is a necessity in this day and age (trust me, your clients are going to want it).
If you don't feel comfortable taking the time really learn CSS (so it takes you seconds or minutes to position elements...not an hour), then you need to pass the layout work on to someone who knows really knows the front-end.
Yes, there are a lot of problems with the current browser implementations of CSS, but nothing so drastic that you should ever feel the need to return to table based layout. Just sit down and take the time to learn it, like you would any other language or framework.
The best online reference resource I've found is this one:
http://reference.sitepoint.com/css
But it might not hurt to look at a book like Designing With Web Standards which goes a long way in helping you to understand why this stuff is important.
I was also thinking Blueprint was great until I saw YAML (Yet Another Multicolumn Layout). There is an online builder tool which is fantastic. I can get a cool looking multicolumn layout within 5 mins.
After a while you don't even think about it. Using divs with CSS seems like the easier option imo. Plus, you have more freedom when using frameworks such as jQuery. I couldn't imagine doing some of the cool jQuery stuff without using css or divs. If you use tables for style and layout I feel like you miss out on a lot of new technologies and stay stuck in the 90's.
This may be unhelpful but I somehow don't understand all these problems related to CSS. If a newspaper designer would try to embed a movie in the ad page, everybody would agree that he's a bit crazy. But still those same people pine after three-column layouts in HTML. HTML is just not apt to handle this kind of layout well at the moment. Furthermore, multi-column layouts are generally not really well-suited for reading on computer monitors. Aren't there enough viable alternatives?
And by the way, even tables don't offer a good way of implementing a fluent column layout so this is no reason at all to resort to such hacks. Assuming a halfway modern browser (i.e. > MSIE 6), tables don't offer any advantages over clean HTML + CSS that I know of.
I would just use the table.
In my experience, using a table for layout will work the same in all browsers and the CSS will not (especially if you're trying to support IE6). It's just not worth the hours and hours of coding to get a layout to work in CSS when it can be done in 10 minutes using a table.
The other advantage to using tables is that your layout can very easily dynamically size itself to content. Trying to get that done with CSS is a huge nightmare.
I find there are lots of limitations to CSS that just seem to hint the specification designers don't make websites for a living.
Use HTML tables if you can't do it easy in CSS.
Having said that, some of the frameworks do help and it always nicer to do in CSS if you can manage it.
You might be able to find some inspiration here: http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/
A List Apart is a great reference for using semantic HTML, the Holy Grail article is probably one of the best examples. Also, check out CSS Zen Garden for some inspiration on the topic or read Dave Shea's excellent book "The Zen of CSS Design."
You use CSS for layout because not only is it semantically correct but because tables have multiple drawbacks.
Tables are horrible for accessibility because they break almost all screen readers, which in turn gives the visually impaired worthless information because of the way the tables are read.
They also render much slower than their CSS counterparts. Tables have to be drawn twice, once for the layout, and again for the content. This can mean that if you have a remote image or two on a server with a slow connection that your ENTIRE LAYOUT will not render.
Would you use an array to store a dictionary when you have a hashmap? No. And you shouldn't use a table when there's something out there which works better.
It seems like every time I try to create a pure CSS layout it takes me much longer than if I'd use a table or two. Getting three columns to be equal lengths with different amounts of data seems to require particular fancy hacks, especially when dealing with cross-browser issues.
My Question:
Who are these few tables going to hurt?
Tables seem to work particularly well on tabular data — why are they so reviled in this day and age?
Google.com has a table in its source code, so do many other sites (stackoverflow.com does not by the way).
Since this is stackoverflow, I'll give you my programmer's answer
semantics 101
First take a look at this code and think about what's wrong here...
class car {
int wheels = 4;
string engine;
}
car mybike = new car();
mybike.wheels = 2;
mybike.engine = null;
The problem, of course, is that a bike is not a car. The car class is an inappropriate class for the bike instance. The code is error-free, but is semantically incorrect. It reflects poorly on the programmer.
semantics 102
Now apply this to document markup. If your document needs to present tabular data, then the appropriate tag would be <table>. If you place navigation into a table however, then you're misusing the intended purpose of the <table> element. In the second case, you're not presenting tabular data -- you're (mis)using the <table> element to achieve a presentational goal.
conclusion
Whom does this hurt? No one. Who benefits if you use semantic markup? You -- and your professional reputation. Now go and do the right thing.
Like a lot of things, it's a good idea that often gets carried too far. I like a div+css driven layout because it's usually quite easy to change the appearance, even drastically, just through the stylesheet. It's also nice to be friendly to lower-level browsers, screen readers, etc. But like most decisions in programming, the purpose of the site and the cost of development should be considered in making a decision. Neither side is the right way to go 100% of the time.
BTW, I think everyone agrees that tables should be used for tabular data.
In the real world, your chances of taking one design and totally reskinning it without touching the markup are pretty remote. It's fine for blogs and concocted demos like the csszengarden, but it's a bogus benefit on any site with a moderately complex design, really. Using a CMS is far more important.
DIVs plus CSS != semantic, either. Good HTML is well worthwhile for SEO and accessibility always, whether tables or CSS are used for layout. You get really efficient, fast web designs by combining really simple tables with some good CSS.
Table layouts can be more accessible than CSS layouts, and the reverse is also true - it depends TOTALLY on the source order of the content, and just because you avoided tables does not mean users with screen readers will automatically have a good time on your site. Layout tables are irrelevant to screen reader access provided the content makes sense when linearised, exactly the same as if you do CSS layout. Data tables are different; they are really hard to mark up properly and even then the users of screen reader software generally don't know the commands they need to use to understand the data.
Rather than agonising over using a few layout tables, you should worry that heading tags and alt text are used properly, and that form labels are properly assigned. Then you'll have a pretty good stab at real world accessibility.
This from several years experience running user testing for web accessibility, specialising in accessible site design, and from consulting for Cahoot, an online bank, on this topic for a year.
So my answer to the poster is no, there is no business reason to prefer CSS over tables. It's more elegant, more satisfying and more correct, but you as the person building it and the person that has to maintain it after you are the only two people in the world who give a rat's ass whether it's CSS or tables.
Using semantic HTML design is one of those things where you don't know what you're missing unless you make a practice of it. I've worked on several sites where the site was restyled after the fact with little or no impact to the server-side code.
Restyling sites is a very common request, something that I've noticed more now that I'm able to say "yes" to instead of try to talk my way out of.
And, once you've learned to work with the page layout system, it's usually no harder than table based layout.
I'm of the thought that CSS layout with as few tables as possible is cleaner and better, but I agree that sometimes you just gotta use a table.
Business-wise, it's generally "what's going to get it done the fastest and most reliable way." In my experience, using a few tables generally falls into that category.
I have found that a very effective way to mitigate cross-browser differences in CSS rendering is to use the "strict" doctype at the top of your page:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
Also, for the dreaded IE6 CSS issues, you can use this hack:
.someClass {
background-color:black; /*this is for most browsers*/
_background-color:white; /*this is for IE6 only - all others will ignore it*/
}
The main reason why we changed our web pages to DIV/CSS based layout was the delay in rendering table based pages.
We have a public web site, with most of its users base is in countries like India, where the internet bandwidth is still an issue (its getting improved day by day, but still not on par). In such circumstances, when we used table based layout, users had to stare at a blank page for considerably long time. Then the entire page will get displayed as a whole in a tick. By converting our pages to DIV, we managed to bring some contents to the browser almost instantly as users entered to our web site, and those contents where enough to get the users engaged till browser downloads entire contents of the page.
The major flaw with table based implementation is that, the browser we will show the content of the table only after it downloads the entire html for that table. The issue will blow out when we have a main table which wraps the entire content of the page, and when we have lots of nested tables. For the 'flexible tables' (those without any fixed width), after downloading entire table tag, browser has to parse till the last row of the table to find out the width of each columns, then has to parse it again for displaying the content. Till all these happens users has to stare at a blank screen, then everything will come to screen in a tick.
If you have a public facing website, the real business case is SEO.
Accessibility is important and maintaining semantic (X)HTML is much easier than maintaining table layouts, but that #1 spot on Google will bring home the bacon.
For example: Monthly web report: 127 million page views for July
Monthly web report: 127 million page views for July
...
Latimes.com keeps getting better at SEO (search engine optimization), which means our stories are ranking higher in Google and other search engines. We are also performing better on sites like Digg.com. All that adds up to more exposure and more readership than ever before.
If you look at their site, they've got a pretty decent CSS layout going.
Generally, you find relatively few table layouts performing well in the SERPs these days.
Keep your layout and your content separate allows you to redesign or make tweaks and changes to your site easily. It may take a bit longer up front, but the longest phase of software development is maintenance. A css friendly site with clear separation between content and design is best over the course of maintenance.
One other thing I just remembered, you can assign a different stylesheet to a page for printing vs. display.
In addition to your normal stylesheet definition, you can add the following tag
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="PrintStyle.css" />
Which will render the document according to that style when you send it to the printer. This allows you to strip out the background images, additional header/footer information and just print the raw information without creating a separate module.
doing a complete revamp of a 15 page web site just by updating 1 file is heaven.
This is true. Unfortunately, having one CSS file used by 15,000 complex and widely differing pages is your worst nightmare come true. Change something - did it break a thousand pages? Who knows?
CSS is a double-edged sword on big sites like ours.
In my experience, the only time this really adds business value is when there is a need for 100% support for accessibility. When you have users who are visually impaired and/or use screenreaders to view your site, you need to make sure that your site is compliant to accessibility standards.
Users that use screenreaders will tend to have their own high-contrast, large-font stylesheet (if your site doesn't supply one itself) which makes it easy for screenreaders to parse the page.
When a screenreader reads a page and sees a table, it'll tell the user it's a table. Hence, if you use a table for layout, it gets very confusing because the user doesn't know that the content of the table is actually the article instead of some other tabular data. A menu should be a list or a collection of divs, not a table with menu items, again that's confusing. You should make sure that you use blockquotes, alt-tags title attributes, etc to make it more readable.
If you make your design CSS-driven, then your entire look and feel can be stripped away and replaced with a raw view which is very readable to those users. If you have inline styles, table-based layouts, etc, then you're making it harder for those users to parse your content.
While I do feel that maintenance is made easier for some things when your site is purely laid out with CSS, I don't think it's the case for all kinds of maintenance -- especially when you're dealing with cross-browser CSS, which can obviously be a nightmare.
In short, your page should describe its make-up in a standards compliant way if you want it to be accessible to said users. If you have no need/requirement and likely won't need it in the future, then don't bother wasting too much time attempting to be a CSS purist :) Use the mixture of style and layout techniques that suits you and makes your job easier.
Cheers!
[EDIT - added strikethrough to wrong or misleading parts of this answer - see comments]
The idea is that Designers can Design and Web Developers can implement. This is especially the case in dynamic web applications where you do not want your Designers to mess around in your Source Code.
Now, while there are templating engines, Designers apparantly just love to go crazy and CSS allows to pull a lot more stunts than tables.
That being said: As a developer, i abandoned CSS Layout mostly because my Design sucks anyway, so at least it can suck properly :-) But if I would ever hire a Designer, I would let him use whatever his WYSIWYG Editor spits out.
Business reason for CSS layout: You can blow away the customers by saying "our portal is totally customizable/skinnable without writing code!"
Then again, I don't see any evil in designing block elements with tables. By block elements I mean where it doesn't make any sense to break apart the said element in different designs.
So, tabular data would best be presented with tables, of course. Designing major building blocks (such as a menu bar, news ticker, etc.) within their own tables should be OK as well. Just don't rely on tables for the overall page layout and you'll be fine, methinks.
*I would let him use whatever his WYSIWYG Editor spits out
I just threw-up a little...
*ahh hello? You don't think the graphic designer is writing the CSS by hand do you?
Funnily enough I have worked with a few designers and the best among them do hand-tweak their css. The guy I am thinking of actually does all of his design work as an XHTML file with a couple of CSS files and creates graphical elements on the fly as he needs them. He uses Dreamweaver but only really as a navigation tool. (I learned a lot from that guy)
Once you've made an investment to learn purely CSS-based design and have had a little experience (found out where IE sucks [to be fair it's getting better]) it ends up being faster I've found. I worked on Content Management Systems and the application rarely had to change for the designers to come up with a radically different look.
Besides being easily updatable and compliant...
I use to design all table based web sites and I was resistant at first, but little by little I moved to CSS. It did not happen overnight, but it happened and it is something you should do as well.
There have been some nights I wanted to toss my computer out the window because the style I was applying to a div was not doing what I want, but you learn from those obstacles.
As for a business, once you get to designing web sites by CSS down to a science, you can develop processes for each site and even use past web sites and just add a different header graphic, color, etc.
Also, be sure to embed/include all reusable parts of your website: header, sub-header, footer.
Once you get over the hump, it will be all down hill from there. Good luck!
:: nods at palmsey and Jon Galloway ::
I agree with the maintainability factor. It does take me a bit longer to get my initial layouts done (since I'm still a jedi apprentice in the CSS arts) but doing a complete revamp of a 15 page web site just by updating 1 file is heaven.
Some additional reasons why this is good practice:
Accessibility - the web should ideally be
accessible by all
Performance - save
bandwidth and load faster on mobile
devices (these lack bandwidth to some
degree and cannot layout complex
tables quickly). Besides loading fast is always a good thing...
When a screenreader reads a page and sees a table, it'll tell the user it's a table. Hence, if you use a table for layout, it gets very confusing because the user doesn't know that the content of the table is actually the article instead of some other tabular data
This is actually not true; screen readers like JAWS, Window Eyes and HAL ignore layout tables. They work really well at dealing with the real web.
I don't think there is a business reason at all. Technical reason, maybe, even so, barely - it is a huge timesuck the world over, and then you look at it in IE and break down and weep.
i actually can see Tables in Stack Overflow on the user page.
It even has heaps of inline styles...
There definitely is. If you are still striving for it, you are not getting it right.
DIV+CSS layout is actually much easier than table layout in terms of maintainability and productivity. Just keep practicing it before it's too early to say that.
Table layout is good too it's just not meant for layouts and have exceptional drawbacks when it comes to minor tuning.