css vs tables

[Wally S]

Hi Eleanor,

Don't slow down when you retire. I am already retired, but I am busier that
when I worked, and I travel more too. I've never had as much fun.

Wally S

 

[Cheryl D Wise]

Wally,

It really is up to you what you want to do and how you want to do it. I
maintain approximately 40 websites, more or less as a one woman show.

My partner is now allowed to touch live web pages (only backend stuff)
except for his personal site because he honestly sees nothing wrong with
copying and pasting from Word Docs and complete with Word mark-up. (See wy
he isn't allowed to touch our business site or any of our client sites? He's
a much, much better programmer than I am though.)

I haven't used a table based layout in at least 2 and probably closer to 3
years. I find CSS easier than dealing with tables, especially nested tables.
If you don't and do not want to spend the time to learn, its okay. Yes,
there was a learning curve but while there are plenty of people who make me
look like a rank novice when it comes to CSS I'm past the foundation
learning curve to the point where it is second nature. Then again, I've
never been a fan of nested tables or using slice & dice images to create a
page layout even before CSS.

CSS layouts don't have to be fragile and they can degrade very gracefully
for older browsers and other devices.

--
Cheryl D. Wise
MS FrontPage MVP
http://mvp.wiserways.com
http://starttoweb.com
Online instructor led web design training in FrontPage,
Dreamweaver and more!
Next Session June 26th

 

[Wally S]

Hi Cheryl,

Thanks for the reply. I'm not a big fan of nested tables either, but I
wasn't able to find any info on the web as to how to keep my layout from
crashing. I must admit I haven't really spent a lot of time on it, but I can
see where it bears looking into. I'm not afraid of a learning curve. I've
learned tougher things than this in my day.

I knew the crash was due to a long unbreakable word, so I checked all my
"mail-to" links, which is usually what it is, but the culprit was the word
"consciousness" already in large type as part of a title in a narrow column.
In the same page laid out as a table, I could enlarge the font size in IE
without anything at all happening. I need this kind of stability in a
layout, but so far I haven't found any info as to how to get it with CSS.

Otherwise, except for basic layout, I do all my formatting with CSS except
for an occasional <b> or <i>, where it is only going to happen once or twice
and is not worth making a new class for.

Wally S

 

[Kevin Spencer]

Hi Cheryl,

I guess I'm going to have to jump in at this point, just to support what
you're saying. CSS is to HTML what Object-oriented programming is to
programming. Yes, in some ways it makes things more complex in the short
run, but in the long run it makes things much LESS comnplex. In fact, CSS
IS Object-oriented, but that's not my point. My point is based upon the fact
that with an external shared style sheet, which removes the layout style
from the HTML content, an entire web site's look and feel can be changed in
radical terms by making changes to a single file. Yes, it does take longer
to create such a style sheet, and it's a learning curve, particularly when
tools like FrontPage (and unfortunately, Ineternet Explorer, which used to
be the leader of the pack of browsers) are slow to catch up with the new
technology. But we're talking about creating a single file, and simplifying
tremendously the HTML in the web pages themselves. In the long run, it makes
the pages much easier to edit and change, and the overall look and feel of
the web site MUCH easier to change.

In .Net programming, Microsoft touts the philosophy of separation of code
and content, of creating "layers" in an application, for the purpose of
extensibility, reusability, and ease of maintenance. The same goes for HTML
and CSS.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Ambiguity has a certain quality to it.