Why tableless layouts are essential?

[rajveerr]

Hi,

There may be few of us still questioning as why we should pure CSS to build beautiful web pages. Check out the article I wrote here to cover the same topic in a precise manner.

You can also download the the PPS file for your offline reference from my slideshare a/c here.

Thanks,

Rajveer

[D856C]

This has little to do with why things are the way they are.

Print people liked the control of table layouts, and dislike(d) ideas which come with CSS -- such as fluid layouts. It mattered little that CSS can do both, that's just the slippery slope to yielding control to users.

Tables also offer an attractive feature: Obfuscation. It's a little difficult for regular people to understand or edit, so it keeps the paychecks coming.

The technical discussion is largely a smokescreen. It's never a precise matter to understand human motivations -- and it rarely has much to do with technology. These technical discussions lend the illusion of precision to largely emotional reasons for doing things.

[rajveerr]

Nice theory D856C :-) Lets hope that desired valuable things reaches to the right people on right time and they can should be ready to take the challenge to help improve our web world.

[next]

Did anyone notice what happens with CSS? Without CSS designers abused tables, now it's CSS time and people abandoned tables and started abusing lists and divs.

Tables are meant for tabular data you say, but you forget that lists weren't meant to be navigations.Speaking of code mess, dude, when was the last time you counted that amount of divs?

Frankly this makes no sense to me. Every1 switched 1 flaw for another.
Granted, properly combined CSS and XHTML are effective, but i think designers misunderstand coding. IMHO

[Harry]

...but you forget that lists weren't meant to be navigations...

Ah, interesting. You're confusing navigation with menus. Well, not just you. About 99% of developers call menus 'navigation'. Navigation is a sitewide function not constrained to the menu which, as you say, is usually a list (<ul>). 'Navigation' is links within copy, and calls to action and a whole host more. A 'menu' is your "Home | About | Contact" that remains fixed in one place.

In this sense, a list is a perfectly semantic and correct way of styling a menu, because menus are lists.

[next]

I don't think i confuse navigation and menu, those are the same. Menu is a collection of links from which you choose where you wish to go. Navigation is also a collection of links which NAVIGATE you to specified destination.
+ even if what you are saying is true, "Home | About | Contact" is very often included in navigation. And my point still remains the same even if navigation and menu are two different things.

[Harry]

I don't think i confuse navigation and menu, those are the same. Menu is a collection of links from which you choose where you wish to go. Navigation is also a collection of links which NAVIGATE you to specified destination. But even if what you are saying is true, my point still remains the same.

Wrong. A menu is a collection of links, but navigation encompasses every way a user can navigate around your site — a menu is just a part of that.

A menu is a part of navigation, navigation is not just a menu.

Though in a sense I can see what you mean about people going from one extreme to the other. Like some developers vehemently avoid (x)HTML tables for everything. I've seen people making a table from list items... Insemantic and they break 1000 times easier.

EDIT: Just seen your other post after writing this one. I wasn't having a go lol

[next]

Which brings me back to the point. Take a look at how i styled it at first and how much more decent my code looks now after i replaced lists with a table. Tables can make design a lot easier you just have to learn not to abuse them, lol.

[Harry]

Yeah, tables for forums aren't a must. You were making headway with <li>s and it's a doable way. But when people try making data tables (league results etc) with <li>s that's when it's wrong.