To table or not to table?

F

fred.haab

Almost all the many pages on my website look something like thishttp://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Jims_pictures/Jimspics_14_wav...
Is there any advantage to doing away with the 'table' as a placeholder?

The rants against tables are way overblown, IMO. Yes, I avoid tables,
and there's a lot of practical "theory" about why you shouldn't use
them for layout, and they all make great points. There are, however,
cases where even the most creative use of "div" and css doesn't work,
especially on all browsers. So then they think hacks to make IE look
right are better than tables. I don't.

One of the horrible things about browser capability/compatibility is
that vertical centering often simply doesn't work at all. In fact,
even horizontal centering has a lot catches depending on how you do
it. I was accused, when last I argued about this, of using
"pathological" cases to show why DIV doesn't always work when, in
fact, it was for a specific project I was working on. Especially
with "dynamic" content (like on your pages - you want to use the same
page structure, but some of your images might be wider or landscape as
opposed to portrait, so you can't just use some of the CSS hacks and
always have it centered). I was actually told I should be using
scripting to dynamicall modify the CSS in that case. Uh.... no, not
when I can do it with a simple table.

My opinion is that a very SIMPLE table for layout (not the nested
table within nested table nightmares) is not such a horrible thing.
 
N

Neredbojias

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:01:49
GMT Jim S scribed:
Almost all the many pages on my website look something like this
http://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Jims_pictures/Jimspics_14_wave.
html Is there any advantage to doing away with the 'table' as a
placeholder? If so, could someone please show me how to do it?

I pretty much agree with Fred and think you'll invariably _need_ a table
for vertical "middling". But, oh, the disappointment! _Transitional_??
You a coward, just lazy, or what?
 
J

Jim S

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:01:49
GMT Jim S scribed:


I pretty much agree with Fred and think you'll invariably _need_ a table
for vertical "middling". But, oh, the disappointment! _Transitional_??
You a coward, just lazy, or what?

<g>
My other website is Strict
I cannot get tables to occupy the full HEIGHT using Strict or I would.
 
D

dorayme

Jim S said:
Almost all the many pages on my website look something like this
http://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Jims_pictures/Jimspics_14_wave.html
Is there any advantage to doing away with the 'table' as a placeholder?
If so, could someone please show me how to do it?

"table as a placeholder" presumably means "table for layout". I
mention this to help you search the many times this has been
discussed here. There are several things that you could be asking
here:

(1) Why is table for layout bad in general? (you won't get too
much these days from many experts here because they would be
tired of answering this). Yes, there are advantages, they are of
a *general kind*, it has been greatly discussed.

(2) Is it worth changing a table layout site to one that conforms
to better practise? If it is an evolving site, and will have a
future, be updated regularly and get new sections etc, yes, it
will gain all the advantages from accruing from the above. If it
is not, if it is a legacy piece, still of interest, if it is also
large and complicated, the answer is probably not.

(3) As for your particular page above, it is an example of many,
the changes would be very easy and useful because you might
improve some things while at it - for example, in Safari, the fwd
and back buttons are way down at the bottom of a page. The
caption is way down from the pic. It looks odd on a big screen
and involves greater travel for the mouse. Making a page for
these pics with a caption, and forward and back button would be
very simple, involve less code (less css and less html) than what
you have. I would be happy to give you a demo if you are
interested as I am sure would others.
 
S

Sherm Pendley

The rants against tables are way overblown, IMO. Yes, I avoid tables,
and there's a lot of practical "theory" about why you shouldn't use
them for layout, and they all make great points. There are, however,
cases where even the most creative use of "div" and css doesn't work,
especially on all browsers. So then they think hacks to make IE look
right are better than tables. I don't.

Agreed.

The key reason to avoid layout tables is that it makes for cleaner markup,
simplifying both initial development and maintenance. Some people confuse
the end with the means, though, and insist on avoiding tables even when
cross-browser issues make the alternative far more complicated.

sherm--
 
J

Jonathan N. Little

BootNic said:
On 01 Oct 2007 19:09:35 GMT, Neredbojias wrote: [snip]
I pretty much agree with Fred and think you'll invariably _need_ a
table for vertical "middling". But, oh, the disappointment!
_Transitional_?? You a coward, just lazy, or what?
<g>
My other website is Strict
I cannot get tables to occupy the full HEIGHT using Strict or I would.

4.01 Strict example:
http://bootnic.atwebpages.com/100PercentTableHeight.php
Hmmm interesting... no mater the window size even at 1536px tall *still*
has a vertical scroll bar!
 
J

Jim S

"table as a placeholder" presumably means "table for layout". I
mention this to help you search the many times this has been
discussed here. There are several things that you could be asking
here:

(1) Why is table for layout bad in general? (you won't get too
much these days from many experts here because they would be
tired of answering this). Yes, there are advantages, they are of
a *general kind*, it has been greatly discussed.

(2) Is it worth changing a table layout site to one that conforms
to better practise? If it is an evolving site, and will have a
future, be updated regularly and get new sections etc, yes, it
will gain all the advantages from accruing from the above. If it
is not, if it is a legacy piece, still of interest, if it is also
large and complicated, the answer is probably not.

(3) As for your particular page above, it is an example of many,
the changes would be very easy and useful because you might
improve some things while at it - for example, in Safari, the fwd
and back buttons are way down at the bottom of a page. The
caption is way down from the pic. It looks odd on a big screen
and involves greater travel for the mouse. Making a page for
these pics with a caption, and forward and back button would be
very simple, involve less code (less css and less html) than what
you have. I would be happy to give you a demo if you are
interested as I am sure would others.

Not here I haven't.

Anyhow, yes I am asking for a demo.
I simply have never been able to find a simpler way of presenting the
pictures in a way that keeps them within the bounds of an 800x600 layout
(and bigger), centralised. The buttons are meant to be in the lowest bottom
corners of the screen.
 
B

BootNic

BootNic wrote: [snip]

God, I hate pages which won't scroll with the mousewheel.

Why overflow:auto?

Ya know I don't recall all the details of it, but I would guess it has
something to do with allowing access to the table if the table is more
then 100% of the viewable area and or issues with Opera, IE 5-7 and
Safari.

The conversation that sparked this abomination can be found at:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.html/browse_thread/thread/50811524ef19 997c/2853009db7412329

Perhaps you may recall some of it.

As far as the mouse wheel goes, mine works just fine in almost everything
I view it in, the exception being an old mozilla browser before they
fixed the scroll issue.
 
B

BootNic

BootNic said:
On 01 Oct 2007 19:09:35 GMT, Neredbojias wrote: [snip]
I pretty much agree with Fred and think you'll invariably _need_ a
table for vertical "middling". But, oh, the disappointment!
_Transitional_?? You a coward, just lazy, or what?
<g>
My other website is Strict
I cannot get tables to occupy the full HEIGHT using Strict or I
would.

4.01 Strict example:
http://bootnic.atwebpages.com/100PercentTableHeight.php
Hmmm interesting... no mater the window size even at 1536px tall
*still* has a vertical scroll bar!

Yes it does as it should, the footer is not in the table and the table
is set at 100% height. So lets see what to do about it ... lets remove
the footer from the page.
 
D

dorayme

Jim S said:
Not here I haven't.

Odd thing... I am sure it is not important. It appears in FF web
developer extension facilities. Here is a picture to demo what I
saw.

http://netweaver.com.au/test/pics/hidden_character.png

Anyhow, yes I am asking for a demo.
I simply have never been able to find a simpler way of presenting the
pictures in a way that keeps them within the bounds of an 800x600 layout
(and bigger), centralised. The buttons are meant to be in the lowest bottom
corners of the screen.

Give me a few minutes then. I will just say here that if you are
expecting to always get *exactly* what you can get cross browser
from tables but using best practice coding without tables for
layout, you will be disappointed. You need to be convinced that
sometimes, it is the look of the thing that is involved in the
change too, not merely a change in code. With lots of effort,
most table layouts can be mimicked... but doing this would be
pointless, it would be superficial, it would show that the author
is merely doing a "Look ma, no tables" trick. You will understand
what i am saying only when you get into designing without tables
from the very beginning. It influences you to design differently,
you get to like what you can do in a natural way.

Back soon!
 
D

dorayme

Anyhow, yes I am asking for a demo.
I simply have never been able to find a simpler way of presenting the
pictures in a way that keeps them within the bounds of an 800x600 layout
(and bigger), centralised. The buttons are meant to be in the lowest bottom
corners of the screen.

Here is something that might disappoint you if you are adamant
about vertical centering. I respect you wanting that but think it
is not something that should overrule the advantages of other
ways of proceeding, simplicity, easier mouse control over larger
canvasses, greater flexibility to change the look of the pages
etc):

I am happy with like this:

http://netweaver.com.au/jim/guestFootJim.html

(I did not remake the arrows, they are from another gallery of
mine and bigger natively than sized in the html (not best
practice, just for here and now)... so they may look fuzzier than
should be in IE)

Closer to what you want follows and demos a simple thing, namely
that you can use your knowledge about your pics (they are not
that big, they are highly likely to leave left and right room) to
put in a little absolute positioning for your buttons (I have
merely put in text links)

http://netweaver.com.au/jim/guestFootJim2.html
 
J

Jim S

Here is something that might disappoint you if you are adamant
about vertical centering. I respect you wanting that but think it
is not something that should overrule the advantages of other
ways of proceeding, simplicity, easier mouse control over larger
canvasses, greater flexibility to change the look of the pages
etc):

I am happy with like this:

http://netweaver.com.au/jim/guestFootJim.html

(I did not remake the arrows, they are from another gallery of
mine and bigger natively than sized in the html (not best
practice, just for here and now)... so they may look fuzzier than
should be in IE)

Closer to what you want follows and demos a simple thing, namely
that you can use your knowledge about your pics (they are not
that big, they are highly likely to leave left and right room) to
put in a little absolute positioning for your buttons (I have
merely put in text links)

http://netweaver.com.au/jim/guestFootJim2.html

Thanks I'll have a play
 
J

Jim S

Here is something that might disappoint you if you are adamant
about vertical centering. I respect you wanting that but think it
is not something that should overrule the advantages of other
ways of proceeding, simplicity, easier mouse control over larger
canvasses, greater flexibility to change the look of the pages
etc):

I am happy with like this:

http://netweaver.com.au/jim/guestFootJim.html

(I did not remake the arrows, they are from another gallery of
mine and bigger natively than sized in the html (not best
practice, just for here and now)... so they may look fuzzier than
should be in IE)

Closer to what you want follows and demos a simple thing, namely
that you can use your knowledge about your pics (they are not
that big, they are highly likely to leave left and right room) to
put in a little absolute positioning for your buttons (I have
merely put in text links)

http://netweaver.com.au/jim/guestFootJim2.html

Hi again
It was not t0o difficult to get to this
http://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Tester.htm

but I would have my work cut out on pages like these and others

http://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Local_History/LH_8_graffiti.html
http://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Local_History/LH_10_Blyth_and_Tyne.html
http://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Local_History/LH_52_Greggs.html
http://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Local_History/LH_71_Memorial_Methodists.html
 
D

dorayme

Bergamot said:
Or the keyboard. :-(

To be fair to BootNic's page, the page develops scroll bars when
they are really needed. Try putting in extra text where he has
"test image". At least in FF they then appear. Try putting a
lorem in a <p> outside the table lower down.

Can't test the scroll wheel ability on this Mac (reminds me to
purchase one of those for my Mac, it is a nice feature that I
miss when I have been on a Winbox - which has such - and come
back to my Mac)
 
D

dorayme

Jim S said:
Hi again
It was not t0o difficult to get to this
http://www.jimscot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Tester.htm

Well done. I trust you find it simpler code.

OK Jim, I will take a look at these more complicated pages and
see if I can think of a way of proceeding that makes sense and
does not blind with science.
 
B

Bergamot

dorayme said:
To be fair to BootNic's page, the page develops scroll bars when
they are really needed.

Um, having scroll bars is irrelevant to being able to actually scroll
using just the keyboard. Did you even try?
 

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