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Davio
Development Team Member
Jamaica
12217 Posts |
 Posted - 15 December 2004 : 20:13:30
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Is this possible? To position and align content for your pages using DIV tags and style sheets, without using table tags?
Would this design show ok across the different types of browser out now? Firefox, IE, Opera, Netscape, Mozilla.
Can we start dropping the use of TABLE tags and start using DIV and CSS, or is table tags still around to stay?
I am just getting into the swing of using style sheets with DIV and am amazed at what it can do. |
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davemaxwell
Access 2000 Support Moderator
USA
3020 Posts |
Posted - 15 December 2004 : 21:16:30
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For the most part, you can control your positioning very easily with css and can eliminate most of the uses of tables. The biggest issue is when you want to have a truly flexible layout which will stay nicely in all browsers. That can be a challenge.
That being said, tables should still be used where they are appropriate. If something is tabular data (like say, oh...these forums  ), then the tables can stay. Now you can do things like get rid of the wrapping table and stylize the rows pretty heavily, but it should still stay as a table. This is as much for text readers and other non-standard browsers. You want to leave this kind of stuff tabular because it makes it easier for the nonstandard browsers to work with what is there. |
Dave Maxwell
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Ranko
Junior Member
400 Posts |
Posted - 15 December 2004 : 21:19:01
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IT can take the brunt of the work, but some tables would need to stay (my estimate is up to five). Add an external sheet, heavily commented (better than Speedball, simply to give a break to CSS-challenged people) and you have a winner.
OTOH, flash thought is if some positioning could be moved around (drop down paging and such), you could go without tables at all. |
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-gary
Development Team Member
406 Posts |
Posted - 15 December 2004 : 23:15:54
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| There's a whole world out there that is into compliance and standards based sites. Notice how most CSS sites are fixed width? The hacks to make a truly liquid cross-platform site are somtimes worse than using tables for layout in the first place. Google "box model hack" and see what comes up. |
KawiForums.com
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dayve
Forum Moderator
USA
5820 Posts |
Posted - 15 December 2004 : 23:21:32
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| I spend a lot of time at http://www.cssvault.com and have seen a lot of table'less sites. It is very possible. |
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D3mon
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1685 Posts |
Posted - 16 December 2004 : 04:18:17
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Speedball 3 (in progress) is taking some heavy steps forward in terms of CSS-Driven, table-less layout. Note that forums are tabular data and therefore should (correctly) contain at least one table (for the main part of the page.)
Wanna learn CSS? Start here http://www.w3schools.com/css/ |
Snitz 'Speedball' : Site Integration Mod : Friendly Registration Mod
"In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won" |
Edited by - D3mon on 16 December 2004 04:18:58 |
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red1
Junior Member
355 Posts |
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-gary
Development Team Member
406 Posts |
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Da_Stimulator
DEV Team Forum Moderator
USA
3373 Posts |
Posted - 16 December 2004 : 14:40:57
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Thats amazing gary... I didnt see a single table!
I tried figuring out how to do the table-less thing, but I failed miserably... I messed with a test page on my local host for about 2 hours, only to accomplish nothing...
One thing that pisses me off about CSS is the fact that its flexible... thats usually a good thing, but for instance, IE doesnt support the :hover on div, td, span tags, but Firefox does (I love it)...
It would be kind of hard I think to make a cross-browser CSS based webpage... Too hard for me to start working on anyway.
Right now I'm working on my own website (finally, I'm going to have a domain and an actual reliable host) - I want to try and make it XHTML strict compliant, and I want to use CSS to its fullest extent, but I just dont have the knowledge to do so.
I'm the type of person that learns by example. I learned asp by installing snitz, and customizing it myself through trial and error - and various references via 4guys, and people here at snitz providing example code.
When it comes to CSS, all I can seem to find is references and libraries, its hard to come by code examples for me to learn off of. |
-Stim |
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-gary
Development Team Member
406 Posts |
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dayve
Forum Moderator
USA
5820 Posts |
Posted - 16 December 2004 : 16:09:02
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quote:
Originally posted by red1
I never liked the nesting of tables just to create the single-pixel border effect.
yeah, that is an old-school practice I left long ago. I've been heavily into CSS the past year and have become quite addicted. all of my client sites that I have developed recently have a large percentage of CSS in place of old HTML practices.
another CSS site I visit that has a forum with zero tables in its construct:
http://www.accessifyforum.com/
quote:
Originally posted by -gary
Just a few of the sites I've bookmarked in my journeys.
Practical CSS Layout Tips, Tricks, & Techniques
This is the article I used to create my thumbnail views of images on my forum. |
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Edited by - dayve on 17 December 2004 01:12:26 |
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Ranko
Junior Member
400 Posts |
Posted - 17 December 2004 : 02:10:25
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| If you can get a hold of DW MX 2004, look at their CSS page layout templates - very good, and very playable with. |
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dayve
Forum Moderator
USA
5820 Posts |
Posted - 17 December 2004 : 03:09:34
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| Bah! Dreamweaver Blows.... bloated and outdated approaches. Learn CSS the real way, read and test using a simple code editor. |
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cripto9t
Average Member
USA
881 Posts |
Posted - 17 December 2004 : 09:02:49
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quote:
another CSS site I visit that has a forum with zero tables in its construct:
http://www.accessifyforum.com/
One of my bookmarks I haven't visited in a long time. It's not completely tableless but they're almost there.
This is a forum that went tableless recently.
http://www.csscreator.com/css-forum/forum15.html
These guys have helped me alot with my css problems.
quote:
Would this design show ok across the different types of browser out now? Firefox, IE, Opera, Netscape, Mozilla.
Useing the correct DOCTYPE is the best place to start.
http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/doctypes.html
Check out thier site. They have some good articles and links.
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_-/Cripto9t\-_ |
Edited by - cripto9t on 17 December 2004 09:06:13 |
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MarcelG
Retired Support Moderator
Netherlands
2625 Posts |
Posted - 17 December 2004 : 09:26:00
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| Perhaps it's just me, but what's so bad about using tables ? Is it filesize or something like that ? |
portfolio - linkshrinker - oxle - twitter |
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D3mon
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1685 Posts |
Posted - 17 December 2004 : 10:03:42
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Tables used for layout purposes (i.e. to position elements on the page) cause problems for standard browsers and also can make pages very difficult to read for partially-sighted users etc. who have customized browsers like screenreaders. Nested tables - tables inside tables, amplify this problem.
Of course, tables have a valid use in HTML (to present tabulated data - like a bus-timetable) so they should not to be considered totally evil! |
Snitz 'Speedball' : Site Integration Mod : Friendly Registration Mod
"In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won" |
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