Tables are back for me... any advice?

Hi all

Starting a new job soon and they’ve told me all their websites, templates and CMS is built using tables :nono:

My main concern is I haven’t used tables for a LONG time, what are the problems regarding browsers, markup, bugs, what should I beware of?

Does anybody have any good links or advice so I don’t come unstuck :cool:

good news… there aren’t any

Since you’ll be the new employee fired up with energy and enthusiasm, maybe you can suggest taking their CMS into the new millennium and ditching the tabular layouts.

and make enemies right off the bat!! a winning strategy in any organization

But maybe they don’t know it’s wrong! They need to see the light!

good news… there aren’t any
:slight_smile: So are you saying there’s no bugs at all and however I build the tables everything will function and look the same cross browser? What about CSS? (i was going to post a separate thread)

Since you’ll be the new employee fired up with energy and enthusiasm, maybe you can suggest taking their CMS into the new millennium and ditching the tabular layouts.

I did suggest this at the interview and been thinking about this a lot, I think they do understand they need to update from tables to DIV layouts but it’s a big company a lot of modules and existing sites to recode on the company’s CMS… I’m guessing about 3/4000 machines on the intranet alone.

and make enemies right off the bat!! a winning strategy in any organization
:lol: yes I know r937 that’s all I need.

Thanks guys much appreciated for your advice :cool:

But maybe they don’t know it’s wrong! They need to see the light!
Defiantly! How I see it is, somebody needs to create a fully functional pure blank CSS template for their CMS (Teamsite) and all their separate modules to go with it.

I did get half way through building one for Joomla some time back… step learning curve and very time consuming.

Defiantly? I wouldn’t go that far… being defiant will certainly make you enemies!

Regarding CSS for tables, it’s worth being aware of what the CSS replacements are for the HTML attributes like cellspacing, cellpadding and friends - I’d check the sitepoint reference for that.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons they employed you because you were honest. Plus said you were concerned about misusing TABLE and that there were superior and more efficient solutions using CSS that would save them money, etc. in the long run.

Yes getting a head of myself thanks Raffles. I’ll check out the CSS reference cheers :slight_smile:

Update post same time xhtml…

Perhaps that is one of the reasons they employed you because you were honest. Plus said you were concerned about misusing TABLE and that there were superior and more efficient solutions using CSS that would save them money, etc. in the long run.
Yes just how I was thinking,(it is a support role after all) I think the best bet will be to see what their about when i get their then offer better solutions once I’ve settled in a bit, like mentioned above don’t want to be stepping on peoples toes on the first day. :slight_smile:

Just really needed to know the <table> issues so I know what am doing :cool:

The biggest problem with tables is that the page then doesn’t work for all resolutions and all media.

such as? i’d like to see a few examples, but one of each should do

Robert’s correct, making the change from table-driven to CSS-driven pages will save them money in the long run. Run a Google search on ESPN.com’s switch from tables to CSS. It’s a famous example of a large corporate changeover that has borne fruit for the company. (Now, getting ESPN off of go.com is a different story, but not one you have to address.)

giving you the benefit of a weekend off, could you now take a moment, please, and give an example of one resolution and one medium where a web page with tables won’t work

otherwise i’m gonna call you out – once again – for making preposterous claims that look like fact

One really simple example.

Any table with a width of over 748 pixels in width is broken for print media.

Another simple example.

Any page that has a width other than 544 pixels is broken for webtv media and so if the table forces the page wider than that it is broken for that media.

So as anyone who knows the first thing about what restrictions apply to specific media can easily see it is extremely easy to create situations using tables that are broken for specific media.

You really ought to stop suggesting that all the FACTS that I quote are preposterous just because you haven’t looked into the situation sufficiently to realise that those facts exist.

nice one, stephen

Are these issues specific to table layout?

Would the following not also be true?
Any DIV or image or other fixed-width content with a width of over 748 pixels in width is broken for print media.

Any page that has a width other than 544 pixels is broken for webtv media and so if a DIV or image or other fixed-width content forces the page wider than that it is broken for that media.

Seems to me the issues described are not so much a consequence of using tables, but more a consequence of poor design (and poor design is media agnostic :wink: ).

Disclaimer: I do not encourage table based layouts.

No…! That is wrong. Going to “DIV layout” is just as bad as using TABLES for layout. Use semantics elements, h# for headers, p for paragraphs, etc. Just barfing up a bunch of DIVs all over the place is just as bad if not worst then TABLES. :injured:

Yes but using CSS you can have a fixed width layout of over 748px for the screen and a separate narrower layout for printing - you can’t do that with tables.

Also with CSS you can float the fixed width elements in such a way that they restack themselves vertically when they will not fit next to one another - you can’t do that with tables.

Using tables for layout instead of doing it correctly with CSS means that you cannot have different layouts for different media and you can’t have layouts that adapt themselves to the viewport size. That means that if you use tables for layout then you MUST keep the overall width to a maximum of 544pixels since going over that means webtv users will see only a part of the page. Using CSS you can define an alternate page layout for the webtv users and have a page width that isn’t fixed at 544 pixels for everyone not using webtv.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter that there are other things that can break in those situations since the point being made is that layout tables over 544 pixels wide will always get chopped off for some users whereas using CSS means you can apply a different appearance for the different media to take into account the fixed widths.

there were superior and more efficient solutions using CSS that would save them money, etc. in the long run.

making the change from table-driven to CSS-driven pages will save them money in the long run

Funny enough I have a book with this example. How would this save them money? The book says: bandwidth and maintenance costs. How else could you save money? And why would this be more cost effective?

No…! That is wrong. Going to “DIV layout” is just as bad as using TABLES for layout. Use semantics elements, h# for headers, p for paragraphs, etc. Just barfing up a bunch of DIVs all over the place is just as bad if not worst then TABLES.
I didn’t mean wrapping divs around every HTML element… more of a box/grid layout to hold all the HTML elements etc, 3 column for example and how most sites are built today with 3/4 main div containers.

Good explanations felgall thank you :). I doubt we’ll need to worry about webTV but I’m sure print.css will be used a lot and thanks for starting the debate r937.

Do people still use spacer.gifs to fix the spacing between columns?

Thanks guys :cool: