Usually if you avoid using tables for layout, you can drastically change
the layout of your page without altering the html. If you keep to the
indended use of the html tags, then the page should look somewhat ok if
you turn off your styles altogether (which is maybe how it would look
for someone using Netscape 4 or some other ancient browser). You can
also supply different layouts for other uses like printing or for mobile
devices without changing the html. I think screen readers for visually
impaired people read table html elements expecting it to be some type of
data. I can't say that from experience though. So if you don't really
care about those things, I'm not sure there's anything else wrong with
using tables for layout except you'll have young "know-it-alls" who just
got out of their html development class saying that you have really bad
code (happened to me before). You also can't put those cool xhtml/css
compliant badges on your page ;)
That's crazy about Outlook 2007. It's extremely hard to make consistent
looking html emails. A lot of people require/expect them, but most web
email clients will strip css and alter the html in other ways, plus
pretty much none of them will display images without the user clicking a
button to say it's ok.
From the article, "Bring on PDF email. I'm ready." - that would be
perfect except for the bloated file size of the email do to needing to
embed images and everything in the pdf.
-Rob
Cliff Hirsch wrote:
I have to admit though... avoiding using tables for layout can really
rack your brain in some situations and take more time to implement.
So what's wrong with tables for layout other than all that "not
semantically correct" religion stuff? It seems to me that both
approaches are essentially flawed as they both require hacks. It's hard
for me to justify css/div religion when the browser client space is
still so screwed up.
And -- get this -- I just read that Outlook 2007 dumped its IE HTML
rendering engine for Word's rendering engine, which will further break a
whole heck of a lot of html emails.
See:
http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=156&format=
html#5
Cliff
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