Hi all, I've seen words to this affect quoted several times recently:
>Tables are for tabular data only, and I agree with that philosophically but what is tabular data? To me the third option from Chris: >I would like to see a third version that uses a combination of the two, the best of >each method merged.. The Hybrid Approach. is very legitimate. There was a discussion recently where making a 3 column page using a bare table to create the 3 columns was suggested as 3 column layouts that are truly functional across all browsers is very hard to do, and that suggestion was decried by some as not fitting "the webstandards morality". I feel that 3 columns of content _is_ "tabular" and as such is ethically tolerable. Widening the scope of the topic a bit I also ponder the complex use of CSS to create workable layouts across all browsers, divs inside "container" divs and kludges everywhere, etc., as you often end up with a mess of divs that are just as hard to work through as tables and the accessibility, from, say, a screen-reader's perspective, is often no better than a table-based design. Using the 3 column example I mentioned earlier a single 3 column table holding the column content exactly as you want it (if I remember correctly the earlier discussion was about a layout with a fixed width RH column for news and proportional for the left and centre columns) is a lot less messy than the equivalent in pure CSS. Shouldn't that be the way to go? I'm for accessible hybrids :-) -- Yours, Kym ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
