Hi, Duncan. All the sites I design are based on CSS-driven layouts; however, I still use tables for presenting tabulated data (naturally). Even the most hardcore CSS junkie will admit that there are some table-based layouts that cannot be replicated using just CSS. The usual way to get around this problem is to compromise the layout, but a client may insist on a certain functionality that can only be achieved with tables at the moment.
Deep nesting is definitely a problem, because it produces a LOT of wasteful, presentational markup that is hard to immediately comprehend. Deeply-nested DIVs are just as bad though, so don't fall out of the frying pan into the fire. Simon Jessey ---------------------------------- mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web : http://jessey.net/blog/ work: http://keystonewebsites.com/ ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [WSG] ultimate noob question.... is "table-less layout" meaning literally? > > Thing I have trouble getting my head round is the term "table-less > layout". I have started doing entirely CSS based design where I add no > design info to the XHTML, and i've had great success, but I've not been > able to abandon the use of tables entirely. This is primarily because with > tables the row height is always uniform and lush edges (e.g. shadowing) can > be easily recreated using empty rows/columns with the correct class. > > Also I don't understand where "deeply nested tables" = too deep. For one > of my sites I have a 3x3 table for the layout. The outer cells make up the > frame of the site, all done using td{background: and then extra tables in > the middle-left (menu) and middle-center (content) cells again using 3x3s > to give a border (or at least 1x3s with fixed width). Is this bad or is > this acceptable? ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/ Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004 See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
