Al,
Peter wrote,
Presumably, in this case, the right choice is the choice that
limits the up-front cost and training required to get to market?
Surely promoting a questionable technique because it's easier to
learn and gives almost instant gratification is a dubious one?
Al wrote
A questionable technique? Would that be because people who make
their livings (or try to make a living) evangelizing standards have
deemed table layouts "dubious". Hmm :-)
This is called the web standards group. I imagine that those here
essentially adhere to the value of web standards, and discuss things
in this context.
The World Wide Web is the province of the World Wide Web Consortium.
Like it or not.
It does not so much as "try to make a living evangelizing standards"
as "lead[s] the web to its full potential" And it is founded and run
by the guy who quite literally invented the World Wide Web.
One of its many initiatives (along with, you know, simple stuff like
PNG, HTML, XHTML, CSS, SVG) is the Web Accessibility Guidelines
3.3. of which says: Use style sheets to control layout and presentation.
5.3 of which says: Do not use tables for layout unless the table
makes sense when linearized
A bit like deciding that micro-surgery classes at medical school
are a waste of time because once you've got a handle on amputation
it'll solve most problems far quicker and under budget! Why bother
getting bogged down and stressed with the finer points?
Ah. So web design is elevated to science. And all this time I
thought it was a skilled trade. Sheesh.
No, it is a science, at its fundamental level. It is part of computer
science/informatics, which teaches us many lessons from history and
theory. Most of which we seem very slow to pick up.
It is quite evident to me that this type of "cut-and-paste"
technique is just as ubiquitous in the CSS positioning arena - if
not more so. We too teach CSS layout - but keep it non-religious.
We have tens of thousands of customers and a massive support burden
in fixing pages that were "built" from poorly devised or overly
complex tutorials and articles popular in the standards ring of
blogs and online magazines. We don't get a fee for that, sadly.
The "CSS is religious" thing is a straw man. In what way is adhering
to best practices as recommended by tremendously experienced (and not
just in web page development, but in many related branches of
computer science) and thoughtful people in a peer reviewed
environment "religious"? Sure I wrote an article called "A dao of web
design" once, but I was hardly arguing that by developing for the web
in that way you'll become a daoist :-)
It's far easier to try to get to grips with a page of mark-up with
everything in one convenient HTML page than to have to understand
the abstraction of separating the content from the presentation.
Hey presto! A lovely table-based web page that IE in quirks mode
renders as intended! Welcome to inner sanctum of web development.
I think perhaps who are mistaken. A table-layout can be just as
valid, usable, and accessible as anything else.
You can validate pages that use tables for layout. Based on my pretty
extensive research it will take more effort than non table based
layouts.
They can probably be as usable, but according to people who have done
an awful lot of work on the issue they won't be as accessible.
The key is what is optimal for the project. Using tables on the
rare occasion is not a hall pass to skip knowing how to mark up a
table - or understand the structure.
The problem, in my opinion, is that the same people who devised
ridiculous nested table constructs to make web pages look like
magazine pages are the very same people who are now condemning
tables. Perhaps if they'd taught folks how to make clean table
layouts, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
This is simply ridiculous. Dave Segal? Tod Farhner? I don't see too
many articles by them of late :-)
The people who have been strong advocates for table free design are
in my reasonably well informed opinion a new generation, starting
with people like Eric Meyer, and typified perhaps by young bloods
like Dave Shea and Douglas Bowman.
From the get go the tables for layout approach was a hack - the use
of a technology for a purpose for which it was not intended because
it "works" in some narrowly defined set of circumstances. History
teaches us that such things, regardless of their present usefulness,
we usually come to regret.
Y2K anyone?
john
John Allsopp
style master :: css editor :: http://westciv.com/style_master
support forum :: http://support.westciv.com
blog :: dog or higher :: http://blogs.westciv.com/dog_or_higher
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