The main goal (as a method sheet language) was to separate document content from document presentation, which incorporates style elements, like color, layout, and fonts. If I throw out a website which has no padding or un symetrial or miss-aligned text I would be asked to start over. Learning how to use Dreamweaver is not the same as learning to write the code. Choosing the right storage format is crucial as it affects your disks I have used css and divs to create multiple lists for a table structure with four side by side columns. It is less complex therefore the effort are significantly reduced. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using a table and CSS formatting for displaying the fitness centers hours and fees on the website. Tables will get you on the air with display compatibility quickly and with confidence. I just think css is a better way now for the reasons mentioned in the post. I designed each of these websites for clients using tables, while formatting the text in CSS in Dreamweaver: animalarkpetsutah.com The same isnt true if youre using divs. Tables and grids are not the same thing in web development. Let me start by letting you know I fall on the css side of things. After-all the 3 column layout with equal height is referred to as the holy-grail in css, enough said! Style adjustment is more convenient. Sounds like you arent going to see any extra advantage here since DreamWeaver takes care of the changes. Proving that the css layout loads 10ms faster (20ms when I just ran the test on your site) doesnt exactly endorse using tables instead? No technique is designed to be used in isolation. There is nothing wrong using CSS and Tables. The posts arent just about the code, but I do provide the basic html and css I use now for a 3 column layout. Odds are pretty good that none of the people who wrote these posts are or were on the development teams that wrote the browser code. Its is also much quicker to use tables, and hey, yeah, once in a while it is nice to be able to glance at your code in a wysywig and actually see what it looks like. IE gets some things wrong, but it gets a lot more things right. Its really about 5 -10 minutes work to set up. 8.1 Introduction to Style Sheets . Sure. I did say calling this css vs tables isnt really correct and that its really about tables and divs. Use table-layout: fixed to create a Versatility: It refers to lots of skills. John all 3 of the sites you list can definitely be developed using css for the layout instead of tables. Years ago it moved away from tables and towards divs and css for layout. CSS (divs) is hard to learn Simply not true. Let me also say that if you prefer to develop sites with a table-based layout, good for you. The main advantage of CSS is that style is applied consistently across variety of sites. As you mentioned, pages built in tables have to load twice (something I didnt know until reading this post) add to this that the example you showed: clearly illustrates how much extra code is required for tables. This would be more about inline css or using html attributes like the font tag vs a separate stylesheet. Hi Jennifer. Yes you use less code using divs than tables. Your text should reflow with changes. I find that unfortunate, as someone who caught the tail end of the table era I find it much more difficult to maintain a website which uses tables (because of my own lack of experience with tables I suppose) than to administer a website which uses a CSS layout. Here is the CSS code, so far, through Dreamweaver: The border-collapse property sets whether the table borders Its huge. Browser compatibility (some styles sheet are supported and some are not). very nice article, good job, i wanted to add my comment based on my own humble experience.. CSS is like a a sword, once you master it, you could be a powerful warrior, and if you truly go advanced with it, youll never ever consider tables once you start writing complicated web apps, that consist of heavy javascript code for the layout, youll feel how important CSS is.. Where did I say you shouldnt try to make tables with divs? Not something you need for a two column layout of course. Top to bottom you seem to sum it up pretty well. While you probably wont appreciate hearing this, the more likely cause for the problems you see is your own knowledge of css. The third problem with tables is in how browsers render them. I think not. How to align a logo image to center of navigation bar using HTML and CSS ? Ive been a designer for over 20 years and been using tables for layout for 13 years. And heres what Im referring to you saying in your post: The problem most people have when learning to use divs is trying to force them to act like tables instead of allowing them to be what they are.. If I ever learn CSS completely, Ill use it more often as you cant fight progress but Ill never discount tables from the equation.
| , and | elements: The table above might seem small in some cases. In order for a browser to render a page built with tables it needs to read the code on the page twice. Like others have pointed out, fixing display bugs related to just about any css based layout often takes entire release cycles, just to get ruined even more by some other dopy designer. Thanks! You pointed out that table cells dont work independently. This is one of those debates that never seems to go away and I guess Im not exactly doing my part to make it go away with this post. Saying things like, all people who use tables are quite frankly is absurd. Thats actually where the hype is. As people combat these myths the debate goes on and on combating misinformation while dancing around the central issue. Once you specifically set the bottom padding of a paragraph to say 20px, all browsers will give paragraphs a 20px bottom padding. Ive been told I can create any design feasible with CSS, so I have offered the above URLs as examples you can either confirm or be dubious about relative to their successful conversion to CSS from tables. You can do that regardless of how you structure your layout. Unless you offer specifics Im going to assume youre just name calling, because you were unhappy with my previous comment. I hope that helps answer some of the questions. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): CSS is defined as a method sheet language that provides web designers control over how an internet site communicates with web browsers including the formatting and display of their HTML documents. Its true that less code means less potential for show stopping errors, but those show stoppers can exist regardless of your sites structure. divs are also a pain, ooh tables are so complex, check out the css for that div when its all done. I think your experience is similar to what most people whove made the transition from tables to css go through. Dont blame the language. How to create X and Y axis flip animation using HTML and CSS ? Thats crazy. But again, if I dont see the overwhelming benefits, I wont don my armor or sharpen my weapons. You either learn code or you use a 1990s style basic editor where you can assemble a site in minutes with tables that will adjust to a any modern display or device. Cmon man! Im not trying to be political, but when Obama kept repeating change a hundred times a day during his campaign I questioned it because change is not the same as progress. I will use them to learn more about CSS. Which CSS framework is better Tailwind CSS or Bootstrap ? In addition there are the little seemingly obscure css properties that need to be inserted to make certain things function properly in general, or with older browsers. There are many more people who dont have those problems. The post right after shows a 3 column layout. Let me also add Im talking about using tables and nested tables for the entire layout of a site. It sounds like youre good about keeping your code clean, but more code means more chances for error. And then discover that I forgot a somewhere and nothing lines up with the adjacent cells. I believe many developers only read do not use tables, missing the later half of the sentence for layouts. You cant break out of the rigid grid easily. If you need to create a modern site that supports an older browser, CSS imposes huge costs. Like I said the debate the wont die. I understand people have old code and sometimes they just need to fix it. And that, in my view, should be the only thing that qualifies you to comment on the number of passes the browser makes when rendering a page. Its less-influenced by personal biases and emotions. Eventually it works, but at what cost? Tables are simply not faster to create. 1) Inconsistent Browser Support Different browsers will render CSS layout differently as a result of browser bugs or lack of support for various CSS features. Having developed and worked on sites both ways Im 100% certain structuring your layout with tables is not the way to go. Im still a little inexperienced to style the whole design in CSS, though. My homepage is currently structured with divs. Theres a huge error in logic in your argument. I dont offer any advantage per se, on tables over divs. Which is why Im not one to generally make that argument. The defaults only come into play if you dont specifically tell the browser what to use. Anyway, the real reason I wanted to comment here is because I think it is hilarious that Ive been reading people bashing table layouts and saying they cant stand any website that uses tables, then I view the source code and they are commenting on a page that uses tables! I also dont have an issue if you want to use them to display a list of links in a menu. Most of the time when someone presents code showing the complicated css they needed the problem was their general approach. By the way if something you followed here didnt work for you, you could have chosen to ask me if Id help figure out why and I likely would have. You can use css with a table-based layout. of CSS vs tables when it is clear that one can can use CSS techniques with respect to tables as well as divs? To me, framing the debate this way is yet another attempt to make a distinction I do think more code means more chances of making a show stopping kind of error. Ive done that for people before. It helps us to determine the changes within the position of web elements who are there on the page. Web Explain the advantages and disadvantage of using stylesheets; Use CSS to create web pages. Very interesting information. Odds are though they would look at every data point they could so I would think a slower server would mean potentially worse ranking. which is all fine and helpful. Im really struggling with whether to learn and use CSS for layout. I also think that more code means more work for a search engine spider. Search engines are interested in your content, not your code. There are plenty of easy ways to create equal height columns in css. With a simple table structure the extra time might not be noticeable, but as the structure becomes more complex with more and more tables nested inside each other it is noticeable. Thats easy. Learning to layout an entire site with divs and css is the hardest part, but I promise itll be worth it. If you ever visited a page that showed nothing for a few seconds before everything suddenly appeared, that time was likely your browser making its first pass over the table structure behind the page. Home / Blog / CSS / CSS vs Tables: The Debate That Wont Die. It takes some practice, but its really much easier than you might think. This style will be applied across all web pages and changes will only be made to one line of code. Its usually one or two things that may cause a problem and those problems are easily fixed. Its pretty common to do when first learning css. Sometimes they write for things called tabloids, or articles of paragraphs arranged in tabular form. Then there is hours of adjust here, adjust there, view, adjust . The performance claims Ive read about here and elsewhere on the web for divs over tables are over-hyped I found only a 10 ms advantage for the div technique over the table technique. I didnt say things like css is much faster or place any other qualifier on it. I certainly havent seen anything to support the validity of these remarks. I dont think using css for a layout means the page automatically ranks better. I think, though I havent used them in years, that tables are far superior for site maintenance in that you do not have to adjust sizes, just add or take away a table cell. Whats the difference? Some times you just need to get it done and move on. You It sounds like youre using tables the same way Im suggesting is fine. Tables should be used when a bunch of blocks need to depend on each other, like maintain the same height, or to cooperate in filling their parents width. Thanks Kevin. Mark your site would be very easy to code with a css layout. 1. To design in CSS is far better, by the subject of order, maintenance, accessibility, navigability and thousand reasons more. My point was they arent the same thing and so to learn how to use divs you should learn the strengths and weaknesses of divs and not try to force the strengths and weaknesses of tables and table cells on them. CSS has many advantages that enable developers to design a website. In the best case scenario youd be adding at least another table cell to get another block of information compared to adding another div for another block of information, which would grow our code equally. That brings us to the second problem with tables. I hope I make it clear, but something tells me many of the people were talking about arent reading the entire post. I hear you Bill. You can either explicitly set the values when browsers are behaving differently or use a css reset file like the ones from Eric Meyer or Yahoo. If youre constantly having to fix old code though, I would recommend looking into the feasibility of redeveloping the site. CSS instructs the display of the HTML on how the web site will display at the users end. Load time is always going to be an issue. It has nothing to do with other tools. Conclusion. One issue is that different browsers have different deffinitions of the padding and the margin variables. Again I do agree that grid shape is a good one. Id rather switch my page to tables, than screw around with IE. CSS (divs) are more accessible Both tables and divs can be coded to be accessible or inaccessible. You are here: more flexible since one div is not dependent on the other divs on the page it allows for more freedom in your design, quicker to load blocks of code can be presented right away instead of the browser requiring an extra pass. 2. Unless you view the source code, it isnt always obvious how a coder puts together a page. I believe Whats best in a given scenario depends mostly on the skill set of the person doing the job. Its true that the easiest way may not be the best way, but I dont yet see that the benefits of CSS outweigh the much greater learning curve with regards to these more complex layouts. A table does. Ive offered tutorials on the basic layout and Ive offered tutorials on things that can go inside that layout, but never all the code for an entire site. Youre mainly proving my point that those who argue in favor of tables usually havent spent the time to learn to use block level elements like divs and css well. I watched many people struggle when it comes to nesting tables. The that article by mathew james taylor even mentions having to do things differently for internet explorer to get the padding right in divs used for that type of layout. Yes, but you can get it done just as quickly with css. If you originally decide all your h1 tags should be blue and later want them to be red its certainly easier to have your h1 style sitting in a single css file. As a web designer I spend the vast majority of my css time finding work around for IE and sometimes other browsers. The industry is now moving again toward a responsive design workflow. Long Run Maintenance 5. w3c standards are useless 6. structure and content css vs tables round II. Your logo image can either be a background image on the header div thats not repeated or a regular image inside the div. With that in mind I prefer divs. If you send me a link Ill be happy to take a look. Let me apologize in advance because what Im about to say may come across as harsh. It amazes me that some folks still use tables for layout in this day and age. Incidentially you do provide 100% of the code because you show it in your examples, in the source. From what I can see most people who argue against css simply havent taken the time to learn to master it. According to ZipRecruiter, the average annual salary for an AI designer in the US as of July 7, 2022, is $100,224. Im not questioning the benefits of CSS in general. Maybe the differences in load times arent as noticeable as they once were and with most people having high seed connections it might not seem like a big deal. With browsers having different defaults paddings, etc. Thats why I wrote this post. I also believe the opposite, theres no point using table rendering if you DO want them to be independent. A div-based layout is: easier to maintain less code and less I hardly ever have to write more than a few lines of code specific to IE. Using display: table-cell would work fine now that everyone uses IE8 or over, but the floating div folks insist on emulating a grid with floating blocks anyway. I thought the debate was or should have been dead a few years ago. Tables seem, at least to me, to be much more intuitive. 3. If youre not creating HTML e-mails, or unless you have some overriding need to have part of your page scale because of the amount of content on other parts of your page, theres no reason to use tables for layout. Creativity User preferences Multiple variants Personalized user experience Artificial intelligence design disadvantages Understand nuances Create original content Filter biases 3 best artificial intelligence design software UIzard LetsEnhance Fronty Conclusion Table cells are the only elements in HTML that expand and contract based on adjacent content. Im going to remain open minded and give CSS a chance! I would have to say,use divs and tables for what they are designed for. Columns of equal height? I disagree about it being more code. If anyone would love to show me how to make my old newindex page into CSS Id appreciate the help, but I have to admit that lack of documentation for anything other than simple layouts is getting really frustrating. The problem most people have when learning to use divs is trying to force them to act like tables instead of allowing them to be what they are. CSS changes are device friendly. Im not suggesting you should never use an html table anywhere. Im surprised this debate continues, though admittedly Im continuing it right now after the question was raised on my small business forum. (10-20 is most common.) Even though I like tables I appreciate it when someone with a different opinion can use humble language to support his case. Then you can use divs inside your table. Theyre much easier to use now. It permits online videos to be seen without using third-party plug-ins. No one is saying that a div can do more than a table. Tables should only be used to display tabular data but what is tabular data is debatable. One example, is to have a banner across the top, a side banner down the left, with a background image that must align with the top banner in the corner, and then content within the area below the top banner and to the right of the side banner. Content css vs tables isnt really correct and that its really about 5 -10 minutes work to up! Prefer to develop sites with a different opinion can use css for a two layout. 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