What Is the Hype of Table-less, CSS-Only Markup?

I hope I don't get my head chewed up on this, but what is the big advantage and hype? I don't see why designers spend so much effort (and sometimes frustration) in makeing this work.


Any and all feedback / opinions welcome...

Depends on what your making. Full CSS sites will be more common why IE7 comes out, atleast thats what I think

tables can get really complicated when you start nesting tables. It's hard to read and maintain. Plus i think tables loads more slowly.

The answers are worded a bit strangely. CSS isn't a replacement for HTML, it's in addition to it. Therefore I kinda agree with the first 2 questions.

Like Minaki said css isn't a replacement for html. They work together. Now I do think that a css layout is absolutely the way to go. I'm also not sure why everyone thinks it's such an effort. It will take a little time to learn how to create them well, but it's actually pretty simple, no more difficult than developing a layout with tablles.

And there are many benefits, too many to just list here and since I've already written about it more in depth I'll point you to a couple of posts I wrote on my blog:

The Benefits Of Cascading Style Sheets
CSS Layout Or Table Layout

Originally Posted by vangogh

Like Minaki said css isn't a replacement for html. They work together. Now I do think that a css layout is absolutely the way to go. I'm also not sure why everyone thinks it's such an effort. It will take a little time to learn how to create them well, but it's actually pretty simple, no more difficult than developing a layout with tablles.

And there are many benefits, too many to just list here and since I've already written about it more in depth I'll point you to a couple of posts I wrote on my blog:

The Benefits Of Cascading Style Sheets
CSS Layout Or Table Layout

Thx Vangogh for the blog article links - interesting content you have in there.

I don't want to make people think that css is a replacement for html, because its not. What I was referring to is the idea of page layout depended on div styles alone.

I do depend on CSS a lot in my design format. Its just that there are a few styles that I don't fiqure out (maybe its because I don't know enough about them). For instance, makeing elements fit relative to each other (even during window resizing), z-indexing, and floating.

Hi i have got limited knowledge of html but i picked up CSS layout in 3 days i was able to design a basic site it is easier to use position to style your layouts and it also does not take up as much bandwith on my site why i dont know but when i had table design it was taking alot more bandwith up.

I would say CSS/Tables is ok to use but the future is CSS why because it is being more and more built into services.

Remember i am an amatuer web designer still learning and this is only my observed opinion.

I'm also not sure why everyone thinks it's such an effort. It will take a little time to learn how to create them well, but it's actually pretty simple, no more difficult than developing a layout with tablles.

I guess part of the problem is that different browsers interpret CSS in different ways (which leads to a new breed of anti-MS complaining). The other part of it is that too many "standardistas" go on about how great CSS is rather than explaining how CSS is great.

Anyway, my thoughts are that it's the only way to fly. If coded correctly, CSS layouts are more user-friendly, easier to crawl, support different browsers more cleanly, etc.

That makes sense Adam. Some of the browser issues can be frustrating at first and I've certainly spent many late nights trying to understand why something wasn't working like I was sure it would. Experience definitely helps. Even though I think IE could do a better job with it's css implementation it does get more flak then it deserves. It can handle most anything you need and there's always a workaround for the few things it has problems with.

I've also found that when things aren't looking the same in IE and Firefox if you explicitly set a few things like margins and paddings often things start to line up fast. I find developing for Firefox and the standars first and then tweaking for IE works a lot better than coding for IE first. In the end though I hardly ever need more than a half dozen lines of IE specific code, if that many.

The more you work with css layouts and the more of those frustrating things you figure out the less you have to deal with them on future sites. You can begin to not only get things to work, but understand why they work.

For me the best reasons to go css is how much easier the code becomes to maintain. I think you also get much more control over how the various elements on your site can look. I've been able to code things with css that people would swear are images, but it's all code.

Tables create a lot of code to structure a page where css requires very little. And since most if not all the css will likely end up being in an external file it's so much easier to make changes and know that you're one change will be made sitewide instead of having to wade through every page of the site.

Load times are typically less since table designs encourage the use of images, most of which aren't needed with a css layout.

I think people have missed the biggest reason. Tables were abused, it was never intended to be presentational display for your site, but for representing data. If you've created a table and you can not make a graph out of the information supplied in that data, then you're using tables wrongly, this is and still is what W3C had recommended the table element for.

CSS is not hard, and should be able to do what you want, though I eagerly await CSS3, which I can't believe it took so long for ideas that had existed long before CSS to actually make it to web documents and applications. In an attempt to mimic Office applications, Desktop Publishing software, and whatever other software that would make successful documents and share information should have been thought about.

A joke that's been floating around the internet for a while is this:

<div class="table">
  <div class="tr">
    <div class="td">Some Content</div>
  </div>
</div>

This is quite valid, and can be created so that it mimics the table display, but those who complain about this would probably be the hardcore HTML/CSS coders.

I prefer table-less designs (unless using tables appropriately) because I usually work with naked documents first (no CSS) before applying styling, that way all I have to deal with is what to do with the content for my sites and worry about the design aspect after I have some foundation to go on.

Also I don't understand this poll, you can't have CSS only, HTML is for your content, CSS is for your presentation. It's about combining both to achieve results.

Cheers,

MC

Yeah ok it might be some extra work for people to lean how to use CSS for layouts but once you have learnt it life is so much easyer.

From the HTML 4.01 Specification
Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control layout rather than tables.
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/str...les.html#h-11.1

Here is a few articles explaining the advantages of using CSS for layouts.

Article 1 (There is a few pages to this one so dont just read the first one and think that was a bit pointless)

Article 2

Article 3

There are loads more out there but I am sure these cover most of it.