82 replies to this topic

[ludwigw]

Nothing is wrong with tables, the point of my post is that there are alternatives - and you use what you prefer - but CSS is the 'in' thing right now.

[urmomma]

^there is nothing wrong with tables. It is just that a complete layout in CSS loads faster. Its up to the webmaster to decide what he or she wants to code in. No need to bash people because they prefer one over the other.

I'm going to agree with Faken on this one. Everyone, who are webmasters, should make it cross-browser compliant. Why bash your customers because they are not using the broswer you want them too, because you only coded it for one specific browser. What happened to, "The customer is always right" saying. It is still a business practice today, and if you want to run a good business, I believe you must accept that (of course, there are cases when that is not true...but generally... it is) If you must, write in PHP to check the user's browser and send their own template in terms of code to get it right (so you don't have to lose and quality on design and can make all browsers happy)!

Also, I do believe that Firefox is the better browser then IE, exactly for the reason of zero-tolerance, it seems faster (I have run personal tests and on my computer it is faster at loading). I don't get any more viruses anymore (and I use ad-aware to check...).

But all and all, I wish all browsers would interpret code the same. It's annoying and tedious, for complicated designs, to get them to work in all browsers. Well, Best wishes to all webmasters!

[AnDy89]

People who keep confusing xhtml with a CSS layout are starting to annoy me. You dont need xhtml for it, html 4.x.x is fine also.

Also why do people keep saying IE is hard to code for? Try not using firefox to keep testing then test in IE at the end, test in IE and then test in firefox at the end. As ive already said I spend my time coding for firefox if anything as it has its own stupid ways, the one i found today was a dotted border has to have 3 dots in firefox.

One more thing, once you have learnt a coding language there should rarely be a cross browser issue, eg when i coded with tables i always had some sort of issue, being IE or firefox but now i have bothered to learn CSS there are rarely major issues

[Faken]

Just so you guys now, part of the rage to going with CSS, if not ALL the rage is due to SEO. Search engine rank is HUGE business, and the smaller and more efficient your page code is, the better your site is crawled, the more accurate your keyword parsing is performed, the more traffic you will likely get. Unfortunately table coding is just not as efficient as CSS and requires more coding, so it's more junk for the crawlers to chew on when it should be looking at keywords.

One day I am going to write an article about something I have been saying for a long time. Google is becoming the police for webmasters... think about how many things professional webdesigners will and won't do because it will affect their performance with google. And I don't just mean coding wise either... Entire business models had to be changed when Google performed major Algorithm changes. It's crazy how we're at google's mercy, and it's kind of spooky how they can make or break you.

Anyhow, SEO... the main reason for CSS rage. The sad thing is that "noob screamers" generally have no idea why they think CSS is better than tables. Personally I just shrug as I go back to my web stats

Faken

[dEcade]

I agree that everyone is at the mercy of Google, the reason is basicly because they are way bigger than any other search, and pople all over the work use it. So what better way to get your site more users than to code it so that it can get on google more. Also I am not sure about the loading faster part of CSS, yeah maybe it does but not by much.

Personally I coded my site with <div> just to try something different other than tables.

dEcade

[AnDy89]

Fake you can also alter the content order with CSS, another thing which helps when google comes along. So you can set it up so your left bar is read last so that the keywords iny our content are read first.

[Jamie Huskisson]

SEO isn't the main reason for the switch to CSS but its one of them

customisability globally (change on line, all templates change.. no PHP or anything needed, just a stylesheet), speed (loads 10 times faster than tables, faster for the user), cut down on code for output (faster on the server, PHP or any other language), organisation, templatability (you can switch themes on the page, no seperate coding needed, just tweaked style sheets)

Seo is one of the benefits, as it cuts down on the time it takes for the search engine to strip all the tags etc. As table based layouts (specially ones as large as the current P2L) time out after a certain amount of seconds and fail to crawl most of the content - but its not the only benefit by any means

Edited by Jay, 14 January 2006 - 11:31 AM.

[Keir]

There are of course advantages to CSS. There's no disputing that.
There's ordering of your DIV's to provide the search engine bot's with the important information first. There's the generally cleaner code, again, assisting the bot's. There's these apparent "reduced loading times" although, anyone on broadband isn't going to notice this particually, and of course, the fact you can change your websites design simply by changing one file (unless you want to add in further components into your sites design).

Unfortunatly, for those of us who have been using Tables to lay out our designs for the past X years, having to relearn everything we know isn't something that many of us find to be an attractive prospect.
Those of us who are new to the scene, and most of those who will start in the coming years will be starting off straight into CSS.

They may defend CSS with all their heart, and attempt to excorsise tables from the world for good, but they will know how the majority of us (dare I say it) "old-school/sk00l/skool...whatever" feel when in another 5 or 10 years when CSS is being discarded in favour of something even better.

It's going to happen, web technology's age, they become limited in terms of what they are able to achieve, just like any physical technology's.

We'll look back on the iPod in the future and try to explain to our kids why we had to cart this huge "Nano thing" around with us compared to what we will no doubt be using in the future.

Everything ages, and becomes obsolete. It's just a matter of time, and each time this happens, we are forced to use an alternative. It may require some work, some effort and some patience but its not exactly an impossible task.

I'm not in any way defending these "CSS Nuts" who thrive on the prospective demise of tables, feeding on the corpses of <td> tag's, but one day, we will have to move on to another technology.

I'm not looking forward to it. A lot of people aren't looking forward to it but its going to happen however we look at it.

I stick by what I have said in the past. I'll continue to use tables where I feel necessary, and if I wan't, I will design an entire site in tables, but I am also learning CSS and doing some work in that. I expect as I advance in CSS I will be slowly phasing out table designs, but for now, tables are definitly something I still use.

Hey, it saves hacking up my perfectly organised code to make it display in correctly in the various browsers!

A bit off topic, but I felt that I needed to get that off my chest
P.S. If I repeated myself or made little sense, its been a long weekend and I've been drifting in and out of dreamland throughout writing this....zzzzzz

[Jamie Huskisson]

believe it or not, CSS is becoming a server side language with v3 from what I see... with visual basic like logic inside

ie (if width > 300) columns = 3; etc.

so count on having to learn this soon

I don't agree with tables being replaced by CSS just yet, but with CSS 3, tables are definatly replaced

Edited by Jay, 17 January 2006 - 11:20 AM.

[AnDy89]

ewww, i'd hate ifs in CSS, it would defeat the object of short code. Anyway arent those sorts of things possible with javascript anyway?

[Donna]

These are annoying, I just popped over to blogspot to read an article and I get greeted with:

You are still using Internet Explorer. Try Firefox, its better.

· Firefox blocks pop-up windows.
· Firefox stops viruses and spyware.
· Firefox is free and open source.
· Firefox will save the world (well, maybe not).
Click the button on the right to download Firefox. It's free.

Sorry dudes I'm a strict IE user for surfing, gets me around the web 100% faster than Firefox will ever do, and I use Firefox but even if they fix all the problems up maybe in Version 2.0 then I'll swap so enough of the silly use Firefox messages I just *poof* click off.

[Alex Humphreys]

I do say my site is recomended in FireFox as there are a few slight bugs in IE
But i wouldnt class it as 'Too Cool For IE'

[SmartSquid399]

Very nice article Faken! I completely agree. If you put a Too Cool For IE banner on your website, you are losing (like many people have already stated) about 70% of clients. That's a lot!!!

Anyways, I personally think that <div>'s are slightly better than tables, but I currently use tables with my websites because I'm more used to them, and that's how I learned to code first. I've gotten a little more experience, so I'm going to re-code my website using divs for a lot of reasons:

1. Divs are better for search engines because there's less code, and more content.
2. You don't have to code as much with divs, because most of the code will be in the CSS, not in the actual HTML.
3. It's a little easier to manage divs, because tables are slightly limited. Of course, there are some areas where not using tables is almost impossible, but divs are generally a better choice for normal websites.

Edited by SmartSquid399, 12 February 2006 - 03:03 PM.

[thedanharkins]

To each his own, you know. The facts are out there, let the person decide what they use.

Personally I use firefox in that it is faster for me and has features that I haven't yet been able to find for IE. Before Firefox I have been an IE for 5 years. And through that time I have learned that a browser does what its told to do. Spyware and viruses are all proventable in anyway. Through those 5 years of using IE have I ran into a virus or spyware that I couldn't stop, or couldn't remove.

People are going to be people, there is no way to stop idiocy or ignorance.

Thats my 2 pennies.

[Paint]

I use FF, and I love it! But, if I didn't code multi-browser friendly, then my sales would crash! Besides, if you take the time to code right the first time, you won't have to worry about it later. I, as an amatuer web designer, have 6 different browsers loaded onto my computer. This is so I can make sure everything works with all of them, and trust me, it takes a big part in my sucess this far!

If anyone out there thinks that they are too cool for IE, then let me tell you: A Web-Designing Career is too cool for you.

[Dtrigger]

I agree, the idea of throwing away the majority of you're audience just because you can't code for cross browser compatability is just plain stupid. It's not really all that difficult anyway....

Pwning (I totally agree!)

[Erik Bernskiold]

I use FF, and I love it! But, if I didn't code multi-browser friendly, then my sales would crash! Besides, if you take the time to code right the first time, you won't have to worry about it later. I, as an amatuer web designer, have 6 different browsers loaded onto my computer. This is so I can make sure everything works with all of them, and trust me, it takes a big part in my sucess this far!

If anyone out there thinks that they are too cool for IE, then let me tell you: A Web-Designing Career is too cool for you.

That was very well said and I couldn't agree more to the last part I marked in bold! Very well said indeed!

[Av-]

i recently found out that my php files use many Gigabytes of bandwidth, 3rd place, after images, gif and jpeg. 20% of my total usage. Will switching to xhtml and css help cut down the bandwidth usage??

[Matheus]

everyone cares if it works in opera, ie and ff
but anyone care if works fine in safari? netscape? and others?
I think that if you want to make a website for ALL USERS you have 2 choices:

-Make a simple and good HTML
-Use flash or javascript
-A mix of the two above

I prefer a mix, flash works with flash player and wont be seen diferent no matter what browser do you use. javascript almost the same. And HTML even a home-made browser can see.

[Jaymz]

-Use flash or javascript
-A mix of the two above

Just remember some users disable javascript or don't have flash installed.