16 replies to this topic

[JohneeMac]

Tables ARE a perfectly valid and acceptable design in the right place

only a overly pretentious designer/coder would insist on using divs & spans etc to layout a spreadsheet look for data.

Using tables to design a layout for a simple page is obviously a silly method BUT it is still a valid use of HTML, the CSS snobs & purists may frown on it but what has it got to do with them!!!!

I always maintain that the XHTML strict "willy wavers" are also wrong, unless they are using XML in the document.

The mantra should be use the right tool for the job at hand NOT "Thou shalt use div & spans for everything"

Nonsense! JM looks at date and maybe thinks hes warped back to 2000.

I don't really want to have this debate again as we've had it a number of times here, but your analogy just doesn't make any sense.

One thing works perfectly fine (tables for your layout) and provides exactly what you need to make your site look the way you want it. And the other doesn't (reciprocal links).

Why are tables bad again?

As you say other there is another thread about but quickly: Accessibility, Multiple Devices, Updatable are three quick words!

[Dimmerswitch]

Tables ARE a perfectly valid and acceptable design in the right place

only a overly pretentious designer/coder would insist on using divs & spans etc to layout a spreadsheet look for data.

Using tables to design a layout for a simple page is obviously a silly method BUT it is still a valid use of HTML, the CSS snobs & purists may frown on it but what has it got to do with them!!!!

I always maintain that the XHTML strict "willy wavers" are also wrong, unless they are using XML in the document.

The mantra should be use the right tool for the job at hand NOT "Thou shalt use div & spans for everything"

Nonsense! JM looks at date and maybe thinks hes warped back to 2000.

If you re-read Chris's post I think you'll see you've overreacted.

Johnee, surely you're not arguing that <div> and <span> elements should be used for tabular information like spreadsheets?

It's good, healthy, and (I feel) important to write markup which seperates structure from presentation. It's also cool to be enthusiastic about web standards. It's inaccurate to say that tables are inherently invalid though - even in XHTML strict.

I don't use tables for layout in my work, and I find it a less-natural way to approach page layout now, but I don't think that the act of writing a <table> tag to solve a layout problem makes people unclean or polluted somehow (for me, that's reserved for folks who continue to sprinkle <font> tags all over their markup).