Like I said the debate the wont die. html. Each technique has its uses, advantages, and disadvantages. Web Explain the advantages and disadvantage of using stylesheets; Use CSS to create web pages. I dont offer any advantage per se, on tables over divs. In this case, it is almost impossible to get CSS only to render this as desired, either the width or the height of the side banner will be wrong, or the background image will appear to disappear or not be long enough, or be too long, or the content will bleed over into the side banner if you change the width of the browser. When I first learned how to develop a website I learned to build them with tables like so many others. The pros and cons are supposed to be regarding the setting up of grid layouts using display:table. I think youre right about people reading do not use tables and missing the part about layouts. Even a simple html site can utilize include files for repeating blocks of markup. I wrote a 2 part tutorial on turning design image into a css layout for another site. Items misaligned, trouble getting the position of floated elements, absurd hacks, you name it. 2)Less code?No.Comparably,table-based websites are having much less lines of code to write.Because,you are also writing the CSS,and its always not one file.So,code is much much less. Research Im really struggling with whether to learn and use CSS for layout. I have designed the following sample homepage for a client: 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. Also if you include the wrapper tags and the like you tend to end up with more tags for css than tables beause of all the work arounds you have to do. I think your experience is similar to what most people whove made the transition from tables to css go through. I came to web design by way of VB. Examples might be simplified to improve reading and learning. It wasnt my intention. What I will say though is that every person Ive ever met who was equally capable at using both css and tables chooses to use css. If your visitors are using IE you need to support IE and whether its the code or the browser that gets things wrong is irrelevant. So, its important to ensure faster speed. I did list the seo benefits under the heading Myths. No matter how many times I see this question or people making an argument on behalf of their opinion, the technical answer remains the same. I cant tell any discernable speed difference between a table layout and a CSS layouts load time. Its easier because youre more familiar with using tables. Its less-influenced by personal biases and emotions. I learned by reading the book Eric Meyer on CSS. This can provide evidence that will back-up a particular choice. Thats not an argument for tables in general, but it is an argument for me to continue to use tables for my small business clients who wont pay a lot for a web site, and will not get enough traffic to benefit from div based techniques. To me it seems so obvious that using divs over tables is the better approach that I have a hard time understanding how someone would argue otherwise. I agree with using divs and css to display content for what I think is a pretty simple reason if I want to change the look of my site I can write a new style sheet using the same div IDs and the site is suddenly completely different. Granted, CSS loads faster and for big websites is easier to maintain for large websites, but after trying to convert the newindex1 page from tables to CSS, Im having a very hard time understanding why CSS is better for small websites. How does it suggest we should use tables? I dont know about you, but generally speaking what my clients want most often is to update the content. I agree to an extent but I have here 2 very good reasons why tables are definately worse for SEO: 1. Then there is hours of adjust here, adjust there, view, adjust . 3. Maybe I just havent searched the web enough. Really? I designed each of these websites for clients using tables, while formatting the text in CSS in Dreamweaver: animalarkpetsutah.com Web1. Four-fifths of the way through an assessable project isnt the best time to have to redo a table-based layout. That brings us to the second problem with tables. . Web designers who take the time to learn css dont have the same problems youre seeing. Ive never read about this debate until now, however in the back of my mind I always knew someone(s) was debating it. Where did I say you shouldnt try to make tables with divs? CSS, CSS 2, CSS 3 are often quite confusing. How to override the CSS properties of a class using another CSS class ? Fixed positions make things more flexible? I just said they were faster, which you proved. Once a again, thank you for the info! The whole display gets shuffled. The best things in life are not necessarily easy or easy to learn. And server space/bandwidth doesnt seem to be an issue anymore either. It totally contradicts the argument that you can completely change the layout with only css, as if youd want to put one item before another. Its huge. Its only when you dont specify the value that browsers might use different defaults. 3. You can use css with a table-based layout. Oddly as grids become more and more in use theyre sometimes developed in a way that attempts to recreate a table using css. In modern times, people usually wait for just a couple of seconds for a website to load. The secret is you have to use < and > for the angle brackets or it gets interpreted as actual code. My div test page was only 2285 bytes smaller then my table page which would save me 1.74 MB/month of data transfer. There are also dozens of other methods I didnt mention. http://www.taylor-graphics.net/eye_clinic/. One debate Im honestly curious about is the best way to go about table type content with CSS, such as using the actual table properties, using display: inline, using float: left, etc wheres that write up? 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. By the way I forgot to mention it when I commented on your post, but I did enjoy reading it. Im not sure why people think it takes a lot of time to get things working cross browser. acknowledge that you have read and understood our, Data Structure & Algorithm Classes (Live), Data Structures & Algorithms in JavaScript, Data Structure & Algorithm-Self Paced(C++/JAVA), Full Stack Development with React & Node JS(Live), Android App Development with Kotlin(Live), Python Backend Development with Django(Live), DevOps Engineering - Planning to Production, GATE CS Original Papers and Official Keys, ISRO CS Original Papers and Official Keys, ISRO CS Syllabus for Scientist/Engineer Exam, Interview Preparation For Software Developers. (10-20 is most common.) WebYou can have as many rows as you like in a table; just make sure that the number of cells are the same in each row. I code both a little differently now, but the posts might still help. One thing Ive noticed in your tutorials is that your not very accurate with alignment. designing since 1999 started with dreamweaver, handcoding is a pain and for programmers. Divs can work independently from each other. Especially when php can make up for some of the down falls. Times have changed. If you want to use tables go ahead. Its now moving on from the CSS methods that replaced tables and using CSS thats being written specifically to lay out sites. A table does. 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. biscotools.com. If anything I think the code would be almost equal and the differences insignificant. Read the post to find out why. Space on the server for all of my clients sites is generally 1/16 of capacity. This post is framed the way it is, because its a reaction to posts framing the topic as html tables are better than css. My guess as to why they didnt learn it as well as you is because its actually not intuitive as you say, especially when trying to implement a grid shape with 3 independent blocks. Over the past few years Ive been slowly converting them to divs and CSS. Not doing something because it takes time to learn is laziness.. I just think css is a better way now for the reasons mentioned in the post. I cant go selling a 10 MS speed advantage to anyone and expect them to take me seriously. Having developed and worked on sites both ways Im 100% certain structuring your layout with tables is not the way to go. Thats not meant as a knock against you. My process doesnt involve spending hours resolving cross-browser compatibility issues by the way. plays an important role, by using CSS you simply got to specify a repeated style for element once & use it Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using a table and CSS formatting for displaying the fitness centers hours and fees on the website. Easy to learn: JavaScript is easy to learn. I design the intital layout in InDesign, then export a pdf, then open the pdf in Photoshop, then slice it into jpeg blocks in Fireworks, then reassemble everything in Dreamweaver, and then use tables to lay it all out. They make a lot of sense for displaying things like data. I wrote it to answer the question. Not so much about being able to have your changes update across the site, but on the single page itself. Wow. 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. If you look at the source code of most sites (especially the ones you like) youll discover that most and nearly all use css for page layout. Ive been a designer for over 20 years and been using tables for layout for 13 years. It was easy to do, and it looks great in Opera, Firefox, and Chrome, but guess what?! Im amazed that in 2013 people are still defending table-based layouts, but whatever. Very informative article and I hope that it gains some traction so people will stop using so many tables for layout. Unless you offer specifics Im going to assume youre just name calling, because you were unhappy with my previous comment. That flow is what needs to be eliminated! What happens if it goes 1 pixel beyond the the available size? Tables are still very useful for layout given that most sites are still essentially boxes that never move, but adjust in size as needed. I never broke any of your layouts or created display bugs in whatever you produced. As for the I dont need any extra code to get stuff to work for ie when using divs and css, really is that so? I dont use DreamWeaver and you dont need to add fixed dimensions everywhere to make divs work. Global changes are easier: If youre using external styles, you make a change in one place and its automatically propagated to all the pages in the system. Table cells are the only elements in HTML that expand and contract based on adjacent content. Instead you chose to insult me and the tutorials here. Required fields are marked *. I have no great love for code. After a week of wandering around the interwebs I still cant figure out, nor have I found any tutorials, on how to create a header like the one I have, one where there are three colums where the middle expands to fit a wider browser. The limiting factors isnt the language, its my ability to use the language. Style adjustment is more convenient. Those arguments alone should be enough to tip the scales in the argument. Everything should be able to reflow the way you want with css. I typed along with all the code samples and it helped me a lot. I dont agree with their reasoning, but it is there. And I never use some software package to do it for me unless I wrote that package myself. I coded up 3 different versions of the same page (divs, tables, tables with table-layout:fixed), and then ran some benchmarks on performance and file sizes. CSS has many advantages that enable developers to design a website. That extra pass at the code makes table-based layouts take longer to display. I do think css is the better option, but feel free to develop sites any way you want. Ive been studying the Eric Meyer CSS books, so I am picking up CSS quickly. What css function does that? The resulting code runs issue free cross browser. Thats why this method is useful for testing or previewing the changes, and Very amusing. Generally you wouldnt be setting heights on most divs allowing them to expand and contract based on the text. Feel free to contact me if you want me to develop the home page without tables. I mentioned at the start of this post that misinformation spreads on both sides of this debate. CSS doesnt restrict anything. between the 2 techniques when in truth, there is little distinction to be made. This debate is mainly from those who code by hand I would think. And Id suggest its still debatable that tables do equal columns better. WebDisadvantages of Sketch Maps (3) easily exaggerated and distorted, one view at one point in time, not an accurate representation of an area. Thats why theres more than one method in the post. Using css to layout a site is the most difficult part, but it does come together with a little practice. I think grids are great, but I dont think you should create them using html tables for the reasons I mentioned in this post. That is true, but you can have all your presentation in a separate css file while having a table-based structure to your html. It separates style from content (editable/un-editable). Different levels of CSS i.e. Its not hard. If you read the post youll see I never once said you couldnt use tables. Laying out a site with divs has a learning curve. I will need to learn more about how to use cssdiv to do a page layout. 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. Specifically, it would take more than one div to create a row cell structure so when you need to display data in that structure its actually exactly the same amount of html whether you use a table or nested divs. When you ask about table type content with css do you mean using css to show tabular data or are you asking more about how to style tables? John if youre having to adjust margins and paddings and height and width because youre updating text youve done something wrong when setting up the code. You pointed out that table cells dont work independently. 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. Take the time to learn how to use it. I disagree about it being more code. The times when floating blocks are more appropriate to use, besides its original intended use of having text wrap around images, is specifically when the blocks are meant to be independent from one another. My point about flexibility isnt simply flipping columns. by using percentages, so the design is more responsive. There are a few downsides while using CSS. The best practices standard for doing web design is to use DIVs for page structure and tables for tabular data only. css vs tables WRONG! 2) Faster Load Times Because of Lighter Code I remember load times being a major issue when I first got started but it doesnt seem to be the case anymore with so few people on dialup. Theres simply less code to create a div than there is a table with a row and cell. Itll be interesting to see how it develops and also what kind of browser support it gets. Years ago it moved away from tables and towards divs and css for layout. Sure you can say they just need to learn more, but sorry, they didnt. However, you can build a great site using tables and a poor site using css. Learn more about Teams Thanks for the online references, Steven. I feel the same about maintain tables-based sites. However please dont imply that css cant work for old sites or makes it more difficult to work on an existing table driven site. This is rubbish. The only way its faster is for updating, but if you read correctly, I style my tables with CSS tags (div, id, class) so I am just as quick. 2. Incidentially you do provide 100% of the code because you show it in your examples, in the source. But some things can be said about the style of a website. Cmon man! So Ill be more explicit. I agree your point of view. If I had stopped my study on the first day the table would have won by an equally small margin. Conclusion. If they want to tweak something in the design, again, piece of cake to do. I support reasonable use of tables for backward compatibility. Some times you just need to get it done and move on. Separate of style and structure is less about whether or not you use css or tables. A div-based layout is: easier to maintain less code and less To remove double borders, take a look at the example below. A div-based layout is: That might not seem like a lot, but just those three things are enough to make a div based approach better to a table based approach. I am in the middle of a major project that we tried to code with proper CSS, but its incredibly frustrating and time consuming. Having used both its very obvious to me that the div based approach is the much better way to go. 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. In my scenario, I flip the first and second td elements in a .Net master page. As far as I know Ive never provided 100% of the code to any of the sites youve developed, which would mean the issue isnt necessarily my code. If youre having to spend the vast majority of your time finding workarounds for IE then youve probably been doing something wrong. These must all be on the same horizontal line to work, and if one has a word or two text change, only that column will flow properly, and I have to do lots of editing of the other columns. You can definitely hire someone to create a template for the site if you want. Of course see load times above which now seem to be one signal Google looks at. The only time I get nosy is if someone did something mind blowing that I want to learn how to do also. Web3. (i know theres gotta be one but thats almost another argument for CSS over tables multiple ways you can go about it even). Click OK twice to exit the Table Properties dialog box. Sorry if it came across like I was against tables completely. Q&A for work. An example of this lie is what proponents of divs like to show off by only having a few divs compared to a table structure, but in order to get even close to having the same properties as table we have to use something like the last example in http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/equal-height-columns/ as the others are just faking the appearance with a background image. You also keep pointing out how everyone who disagrees needs to keep learning, but if youve ever been in a large production environment, youd realize that this is a complete load of bullshit. Tables will get you on the air with display compatibility quickly and with confidence. Well, today a few colleagues of mine got freaked out when they saw me using a table to display data. As for formatting and style, you should use a clear and descriptive title that reflects the main topic and keywords of your paper. Notepad is for pros. Wish me luck. It is less complex therefore the effort are significantly reduced. The web developers need to test for compatibility, running the program across multiple browsers. Discover the best hard disk format for your Mac! The complicated css wasnt a requirement. But using tables and styling them completely with CSS is just as effective as CSS alone. The reset files basically set many things back to 0. Tables seem, at least to me, to be much more intuitive. he argument is made by people comparing learning something new to learning something they already know well.. If you need to create a modern site that supports an older browser, CSS imposes huge costs. Menu. The post right after shows a 3 column layout. Learning at write CSS layouts can be tricky, especially if you become familiar with usage tables, but here's why CSS is your best programming bet. It will usually involve adding more tags on the table side as compared to the div side. I honestly dont care what they call it.. as long as it still works like tables. 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