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Hi,
I am not sure but heard a lot about tableless websites. Are they better than those using tables
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Rod seems to sum it all up admirably... It's a lot of work converting an existing site; for very little benefit.
For a new site design, then by all means embrace the CSS mantra as you are future proofing your site. It makes it easier to customize for mobile browsers and new trends. |
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Here are a few more advantages to tableless layouts:
Semantic content Search engines can't read everything in tables and it becomes even worse if you have many nested tables, where most table layouts will become nested too deeply. Tableless layouts will arrange all of your content in a nice semantic fashion that the search engines can read much easier. Shorter Production Time Tableless layouts can be modified on the fly, not like tables where you'll have to edit multiple places on each page Read Jeffrey Zeldman's "Designing with Web Standards" for every possible reason about why you need to begin developing this way immediately. It will make your life easier. Start small with hybrid layouts and work your way up. |
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My sentiments entirely I find my websites much easier to maintain with tableless layouts, just use table for tabular info now. Much to the chagrin of local web designers here in Jordan! (But then again they are still into loads of flash with skip intros and annoying music as they think its cool! LOL)
The only problem I have had is that my site used to display well on a small screen (ie using Opera F11 to review) When in tables everything used to display nicely in a column - now it all displays but lots of stuff all squidged to the left (presumably as using float left a lot in the css). Any ideas on that??? I am just starting on a new website which has a mobile professional audience target so this will be more impoortant on this new site - I dont really want to go back to tables to sort trhe problem! Rod |
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Rod,
One thing I would always make sure of is that in the top of your CSS file you zero EVERYTHING out. I add this little piece of code to every CSS document I have: Code:
ul,ol,li,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,pre,form,body,html,p,blockquote,fieldset,input,label,div,dd,dt,dl,table,tr,td { margin:0; padding:0; }
Also when your using floats make sure that you clear them out at the bottom of the last float. This can cause a lot of headaches if you don't know to clear them. |
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I know I am a little late here but I think this article shows how powerful CSS can be on large scales:
Mike Davidson - Interview: The ESPN.com Redesign That's right it saved ESPN 2 terabytes/day, wow! |
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This is a related question.
When designing a banner graphic for a fluid website what size should you design for? Thanks!
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Code:
* {
margin:0;
padding:0;
border:0;
}
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Can you explain this a little further. If the page is in HTML, why when the SE's crawl a site can't they read the text code in a table and nested tables?
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When you build a site with tables...you start out with one table that "houses" the entire site.
Then when you move down to the content area, you'll typically have a side column and a main area. You'll need one more table to "house" both the sidebar table and the main table. Then both the sidebar will have its own table and the main area will have its own table. Now you have 3 nested tables, before you have even gotten to content layout. Bots and crawlers have trouble going more than 4 nested tables, so it depends on how complicated your build is. Another downside to tables is the way bots will read and index your content. Just because the content is side by side doesn't mean it will put the two sets of content together. Once again it all depends on your build. Instead of the bots crawling your content from block A, to block B, to C, to D, it may go from block A, to block C, to block B, to block D. And if your content doesn't flow in that order the bots can get a different impression of what your site is really about. |
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Yes, CSS is better for all the reasons already mentioned.
I would not however, re-engineer the existing site just to implement valid xhtml and css. If your site is performing well in its current state (with evil tables |
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Most people will tell you that you should never use tables which is still flat out wrong. There simply are some things which cannot be achieved without using them unless you resort to insanely unnecessary server side workarounds or javascript hacks. I think it is a wise move to make the shift with the rest of the web community to divs, relative vs absolute positioning. But keep in mind every tool in the toolbox counts.
__________________
James Weisbrod - programmer |
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It's important to mention that it does take more time to build tableless when you really want to make it cross browser compliant, but the pros far outweigh the cons when making style changes in your stylesheets (rather than having to update every single page on your site, as mentioned).
You do however need a reasonably seasoned designer (HTML/CSS) to sort out the small niggles as many just give up and then you have slight discrepancies between the different browsers. I would agree with the 'leave it for a big redesign' sentiment if your site is performing. Google's pretty good and fishing out content from tables, in fact we haven't really seen any difference in ranking ability between table / non table design. There are too many other important factors that influence ranking that's more important to attend to before tables vs tableless. That said, my feeling is that tableless is the semantically / standards correct way of doing markup. You'll love it once you get the hang of it! |
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I agree that it takes more time to build a tableless layout but if you have to modify it I found that a table can be tricky to handle so in the long run you can save time using DIVs.
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