Re: To table or not to table?


No problem Jim. Just thought it might give you some ideas, the
coding being so much simpler than your table layout. I am sure
you can mark up your table layout simpler and better (as you are
allowing is possible).

About table layouts, up to a considerable point there is no
reason that you cannot make a fluid design with tables in the
sense that the page displays in a pleasant manner on most
screens. (Mobile brigade: relax!). They can be seen all over the
show.

But fluid does not mean that all the cells of a page must expand
to fill any size monitor. It may (sort of) mean that it should be
able to be seen in 800 x 600. But there is no point at all in
designing so that all the elements of a page make like marks on
the outside of a balloon or like stars in an expanding universe,
getting further and further away from each other.

This is possibly where we differ most.
You would have me create pages which never gets bigger than size X x Y and
would appear in the top left of any browser screen that opens it?
(That's a question)
My own starting point has always been to fill the allotted space

There are a few devices to stop this sort of needless expansion
happening that I can mention immediately. First, do use the
excellent facility of such as

#wrapper {max-width: 1000px;}
I have never met #wrapper and why 1000px?
(Pages with wide empty right hand margins really bug me)

or whatever figure is suitable for your material. Pick a wrapper
(it may be the main table) and a number of px where you judge the
material is spreading out needlessly beyond. Some older browsers
(including IE6!) do not recognise this but there are workarounds.
Oh dear, I imagine most of the world uses IE6/7 and the workarounds I have
used before usually are unvalidatable.

Second, *let* the magic of tables arrange the widths of the cells
to suit the material in it, think carefully whether to bother to
set widths on anything at all in the table. Be wary, above all,
of table {width: 100%;}
I try not to use individual cell widths except where there are several
images which look weirdly arranged otherwise.
HOWEVER width:100%; height:100% are the rocks on which my table stylesheet
is based. I have never actually considered changing that as my whole design
will probably fall to nothing (I'm going off to try that now so if you can
feel bad vibes, you know it's me)

Third, be careful of setting heights on things. My advice is not
to in tables.

Please, Jim, I am working from memory and making general remarks,
I have not got your site on screen.

One thing I do recall though very vividly though is that you have
far too much inline css. If it is maintenance and updating you
are wanting, templating and all that in a busy site, get the
whole lot off the html page and put it into css sheets, use
inline only sparingly and mostly tactically in development.

This, you see is where I have my difficulty ie the jargon.
"Inline css": does this refer to a line like this
<td valign="bottom" style="text-align: left">
or something that refers to some style eg style1 created in the header?
If it is the latter then it is one which has been created by Expression Web
and I have missed it as I try not to let that happen.
OR perhaps I should let EW do that, but call it something more meaningful.
--
Jim S
Tyneside UK
www.jimscott.co.uk
.

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