Taking table-less CSS design far too far

[Andy Dingley]

http://thedailywtf.com/forums/thread/74148.aspx

[Andy Dingley]

On Thu, 25 May 2006 08:32:55 +0100, Steve Pugh <st***@pugh.net > wrote:

"VK" <sc**********@y ahoo.com> wrote:

(a recent real life sample taken from one of newsgroups)

You're joking. Or trolling. Or both.

Or stupid. This _was_ a recent example in a thread on "Are CSS tables
still evil <table>s" ? Both the thread's assertion and VK seemed
equally wrong-headed.

[Dylan Parry]

Andy Dingley wrote:

You'd have to be pretty stupid to accept that sort of statement at face
value though! :)

What if it's combined with "Proof by Authority" and Internet anonymity
though?

I suppose you are right. It's perceived authority figures and Milgram
all over again.

--
Dylan Parry
http://webpageworkshop.co.uk -- FREE Web tutorials and references

[Steve Pugh]

VK wrote:

Steve Pugh wrote:

"VK" <sc**********@y ahoo.com> wrote:

Frank Olieu wrote:
> Why use <h> and <p> when you can use <div class="heading" > and <div
> class="paragrap h"> ;-)

And overall tables are completely dead because:
...
div.grid {display: table; width: 100%; border-spacing: 1em;}
div.grid ul {display: table-row;}
div.grid li {display: table-cell;
...

(a recent real life sample taken from one of newsgroups)
You're joking. Or trolling. Or both.

That's wrong with you?

With you we can never tell when you're joiking, when you're trolling
and when you're just having one of your paranoid delusions. As there
were no W3C conspiracy theories in your post we can rule out the last
one in this case.
Look at the previous post I was quoting to reply
to. This extract of code taken from one of Big 8 groups was intended to
continue the joke.

I wrote the code you quoted.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp....1a2764edce726a

http://steve.pugh.net/test/css-table-demo.html

If you want to play with my toys expect me to join in the game. ;-)
More seriously, the code was written as a theoretical exercise ('cos IE
makes it impractical to use in real life) to demonstrate how CSS can
replace tables used for layout.

Replacing data tables, or replacing headings and paragraphs, with
divs+CSS is just stupid and deserves to be laughed at.

Steve

[Steve Pugh]

Andy Dingley wrote:

On Thu, 25 May 2006 08:32:55 +0100, Steve Pugh <st***@pugh.net > wrote:

"VK" <sc**********@y ahoo.com> wrote:

(a recent real life sample taken from one of newsgroups)

You're joking. Or trolling. Or both.

Or stupid. This _was_ a recent example in a thread on "Are CSS tables
still evil <table>s" ? Both the thread's assertion and VK seemed
equally wrong-headed.

It was an example I wrote.

It served its purpose - as a theoretical demo how CSS can be used to
replace layout tables in compliant browsers. It was never meant to
imply that CSS be used to replace data tables and anyone using it as
such is either joking, trolling or, yes, stupid.

Steve

[VK]

Steve Pugh wrote:

I wrote the code you quoted.
Oh-oh... :-)
If you want to play with my toys expect me to join in the game. ;-)
But no bats, OK? :-)
More seriously, the code was written as a theoretical exercise ('cos IE
makes it impractical to use in real life) to demonstrate how CSS can
replace tables used for layout.
Replacing data tables, or replacing headings and paragraphs, with
divs+CSS is just stupid and deserves to be laughed at.

Glad we are agreed on that one.
If you had one in the post I quoted, I would never use it: ciwas is
full of similar samples (but deadly serious, alas).
If I added a smily in my most, I wouldn't need to comment on it later.

The power of smilies in the Usenet...

[phil-news-nospam]

In comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html Nik Coughlin <nr******@gmail .com> wrote:
| ph************* *@ipal.net wrote:
|> In the mean time, I'll be using elements TABLE, TR, and TD for my
|> layouts that can't be done by other means (and this is most of them)
|
| Do you mean "layouts that I can't do without tables because I don't
| understand CSS well enough yet"? You can do any table layout using CSS
| instead.

But CSS tables don't work in all browsers. That was the whole point of
my post. While I dislike Windows and IE and just about anything else of
Microsoft, I don't carry that to the extreme of making my site unreadable
or have problems for readers using IE.

So wait a few years, then you can do it all in CSS, hopefully.

[phil-news-nospam]

In comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html Steve Pugh <st**********@g mail.com> wrote:

| With you we can never tell when you're joiking, when you're trolling
| and when you're just having one of your paranoid delusions. As there
| were no W3C conspiracy theories in your post we can rule out the last
| one in this case.

"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
--Someone who's name I forgot
| More seriously, the code was written as a theoretical exercise ('cos IE
| makes it impractical to use in real life) to demonstrate how CSS can
| replace tables used for layout.
|
| Replacing data tables, or replacing headings and paragraphs, with
| divs+CSS is just stupid and deserves to be laughed at.

So I leave the tables in HTML. Works fine as is.

[phil-news-nospam]

In comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html VK <sc**********@y ahoo.com> wrote:

| It is a joke to drop table because "daddy said no" and then recreate
| it's exact behavior on div's because "daddy didn't mention that".

So don't drop tables.

Of couse, if you want to anyway, you can. And it might even work in
IE7 or IE8 or IE9 or so in several years.

[Nik Coughlin]

ph************* *@ipal.net wrote:

In comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html Nik Coughlin
<nr******@gmail .com> wrote:

ph************* *@ipal.net wrote:

In the mean time, I'll be using elements TABLE, TR, and TD for my
layouts that can't be done by other means (and this is most of them)

Do you mean "layouts that I can't do without tables because I don't
understand CSS well enough yet"? You can do any table layout using
CSS instead.

But CSS tables don't work in all browsers. That was the whole point
of
my post. While I dislike Windows and IE and just about anything else
of Microsoft, I don't carry that to the extreme of making my site
unreadable
or have problems for readers using IE.

So wait a few years, then you can do it all in CSS, hopefully.

You don't need CSS tables to reproduce a layout that was done with tables in
CSS. The CSS-only version is not going to be a 1:1 conversion from the
table version (<td> isn't just converted to <div>), it requires a different
methodology and mindset, but the CSS version will look and work the same as
the table version. Sure, you have to hack around some IE bugs, but it can
be done.

[Nik Coughlin]

ph************* *@ipal.net wrote:

In comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html VK <sc**********@y ahoo.com>
wrote:

It is a joke to drop table because "daddy said no" and then recreate
it's exact behavior on div's because "daddy didn't mention that".

So don't drop tables.

Of couse, if you want to anyway, you can. And it might even work in
IE7 or IE8 or IE9 or so in several years.

You can do table-less layouts with CSS that even work in IE 5. Any table
layout can be reproduced like this. It just takes a bit of effort to change
your mindset from table layout to CSS layout and to learn the various
browser quirks and how to work around them.