CSS vs Tables - Is the tide turning?

[dang65]

http://www.jobserve.com/W0284D641F4E699B5.jsjob

Our global blue-chip client has an urgent need for a Web Developer to re-work Web Pages within their corporate Website that have been built based on CSS and need to be worked into HTML tables.

[ft101]

Curious! CSS can be good, but like anything, needs to be done properly to realise the supposed benefits (seperation of content from presentation).

There is undoubtedly a story behind this, be curious to know what it is

Also - a week??

[chicane]

http://www.jobserve.com/W0284D641F4E699B5.jsjob

I expect the developer they originally took on was not sufficiently experienced to get around the various difficulties in cross-browser CSS development, and saw fit to blame the browsers' standards support rather than his own ability. Leading to the client believing CSS is incapable of producing the visual designs and choosing to work with tables instead.

[voodooflux]

Perhaps the original developer was trying to render some tabular data using CSS? Perhaps he'd heard that "tables are bad, m'kay" and was avoiding them at all costs, even in those scenarios for which tables are intended.

[dang65]

Perhaps the original developer was trying to render some tabular data using CSS? Perhaps he'd heard that "tables are bad, m'kay" and was avoiding them at all costs, even in those scenarios for which tables are intended.

Good theory. Sometimes there's nothing works better than Ye Olde Table, but you can be stoned for suggesting that in some circles.

[TheBigYinJames]

Good theory. Sometimes there's nothing works better than Ye Olde Table, but you can be stoned for suggesting that in some circles.

DIVs with various floats applied seems a weird idea to me, but it's used often. First window resize you do, all your hard earned work slips off down the page somewhere.

Sometimes you want a fixed layout, and tables are nice and easy.

[DimPrawn]

You can't beat 500 nested divs and spans with various floats and widths applied in CSS and 27 browser specific CSS rules and clever hacks to ensure it looks like a table layout in most browsers, most of the time.

[NickFitz]

DIVs with various floats applied seems a weird idea to me, but it's used often. First window resize you do, all your hard earned work slips off down the page somewhere.

Not if you do it right

[NickFitz]

Good theory. Sometimes there's nothing works better than Ye Olde Table, but you can be stoned for suggesting that in some circles.

Tables are (as VF said) appropriate for tabular data, that's all. It used to be acceptable to use a hybrid table/CSS layout, with one table to control the overall layout of the main page elements, but we haven't needed that for several years now - the problems this approach worked around have long been solved.

It is sadly true that there are a lot of idiots who, not properly understanding the nature and purpose of semantic markup and the principle of separation of concerns, will go to preposterous lengths to lay out tabular data using non-tabular markup. The fact that the data presented then becomes utterly impossible to decipher when displayed without CSS doesn't seem to penetrate their thick skulls

[zathras]

http://www.jobserve.com/W0284D641F4E699B5.jsjob

the trouble with tables is that readers and the like do not read the information correctly and therefore cannot be used with those who are partially sighted.

As such it would run into problems over various bits of disability legislation