h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"But css positioning doesn't have the fluidity of tables"
it's better IMHO

"widely support on a cross-browser standard with backward compatible support"
Well structured html that degrades gracefully helps with this which only effects very old browsers (positioning works in NS4 providing your careful).

Many thanks, I had sussed that DIVs could place stuff around, but am wedded to tables for now.

You're right about the XML statement - see F73672?thread=223596&latest=1 (which I just realised I posted to the Programmers' rather tha WebDevelopers' page for some reason) - DreamWeaver bungs it in regardless, I am going to remove it from future pages/templates, but this was a quicky page just to test things out.

Cheers, actually looking forward to going into work tommorow and finish the re-branding



CH

Using % instead of pixels in tables is still the simplest way of making a page that shrinks and grows with the resizing of a browser.
The thing that makes css such a rapid growth, now (it took a couple of years to take off) is that wysiwyg editors use them to far too great extents. If you want to see the worst example I've come across, just look at Microsofts' new Visual Studio .Net, horridly abusive of technology.

Pastey, you should know better

From "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0"
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-table-markup


"Tables should be used to mark up truly tabular information ("data tables"). Content developers should avoid using them to lay out pages ("layout tables"). Tables for any use also present special problems to users of screen readers "

Yeah, but the thing is, I'm suggesting that neither is a singualr answer. Neither on their own is capable of producing the effects that can be found from using both.

but one is a nasty, dirty habbit that should only be practiced behind closed doors in version 3 browsers

Layout tables should never be used on sites wherer accessibility is an issue.

Layout tables shouldn't be used full stop. But, using tables for their fluidity is a different matter.

No it's not, that's a layout table.
Tables are for Data not layout (fluid or otherwise)

Your opinion, not mine

Not just Mine, its the Opinion of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (see post 24)

But css positioning doesn't have the fluidity of tables and isn't as widely support on a cross-browser standard with backward compatable support.

Using % instead of pixels in tables is still the simplest way of making a page that shrinks and grows with the resizing of a browser.
--

ARGH! Misinformation!

Why use % in tables when you can use % in divs and spans?? It might save you all of an hour's initial development time to use tables but you can _reuse_ all your CSS layouts without copying and pasting.

They're smaller and just as fluid. You can easily build pages that will flow properly when you resize the browser - as a matter of fact you can build a site that resizes _better_ than a table based one because you have more fine-grained control over which section collapses, whether or not the window will clip, wrap, or scroll, etc.. I would show you an example but it got erased accidentally when I rebuild my server and I haven't had time to redevelop it.

These technical reasons plus the accessibility reasons overwhelmingly convinced me that tables are good for one thing - putting data in a table (e.g. a calendar or a price comparison chart).

Okay, here's an example of a fluid XHTML/CSS layout. It's not as complex as the one I wanted to show but it will suffice:

http://torstar.ionizor.dhs.org/msgcore.cgi

You can only look at the login form as the rest is password protected but there is very little variation in the actual layout.

I may well try that, but on a separate topic, I notice in the CSS of the link above the H1,h2 etc are defined as "larger" is this good practice over specifying point or pixel size?

CH

HOOKED - the http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html link is so good.

This is what I need, I lack the knowledge/skills/training to start something, but give me a clear example (like Ion's linkabove) and I am away. OK the sitemay be delayed a bit (have till next week now) but hopefully so much better, it'll mean I have to Cut and paste the tables from my old pages into the new ones (or leave them for now most likely)

Cheers

CH

Can of worms opened.

Next question, is there a way of limiting a DIV (excuse case for now) so that I can say be 10% but not more than 100 px? My side bar on my site looks OK at about 100 px, but any bigger it looks silly.

Cheers

CH

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I don't think there is. Or rather, if there is, I haven't found it.

shame - torn between specifying everything in % or doing the side bar in px - maybe time for compromise.

CH

Just viewed page in Netscape 4.7 and it's pants, non of the CSS styling works! I thought Netscape 4.7 was OK with CSS, within certain limitations.

CH

got it almost sorted for NS4.7 BUT using a CSS like

#left {
float: left;
padding: 10px 2% 10px 2%;
margin: 20px 1% 20px 2%;
background: #666;
border: 5px solid #ccc;
width: 12%;
}
#middle {
float: left;
padding: 10px 2% 10px 2%;
margin: 20px 2% 20px 1%;
background: #666;
border: 5px solid #ccc;
width: 60%;
}

NS refuses to acknowledge the float thingy, placing one DIV on top of the other - any advice?

Cheers

CH

PS if you ever meet me at a meet then I owe you all a pint or several

OK it is a combination of the margin AND the float. If I remove the margin from the #left DIV then it works in NS4.7.

Any attempt to push the margin in usng a class for example has the same effect.

Mmm

CH