better way than tables?

[mattover-matter]

What is the secret? Designing pages without tables inside cells of other tables in bigger tables.....All can get confusing. Any better way?

[x_goose_x]

tables are the way to go.

[jkd]

Yes. Semantic markup and CSS.

[jkd]

Tables for presentation are the devil, despite what x_goose says. :D

[mattover-matter]

Can you help me convert my site to non-tables when I am done with it? Hehe

[cg9com]

basically, all you need to do is use CSS customized divisions.
not too complicated, your still working with the same boxes, just way more effecient.
i dont see anything wrong with helping you convert a site. :p

[x_goose_x]

If anythings the devil, that would be frames.

[x_goose_x]

me speak english good

[cg9com]

Originally posted by x_goose_x
If anythings the devil, that would be frames.
haha, your right about that one

[brothercake]

The point is that TABLE is for data - a table of data. You can use them for presentation, but it's best not to - because it's cumbersome to maintain, like you said, and makes for bloated code and restrictive design.

And it's semantically a contradiction like jkd said - you'd be using an element which semantically means "I contain tabular data", when it doesn't. An equivalent would be to use the <strong> tag and style it "font-weight:normal" - a contradiction.

With CSS-based layout you have much more control and precision; it takes less code to do it, and so your pages will load faster. It means that programatic design changes (stylesheet switchers, user-editable column layouts) become laughably simple to implement.

If you're just starting to learn this stuff (and even more so if you're not), then forget tables for layout; the days of table-based layout are behind us now; you will do yourself much more justice, and acquire much more valuable skills, if you adopt the XHTML+CSS paradigm straight away ;)

nb - I was a die-hard table fan (http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13083) until only a few months ago; since I've made the switch it's been a revelation. Big time. Suddenly making web pages is fun again, instead of an exercise in swearing and head banging. I cannot overstate how much better it is :D

[Jerome]

Exactly,

I started with frames and learned the basic of HTML,

then came tables which made everything complicated,

Now I use DIVs, an external CSS-file and an external JS-file, my code has never been more easy, file-size is down by more then 50% and maintenance is just a matter of ........

It took me a lot of time to learn, and I am still learning, but discuss here and learning goes a lot faster!

Jerome

[Borgtex]

Unfortunately, Dreamweaver still doesn't shows CSS layouts very well :(

[mattover-matter]

I used tables because when I learned I was using absolutely positioned divs( remember how hard it was to figure that out ). Then I figured out view --> source code, so I viewed some pages. Most of them used tables, so I just learned from them. Anyway, I think I am going to complete my site with tables, then convert. Javascript is my biggest priority to get working right right now. Thanks all