Re: FN-FORUM: CSS Madness - split topic here

date posted 29th February 2008 12:18

> Lol you're a brave man Dominic. I can totally understand your point
> of view. I'm not sure why others have said they have problems doing
> layouts with tables.

Doing layouts with tables is easy. The problems come along later, when the
site owner decides he wants a different layout. Keeping layout (CSS) and
content (HTML) separate makes changing the layout so much easier in the
future.

A set of divs is also easier for small-screen-rendering browsers (e.g.
Opera mobile) to re-arrange to fit a small screen device (e.g. turning a
three-column layout into a single-column one). Table layouts suggest that
the rows and columns have semantic meaning, when in fact they don't (apart
from use with properly tabular data, of course!).

There are also accessibility arguments against table layouts, screen
readers have more trouble reading the site than if designed with careful
use of CSS.

Tablular site layouts are thus not a good idea both from a semantics point
of view (makes it hard for machines to read the site) and from a
maintenance point of view (makes it hard for the developer to change the
layout if ever required).

Anthony
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