cardinalvices

I will agree with you. Saving 5% doesn't mean you are in a wrong business, it only means working more effectively. 5% here, 5% there, and you got 10% more in the end of the month..

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FlexxAeon

i don't think you understand what i was describing. look at jamesK's link.

edit: 2 pages wtf? is it this serious people?

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TheDoc

Using HTML tables mixed with CSS, correctly is no smaller or larger than doing table layouts in css.

Stop using dream weaver people.

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FlexxAeon

your sig hypnotizes me in ways i don't understand

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Bro Media - BANNED FOR LIFE

Why? I do all my shit exclusively in dreamweaver and my code validates... it's not the program, but the designer...

TheDoc

Validated means to standard, not efficient.

It's the software when the designer is using software to do the work for them. It's the designer when they are doing it by hand.

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JamesK

I use Dreamweaver but 99% of the time I'm using the "code view". It still has nice features that will save you time.

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Bro Media - BANNED FOR LIFE

Dreamweaver does have multiple modes, WYSIWYG and Code. All my code is light and efficient none of it is unnecessary.

Dreamweaver came a long way since it was introduced, shit it came along way since Adobe took over Macromedia.

NickPapageorgio

Don't agree. That's like saying a grave digger should stick to just using a shovel, when there is a perfectly good backhoe available to him.

Sure, he can make the hole look a WHOLE LOT better when he gets in there with the shovel, but why shouldn't he use the backhoe to do the majority of the dirt removal?

I use DW to start out, but mostly in the "code" view. I can do it in notepad just as easily, but I like some of DW's automated commands, plugins, colored code, etc.

A site designed exclusively in notepad by someone that knows what he's doing is head and shoulders above a site designed exclusively "drag and drop" in DW. However, an experienced site designer using DW vs. an experienced site designer using notepad isn't the same argument.

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NickPapageorgio

Exactly. I like DW because I can save code snippets, preview in different browsers, create symlinks between the site server and the program, use pre-made plugins or create my own, etc etc. It's just convenient really having everything in one interface without having to open 4 or 5 different programs to achieve the exact same thing.

I strive for light, scaleable code that also is to w3c standards for xhtml strict. You don't have to use notepad to achieve that at all.

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NickPapageorgio

If you're looking into having some REAL fun with CSS, do some googling on using sprites instead of different image files for backgrounds and shit. It is awesome. ;)

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Sid70

i guess it doesnt matter much with current internet speeds.

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TheDoc

Hehe, you guys are funny. You sit here and love on DW yet your own sites aren't compliant and have basic html mistakes on them.

DW may allow you more control than it once did. But you still are using its standard, learning its styles of setup. Rather than the real way of doing it.

I don't use notepad, I use notepad2 or do it in shell.

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sortie

I use them both and think the whole argument is a joke.

I have seen table-less design code that had div tags up the ass worse then
any table tags I ever seen. A total mess.

But CSS is great for accessing html elements that tables can't.

Tables are excellent for dynamic content that can scale to any browser size with
one easy piece of code : "width=100%".

The easiest way to keep your website from scrolling in small windows is to use tables.

I love all the SE theories that assume that google is so fucking stupid that it can't
crawl tables. You just have to be an idiot to believe that.
The fucking Chrome browser has to parse tables but somehow google search didn't
figure it out.....OH PLEASE!!!!! Stop drinking.

The reason those theoies are so stupid is because no search engine is even looking
for tables. It's looking for text, images and links.

My tube script crawls hosted galleries and gets the videos and thumbs and not one
piece of my code gives a shit if a table or CSS is there.

Just opened the source on a youtube video page and it's full of tables.
Maybe google can't afford to hire someone to do a CSS design????? </sarcasm>

This whole thing is just where people who like css have over sold it to people who
don't really know what the search engines do or how a browser actually works.

Reminds me of Miller lite commercials back in the day :

"Less Filling!!!"
"Great Taste!!!"

All those fuckers just wanted to get drunk and none of it actually mattered.

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potter

I use DW, although all of my sites are compliant and have no HMTL mistakes. I don't actually use DW because I "like it" though. I code everything by hand, so what I use makes no difference. I just happen to have CS4 and it comes with DW, so DW is what I use.

I can code 100% compliant, cross browser compatible code - In ANY doc type. Seriously, the program a person uses makes no difference. It is indeed the person that makes the difference. I could do what I do in any program available, because the program literally has no effect on the end result as everything is hand coded.

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potter

Wrong, it's not a joke. Tables are not designed to be the structure or layout of a website. I don't know how I can stress this enough. The direction the web originally took in structure and design was wrong. The trend is slowly coming back to design and structure a website using code as it was designed for.

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crockett

actually the browsers will soon be allowing for CSS tables which will make things soo much easier.

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AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE

Quoted for Truth. No matter how mucha CSS Fan boi cries otherwise. SE's read table data the same as CSS, and Yes Table based design was truly the intention of the W3C again no matter how much the CSS fan boi's cry.

DO not let big words like "Tabulated Data" shake you either. I do not think them idiots that profess "Tabulated Data" being read differently by SE's know what Tabulated Data is.

It's a farce claim.
Fact is... When a SE spider comes to your website it reads the content, not the tables or other mark up language.

Even the W3C acknowledges that the CSS portion of the W3C are people that basically dont "Get It" and the W3C also acknowldges that CSS based design is still unstable.

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sortie

And my cock was not designed to be stuffed in some chicks mouth so next you're
gonna say that I should quit doing that and get back to the original design purpose???




The internet was not designed for porn so what do you think I should do about that?

Fuck what someone "designed" for; what can it be "USED" for is the path to money.
People used it because it made perfect sense.

It made so much sense that not a single legitimate argument has been made as to why
it shouldn't be used except that some dumbass can't understand tables when they are
nested. That's the only reason for this extremely dumb argument.

Hey, I will give the client what they want. But don't ask me to believe in dumb shit just
to make you happy.

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NickPapageorgio

It's also about accessibility, scalability, and the future of your site lol. The thing about SE not being able to crawl tables is a new one on me, so I won't chime in on that. Seems kinda dumb to assume that all of a sudden, after a decade or better or table designs, that SE for some reason won't get the info in them.

That being said, it DOES make a difference to onscreen readers. It DOES make a difference to how it's displayed on mobile devices.

Say I made a design, and the main layout of 1000 pages of content was put together in tables. Now, let's also assume that I'm not using some sort of CMS for the sake of argument. What's going to be easier on me in the future? To go through 1000 pages of html, changing out <tr>'s and <td>'s? Or changing a single file that says that div id "X" should display as "blablabla"?

I think that should be enough right there.

What it boils down to is this. If your client is happy with it and paid you...then fuck it. Mission accomplished.

BUT...lol...when said client 2 years from now says "Hey, you know what, I think I would rather have my headers look like so-and-so" you're gonna be kicking your own ass for putting all those tables in, unless ofcourse, you were smart and used <td class="blablabla"> ;)

There are a million pro and con arguments for or against css or tables. I prefer a mix of both and think really, it comes down to personal preference and client happiness.

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NickPapageorgio

My rule of thumb goes like this:

If it's a Halloween promo design that's gonna be up for a month...I'll hack that bitch in the best way I can till it displays the way I want it. Tables, css, whatthefuckever to get it done.

If it's a site that I may have to go back and make changes to a month, 6 months, a year from now? I try to make as many things as I possibly can using css. Period.

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AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE

I use a mix of both myself, but the people touting CSS as the New Testament just got the wrong idea about Jesus. When it's time to Execute Jesus we do what must to put the stake in the ground before tacking up the effigy.

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Stellar

If CSS is so god damn awful,

how come Dickman's Design (best in the biz) uses it?

NickPapageorgio

Oh, then you're talking about the CSS Nazis on the web. Yes, I hate them too lol.

"ZOMG.YOU.USED.TABLE...SINNER! YOU WILL BURN FOR YOUR BROWSER ATTROCITIES!!"

You find a lot of those guys in the comments sections of the mainstream design blogs (and truth be told, 90% of them aren't making a dime off their design work) lol.

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sortie

> The thing about SE not being able to crawl tables is a new one on me

That's touted by idiots that confuse tables with frames/iframes.
When the search engine gets a frame/iframe it has to do a new http request to
get the actual source of the frame. Early search engines just didn't bother to do it;
maybe some still don't.


> Say I made a design, and the main layout of 1000 pages of content was put together in tables. Now, let's also assume that I'm not using some sort of CMS for the sake of argument. What's going to be easier on me in the future? To go through 1000 pages of html, changing out <tr>'s and <td>'s? Or changing a single file that says that div id "X" should display as "blablabla"?

Let's say you don't build sites like an amateur as stated above.
HTML templates can be inserted to cover all those pages just like any CSS.


Lets talk about resources.
CSS has to be pulled from a file on every page in order to do what you said(site wide update).
That's a additional server request for each page.
But you can skip that and write a simple script that uses a template to update all the
pages in one click but those pages don't need the extra CSS file request and thus
saves on a lot of server resources on a heavy traffic site.


There are plenty of pluses for using CSS; it's silly to argue otherwise; but to
argue that tables should be avoided at all cost is so stupid it's like witch hunting.

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sortie

Uhh...you must be replying to the wrong thread.

Nobody thinks CSS is awful.

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Stellar

Oh fuck off sortie,

you know what I meant.

Apparently you have the wrong thread also, because I just read through it completely and many people obviously dislike CSS.

mrwilson

xhtml/css is the only way i will code a site.

I hate tables, i always have and always will do.
Its a load of shit (my opinion only)

Its been like 2-3 years since i last used tables!

TheDoc

Greater designers aren't always the best css creators, and in this case, dickmans gives me more headaches than anyone else when it comes to css. Not to knock dickmans, they are great graphic designers.

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potter

It's real simple. There's just no logical reason to use tables over CSS. There's dozens of reasons at least to use CSS over tables.

There's only two reasons to use tables over CSS.
1. You don't have the skill to properly write CSS, and you won't learn it.
2. You don't have the money to hire someone good enough to code your shit in CSS.

End of discussion. Anyone who tries to say CSS us unstable, hard, or doesn't work properly in all browsers. Simply doesn't know CSS all that well.

Use whatever you prefer, do whatever you want, and code your site how you see fit. But please don't ever try to "bash CSS", or claim "tables are better". You just sound ignorant when you do.

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FlexxAeon

i hate to jump in this argument but...can an SEO expert answer me this? this is what i was told by an SEO guy...

of course, a SE can read through and understand and differentiate between tables & text. but, i was told that amount of characters was also something to consider. especialy when your site is first getting crawled. because there is a limit to the amount of characters/data on a particular page that an SE will crawl through and store in it's archived data. Therefore, the less code needed to format, the more actual text gets stored. this is why you sometimes see those crappy sites that use formatting from HTML infancy do well in SE's.

is there any validity to this?

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TheDoc

That idea is correct, they do read X amount of data - including html/css, but I think it ignores JS and header stuff.

That's the basic idea of css over basic html, less bytes used so more text and links, menus, ect are looked at vs. trash that does nothing.

However, by using a mixture of tables and css, you can keep the byte size just as small and sometimes smaller, than going pure css and pretty much always going pure tables.

The confusion is tables over css is better for reading, space, bw, whatever - is just wrong. That is all up to the designer/creator.

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AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE

Uhhmm no there is not a reason, have you read the thread or done real research on the matter? Table based design is the widest accepted standard for cross browser compatibility hands down resulting in the firmest conformity in browser display.

THere are other reasons why Table based designs are better over CSS. Thats just 1.

Read above, or better yet go read the W3C site and the comments of the Consortium regarding CSS.

CSS is unstable thats a fact, as again mentioned at the W3C site numerous times over. CSS infact is the least stable for Browser display stability and cross plat form compatibility.
Infact with Mobile based design Table base design yields the greatest stability in page layout control.

Who is the ignorant one? CSS is over rated unstable shit. It's been proven time and time again at the W3C site and hundreds of designer based forums. CSS is useful to a degree in some cases but I see few arguments that factually put CSS ahead of table based layout and design. CSS may have a future and the future is when CSS is actually easier to utilise and easier to control design elements within a layout with non unpredictable results cross browser and cross platform displays.

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AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE

No there is no validity to this argument, I read about that shit myself because I found it hard to believe. The fact is the Spiders will crawl in the site searching for content and they do not read tabled data or CSS as "Character's" for indexing. This argument is a wide spread claim that is completely 100% false.

THis claim spread out from none other than the CSS developers themselves and it holds not an ounce of truth.

Spiders are made to parse out layout elements and absorb actual content. Table information and CSS information style elements are all ignored.

Though some SE's do read Image Alt tags as content it is separated from the content formulation of a page separatly.

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potter

AlienQ you just don't know CSS that well if you think it's unstable. It's so easy to write code to work in every single browser. I do it every single day. You seriously just don't know what you're talking about. People who are good with CSS know exactly how each element will display in every browser before even testing it. It's not just a random way it's rendered as you make it out to be.

I don't know exactly what's gotten into your head that makes you think the way you do. You are wrong though. You are looking incredibly ignorant right now.






Oh, and as for your mobile browser idiocy.

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AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE

SO by your very explanation of defense you hide behind the fact that it is better and more efficient to write alternate code for different displays and mobile devices when the reality is if you used tables you would only have to do it once!\

You are an idiot.

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MetaMan

CSS is not the future if you are not using it yet you are already behind.

People just do not want to get out of their ways and i have no idea why. CSS is not unstable when coded properly you can have cross browser designs with 0 issues.

CSS has a bad rep because their is very few people who can actually code it properly. and i mean VERY FEW and even less in adult.

CSS is amazing for a CMS style system and makes editing pages with ease that tables just cannot match.

CSS is cleaner and more compressed code and you can set priority on a designs content which helps with SE rankings.

CSS is more dynamic in its capability of styling a page with minimum amount of images.

compressed code = faster loading speeds.

CSS templates are more dynamic and can be more easily moded compared to their table counterparts.

CSS teaches you how to design PROPER, you slowly teach yourself how and why to compress a code further and further. do not be afraid of the learning curve, it takes sometime but once you get the hang of it and understand the point of it you will never go back. you can almost use the same code for ANY site.

i dont know what the debate is about anyone who can code it proper 100% knows CSS is better then tables, there is just no debate any longer. adult webmasters are stuck in old times and refuse to change and this is why many of your profit margins are decreasing by the month.

potter

And my point is proven:

http://204.15.255.138/~ialienco/index2.html
For starters you don't know shorthand. Secondly, you cannot use numbers in class or div names.

Please leave the conversation now. You're arrogant "all knowing" bullshit isn't going to fly.

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StuartD

Think of it this way.....

tables = excel
css = photoshop

Tables is for aligning things in a grid...
Photoshop is for having layers over and under layers.

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AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE

LOL...
No my friend... You fail.

Cuz appearently the code works and works just fine.

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potter

No, you completely missed the features and ability an author has with media types. I'm saying, WITH CSS you have the ability to switch style sheets according to what type of browser is rendering the page. No scripting or hacking - it's built into the way CSS is designed.

You don't have to do this though. You can use a single style sheet for them all, and code it so it will work and render the same in them all. You think that's magic though so I don't expect you to believe it.

Oh, and just so you know. Doctypes also have a lot to do with how mobile and other browsers render a page. Which has nothing to do with CSS, or tables. You should know that though since you're a "designer".

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potter

It might in your browser. However it won't render properly in them all. Weird you don't know that since you're a designer.

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candyflip

I prefer it for faster loading pages that present the relevant info and not a TON of fucking markup.

My programmers also prefer working with it too, so whatever I can do to make their lives easier makes my life easier.

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Voodoo

Can I start another argument about Content vs. Traffic in here?

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TheDoc

fuck yeah!

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FlexxAeon

omg how did i know that i was gonna get a "yes" and a "no"...

Paging: WiredGuy

as far as what i "believe".... it makes sense to me that even if a SE knows how to "disregard" something like table tags, it still has to process that info (it is a computer after all). so there has to be a certain limit that it will get to your page to allow for "fair" indexing across the internet. otherwise everyone would make SE pages with ungodly amounts of characters.

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sortie

I wrote tubecgi ok. It crawls hosted galleries just like a search engine.
It dose not have, I did not write and I did not care if the gallery has tables or css.

It has nothing to do with the crawl.


A search engine crawl looks for text that is not included within tags ( > hello < )
Notice how I don't even give a shit what tag it is.

The search term for that page is now "hello".

It's not "<center><font style="someshit"> hello </font><center>".

or "<table><tr><td> hello </td></tr></table>".

It's just fucking "hello"....no matter what.

Understand?

Why is it "hello"?

Because it's the only thing on the page that is not html!
Nobody is searching for your html so neither is the SE.

HTML is not content.
The SE is looking for your content!


It then looks for "href=" to find links.

It then looks for "<img" then the very next "src=" to get the images.

So where is the fucking table???????


Only idiots care because they don't know how any of this works.

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AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE

So now this conversation has changed from table controled layout to font and text control in Mobile Display devices? You CSS fan boi's are reaching way to hard.

Listen...
Ya want to restructure a page easily sure no prob you can do the same thing with table based layouts. Table Based Layouts are templates as well. You should know this.

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FlexxAeon

might as well. i'm sure this has already gone further than the OP expected

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