As Zeldman points out in Designing With Web Standards, if your design requires it you can use tables for the overall layout of your site and use CSS for all of the other formatting and style requirements yet still be standards compliant. I think that is what is meant by the "both" choice.
True enough. You may be standards compliant as in getting validated XHTML, but it won't be semantically valid. Tables should, according to the specs, be used to display tabular data. Using tables to build the skeleton of your website makes it very painful to view on small screens (which I believe we will see more of in the future... iPhone anyone?), and the order of the content in markup (meaning how screen readers will "see" it) is often illogical.
But then again, I'm no nazi :) I believe there are situations where using tables can be a good option, but I'd rather avoid it.
1) mainly tables
2) only divs
3) tables and divs, as necessary
The answer should be, I think, (3), since there's content that by its nature belongs to a table. So take away the tables from the site's structure and try to be as semantically correct as possible, but don't hesitate to use tables for tabular content.
Use tables and nested tables very sparingly for complex designs in the content area, but never in the outer framework, nav, footer side nav - where CSS and includes SHINE.
Comments
CSS == Tableless?
Aren't CSS designs tableless, and therefore this poll meaningless? Or have I missed something? :)
Not neccessarily...
As Zeldman points out in Designing With Web Standards, if your design requires it you can use tables for the overall layout of your site and use CSS for all of the other formatting and style requirements yet still be standards compliant. I think that is what is meant by the "both" choice.
learn one, teach one, do one
True enough
True enough. You may be standards compliant as in getting validated XHTML, but it won't be semantically valid. Tables should, according to the specs, be used to display tabular data. Using tables to build the skeleton of your website makes it very painful to view on small screens (which I believe we will see more of in the future... iPhone anyone?), and the order of the content in markup (meaning how screen readers will "see" it) is often illogical.
But then again, I'm no nazi :) I believe there are situations where using tables can be a good option, but I'd rather avoid it.
See:http://drupal.org/node/132899/
See:
http://drupal.org/node/132899/
Should be:
CSS div/div/div
tableless
both
I think you mean...
CSS div/div/div
table based
both
You should be able to edit your own post in Groups.
My own take
I also think the options should be:
1) mainly tables
2) only divs
3) tables and divs, as necessary
The answer should be, I think, (3), since there's content that by its nature belongs to a table. So take away the tables from the site's structure and try to be as semantically correct as possible, but don't hesitate to use tables for tabular content.
Use CSS for the outer layer and framework and font control...
Use tables and nested tables very sparingly for complex designs in the content area, but never in the outer framework, nav, footer side nav - where CSS and includes SHINE.
Find the right curve, and stay ahead of it.
Find the right curve, and stay ahead of it.