Phoenix Network Forums

I've been doing some reading on layouts of websites, and I see that there is a debate on the best way to do it. Some advocate tables as a source of layouts, while others say that layers are the best way. The biggest complaints are, tables should only be used for tabular data not layouts and that the entire table has to load first which will slow down the rendering of your pages. With layers not all browsers are standard compliant so that may cause some trouble when using layers.

The magazine I was reading was Web-Designer. There site is located here. The stance the magazine took was that layers were the best way to do layouts. The things that they really liked were that updating was easier and loading speed was quicker. It appears that their site uses a mix of the two.

I can see the advantages of using layers but, for me, tables are quicker to use in the design phase but a little bit harder to do upkeep on. I have tried layers and can almost mimic the designs that I have done with tables and I must say that editing a css file to change layout is a much better thought. The biggest difference is that tables will render the same in most every browser but layers will not. Ie seems to have the worst problems associated with layer designs that I have found and firefox is the best. I have also read that older versions of netscape, I think 4, don't work with layers at all. I test my pages with safari, firefox, netscape 7.2, and internet explorer(I think 5). I also use W3C to validate my markup.

So what are some opinions from everyone else?
Which method do you use and why?
Do you use an editor like frontpage or dreamweaver for your design?
Do you test your designs in several different browsers? If so, which ones?
How many of you use older browsers like netscape 4?

well i use tables... i dont know, im used to it and its quite simple to work with them... I use Dreamweaver to design my webpages, but only for the basic design (tables)... then i do it by code...
I test my sites in Firefox and IE... I almost forgot that Netscape also exists...

hi, i have been coding with html for a few years now. I find that tables are good, but can become messy. Frames are good, but u need to play around with the targets of links etc

yeah..id like to experiment in design but im used to using tables..
frontpage and dreamweaver

For me, it's all CSS and XHTML, and some occasional CSS2(dang that stuff's perty ). The OP is right, tables should only be used for tabular data, not for an entinre site's layout.

And anyway, besides performance and modular issues, programming a web page with CSS is much easier to both start and maintain, not to mention some of the sweet features that really set tables and CSS apart.

Some good reading material:
http://www.csszengarden.com/

I agree with stupergenius. Look at my homepage, which is under development currently. It's German, but that doesn't matter. Look at the design and finally have a look at the source code. I'm not using frames or tables (except for tabular data).

Nice site mm_freak, which brings me to another point, seperating the data from the presentation.

What CSS allows one to do is to be able to write html only once, but have an infinite amount of ways that the said page can then be displayed. From a programmer's perspective, this means no messy font tags and multiple redundant(how's that ) color/font/image tags which further slow down a page's loading time. That csszen site I specified earlier does just that, by using a single html file, and allowing users to create their own CSS files, they have created many different demonstration sites that are quit unique in their own ways.

I'll stop ranting for now, you get the picture...hopefully.

I have an example of tables vs layers on my site. The first page is done in tables. The second page is done in layers. I'm not using the forms, they are more for layout purposes. I also did a layer version of a friends homepage. The original is here and the layer version is here.

Actually you could have done all that without using tables or layers, but with text flow control. This is the primary intention of it.

some said that the tables are messy... i don't agree with that statement.
i have been coding with tables for a few months and i know there is no way a website is built entirely on tables - divs are also very useful.

i have read a forum where someone sauid that divs are better and the tables are for tabular data. at leas were - since the border="0" was invented

jetstorm wrote:some said that the tables are messy... i don't agree with that statement.
i have been coding with tables for a few months and i know there is no way a website is built entirely on tables - divs are also very useful.

i have read a forum where someone sauid that divs are better and the tables are for tabular data. at leas were - since the border="0" was invented ;)

They still are, but many people misuse them. That's a reason why websites look so different in other browsers. You can do all that stuff inter-browser compatible with pure CSS. Divs are helpful, but not really necessary. My website looks good in every browser (not just in every major browser) - even Lynx.

It also helps maintaining a website. Imagine you want to change your page style... what now? Changing every single HTML file? In my case I just change the CSS file (without touching the HTMLs in any way). I could change my page style totally by changing the CSS file only. You can see this by looking at the version without CSS (click on the ohne css button at the bottom). It's the same HTML file, just without CSS (with the CSS links removed).

i just have someone make a layout then i fill it in


Adams

I personally have been using HTML with CSS but have recently discovered the wonders of XHTML.

In HTML, i used tables as it seemed to organize my content well.
I'm not one for frames

I have designed many layouts in html 4.01. I Check them with w3c validator.
Usually i am using css too, editing is much easier.
When i didn't know anything about html, i used frontpage. Now i write content myself.
I always test my creations with Firefox, Internet Explorer and Netscape.

Just one thing about using an external CSS file and changing that when you want to change the site. This is an extremely powerful method when used correctly, as csszengarden.com holds testament to, but it can be extremely hard to implement on a preexisting site without a complete redesign. in addition, if you want to take the external CSS route, to have full flexibility, you should have a very large amount of "id" elements to anchor the css styles.