What’s so bad about tables?

Hi again,

@handysolo:

No, I don’t believe (or expect) that anyone participating here in this thread will change his/her minds. Remember? I said I’m a realist. ??

But I do expect that a few people who before were likely to blindly follow a futuristic idea without even having a close look at reality, now might to a raincheck. And to me that’s worth having that discussion.

@ladydelaluna:

If the W3C consortium would pose its recommendations as you do, I wouldn’t be arguing, I wouldn’t even need to do that. Basically we two do agree on the most salient point of the whole debate.

Unfortunately neither the W3C nor most other people here use such a logical and appropriate approach. Instead it’s immediate clobbering over the head of people with that Tarzan&Jane-style screams “IE bad, FF good” and “tables bad, CSS good”.

Have you had a good look at the majority of threads/responses that people get here who ask about tables (any which way)? The first thing they get clobbered with is “CSS is better!”. Well, that is not the case for every case. I gave quite a few logical, reality-based and stringent causes and reasons why this is NOT the case.

Indeed the first response should be question instead: “whom and what do you want to publish this to?” and the second: “what do you want to achieve?”. And only after the answers you’ll have an inkling of whether or not “CSS” is indeed “better”. Or accessibility enablement.

If the purported usergroup is e.g. continental European (or African, or Eastern), neither catering to PDA/cellphone devices makes any major sense, nor is in many cases CSS the best response.

Thus the continuous cry of “CSS is best” is what I am against. Not designing for the usergroup you have to cater to.

@manstraw:

There is no “conspiration theory” in the history of W3C decisions, you can read their statements up online. There are enough data available to check back on this. They were and are on a biased mission. If this doesn’t fit with your view of them, I’m sorry, this doesn’t change facts.

In the late 90ies there was a nearly 100% market share for the IE worldwide. Netscape had lost its edge, IE was the standard software on people’s computers and no one but a few tech-oriented students and geeks even went for anything else. Neglectable. IE was the only logical choice if “standard” was what the W3C consortium really wanted. They had a nearly uniform and already existing standard at their fingertips and chose to disregard it.

And quite simply: don’t tell me that’s because the IE had low quality or lacked. Because if that’s the sole thing what hinders you, you can – instead of choosing a different standard – work to better the one you have. That’s what usually happens in such cases. Not so with the W3C. Thus the only answer to this little fact is that they had a totally different agenda. And they stated this often and openly enough so that even you can find that through a good Google search.

These threads do tend to pop up….

To the main participants – it would be very very useful to have ‘real views from real bloggers’. Is there a way that two of you who differ could write a good piece – from a bloggers perspective – that could be somewhere we could link to?
Not a standards bit necessarily but just a ‘case for the defence’ or similar?

I’m not after diverting the conversation or closing it but it would be great to have a good end result for the next people who ask the same question.

I’ll be happy to do that, Podz.
From the perspective of an American blogger, appealing to an audience whose hardware and web browsers are equal to mine, if LHK would be willing to do the same from her perspective, appealing to the audiences that have hardware and web browsers of her same (European, et al.) caliper.

I think it’s a great idea, P… ??

I have a problem with reading words like geeks, idiots, and nazism as you have used them. I don’t think they have a place in a responsible discusson.

Monopoly != Standard. There is more to it than that. The purpose of a standard is not to establish what *is*, but rather to establish a direction for the future that will overcome the shortcomings of progress without forethought. The fact you may or may not agree with some of the decisions of the w3c in no way indicates they have a biased mission. I’m tired of reading these kinds of accusations without anything backing them up. And frankly, they don’t have a place in this thread.

The title of this thread is “What’s so bad about tables?” I really hope we can keep this discussion within that context, and stop discussing the politics of the w3c, hidden agendas, or nazism.

I maintain that tables are less flexible than css for page layout. I maintain that tables are not suitable for alternative browsing requirements. I maintain that properly coded xhtml with css for layout and separated content and style is easier to read and modify than an equivalent page layed out using tables. I maintain that tables are very suitable for the display of tabular data.

I’m not interested in the rest of it. /me is hoping we all can keep it on track.

edit: I wrote the above while podz and lady also responded. I would be very curious to read the result of podz’s suggestion.

Hi again,

@podz: I would be willing to write that, but I’m no blogger.

I’m a webmaster and I have here – all the time – been discussing this question from the vantage point and the POV of someone who has to make educated decisions based on what a client needs, is able to pay, has in his (business) mind and wants of the future.

So if you want that POV you can also have it.

@manstraw: …just as the arguments for tables, no CSS and no extra accessibility enablement stand.

And you even yourself concede that there is a an ulterior agenda in this whole topic by calling a near 100% marketshare “a monopoly”.

Sorry to wake you up chap, but Bill Gates never had a monopoly in the relevant sense of the word. He never was and still isn’t the sole player. No one twisted the arms of customers to use Windows or to not buy Macs. They didn’t, they preferred Windows over Linux and they didn’t like Apple’s prices overly much either. Had Apple lowered their prices to the level of windows boxes, we might have a Mac world right now instead.

In fact, the only truly and successfully standardized items on this world, and there are – in reality – only very very few of that, derived from a 90+% marketshare. Browsers were at that point, and W3C – on explicit purpose – saw to it that standardization did NOT happen.

Oh, and don’t tell me that IE couldn’t or wouldn’t have made progress, if IE was all you had to deal with, you’d have no problems designing a CSS driven site if you wanted to. If W3C hadn’t purposefully alienated the MS programmers in the first place, IE might have been fully CSS-supportive already in Version 5.

Instead the consortium took up the Netscape vs IE battle with a sharp twist and used their socalled primary mission to actually try to break IE’s market position.

It’s never a good idea to transfigure, to idealize such an obscure yet influential group’s activities and actions in the long run.

I truly don’t understand why the discussion can’t just be about tables versus css for layout. I give up.

Post deleted.
Thread closed.