CSS-based web design vs. table-based web design


a little experiment gave me pause

As I mentioned over on my Unit Circle Blog , I'm finally redesigning the Unit Circle Rekkids site. It must be at least 4-5 years since I last redid its look and I think it's held together pretty good over that time, but it is definitely starting to look dated. I'm definitely a curmudgeon when it comes to web design on my own sites. Up until that last redesign, I avoided using tables in my sites because they didn't always look good on Web TV or Lynx. Now for this time I've been thinking that it might be time to switch from a table-based design to a CSS-based one. (I was using CSS before, but in the simplest way to standardize formatting across many pages) The arguments are compelling: keeping data and presentation separate; ease of updating the look; etc... Also I've seen some pretty compelling sites that are done this way. I don't have a book yet, so I'm just using Dreamweaver 8's CSS features and using internet resources to figure it out. It isn't too bad, but after putting together a simple design and testing it out in a few browsers I realized that the CSS implementations are different enough that trying to do this now is going to be an exercise in pain. I'm going back to my table-based layouts with maybe a bit more CSS formatting for this go-around, I think. Once the site is up, I will post my CSS and table based prototypes somewhere and link to them here.

I think that some of the CSS sites I've seen are a little to pretentious about it. I don't think that CSS was originally meant to be the end-all be-all layout system for a website in the same way that tables weren't either. People took the capabilities of these simple ideas and extended them into doing things that they were never originally meant to be used for. CSS files were supposed to be shared across groups of pages, creating more of template-like approach for similar pages. Tables were meant to help lay out tabular data. The war against table-based design seems a little unnecessary to me, especially since CSS consistency across browsers is still be pretty weak. My table based designs look awesome on IE4, how about your CSS ones? Now, I'm not arguing for table-based design here. I'm up for using whatever tools work well and make my life simpler. I'm going to be getting a CSS book or two for Chanukah maybe and I'll see if I was just going about it wrong. What I am against is CSS proponents pretending that their use of CSS is more than hacking in the same way that tables were hacked.

anyway, once more into the breach.

Posted: Sat - December 24, 2005 at 11:29 AM           |

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