On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 02:25 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: > On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote: > > > I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue, > > but... > > I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS > > and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time > > as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've > > managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself > > in the foot or somewhere... > > Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is > > ridiculously fast. > > Any thoughts, observations or recommendations? > > I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create > websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms, > tables are the preferred solution. > > I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics > and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have > all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best > attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject. > > Paul > > -- > Paul M. Foster > I think the argument of tables vs css can go a little deeper too. These days, sites should not only be developed with good clean code that validates, but semantic markup. If your client doesn't like/know what this is, just give it to them in terms of seo! Tabular data should be kept in tables, layout shouldn't be done with tables if you can avoid it, but if you must use them, at least check the site after in a text browser or screen reader to get an impression of how others 'see' it. Same goes for other aspects of a site too. So many times I've seen people (DreamWeaver users for the most part) litter an entire page with <span> tags, most of which do nothing more than bolden or italicise text, which is not all that semantic. Codes lists are another one too. That code should be in a list, as it makes more sense semantically. Trust me, semantics are gonna be the next big thing, especially if browsers start to delve into what M$ has dubbed 'slices' in IE8. Sites are forever sharing content and scraping small content areas from other sites, so wouldn't it be good to make it easier in some respects and give a bit more context and meaning to content? Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
