HTML/CSS question

[javasaurus]

Frames, tables, CSS positioning, all can be used for placing elements where you want them. I know that tables are very old-school for this, and I'm under the impression that CSS is the current vogue, but frames seem more intuitive to me for positioning. Why the move to CSS? Or is there another new method coming?

Comments

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

CSS provides flexibility and reusability. If you use stylesheets, it's easy to make global changes on multiple pages by just changing the style sheet. Frames are more intuitive, true, but if you're using more complicated setups, you can have all kinds of different things you can do with stylesheets that just aren't easily accomplished with frames.

csszengarden.com

Check it out.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

I know a bit about CSS for styles, but not much about using it for positioning. I'll check out the website this evening! Thanks!

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

frames are evil. frames totally mess up with printing and totally mess up with navigation. iframes are useful, but only when you're really writing an application that needs it. frames are used when a part of a page has to come from a completely different site (and you don't want to set up a local proxy for it).

Ajax is the way to go and CSS is a core component of Ajax.

CSS Layout, part of CSS-3, is the upcoming standard that will finally stabilize things and make table layouts a thing of the past. the problem with tables and why they won't go away is that the browsers are all different with regards to margins and padding for certain elements, especially in forms and lists, so there's a LOT of tweaking one has to do to get something "just right" across the board, things that tables just do "right" up front.

CSS-3 will fix that, but damned if they're not taking their time with it.

and even then, it'll be years, if ever, for microsoft IE to actually do anything about it. after netscape died, M$ actually completely disbanded their IE team and even the current team that produced IE 7 so couldn't make sense out of the browser rendering code that they only changed the front (menus and buttons) and kept security patches up to date - they didn't touch the rendering code that is just as broken now as it was when IE 5.5 came out. So for all the "big changes" IE promised with 7, just like the "big changes" with Vista, NONE of them ever came to pass - just a little cosmetics and added hardware support, nothing more.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

The problem for me if tables go away is that a lot of the survey type things I do for a living depend on some use of tables in order to 'match' the paper version of the survey. I really REALLY don't want to have to go back and redesign huge blocks of coding because of non-support of tables.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

tables will never go away. there are plenty of reasons for presenting tabular / "grid" data and that's not going anywhere.

we're talking about table-based layouts, which are the hacks people (including most LJ template designers) use to get their menus up in corner x, their sidebars along side y at n pixels wide, etc. they are total hacks, abuses of the system for things it was not intended to do.

a table is meant to be a page element for presenting data, not a mechanism for laying out the whole page. it was just so reliable and easy to learn that it caught on before the standards people could design an alternative.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

as for what the amateur can do - table-based layouts are ok if you're not worried about it and just want a "home page" or for, like a blog, you'd rather it "just work" than be technically perfect or forward-looking.

tables are evil if writing a full web application. tables make it hard to support printing properly (with CSS layouts, I can hide away the menu and sidebars when doing a print - see http://www.teoco.com/aboutus.htm and hit print preview - you didn't reload the page to get that new layout). (yes, i know the "go" button is off the screen in firefox - it'll be fixed in the next rollout. that's one of those browser differences issues i talked about above).

tables also make ajax updating a pain because they'll muck around with the layout as you change things. updating divs controlled by css will be more stable-looking.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comments! It's a shame that frames have such problems as you mentioned. I've only recently started experimenting with them, and they seem wonderful on the surface. I didn't realize there were printing problems with them. I'll check out the links you suggested, and look at CSS positioning more this evening.

Thanks again!

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, keep in mind that css layout thingy is NOT implemented anywhere yet. the spec isn't even done.

just google for "page layouts without tables css" and you'll get plenty of links for templates out there for things the browsers do support. there are even books on just that topic alone.