nesting tables

disaster-master's picture

She has: 2,154 posts

Joined: May 2001

I just read a post that mentioned nesting tables and was wondering.....is it better to have one big table for your layout with lots of rows and cells or two or three tables within the main one?

Am I correct in saying that if you have lots and lots of tables inside each other it takes longer for the site to load?

Just curious about this. I just started using dreamweaver and have found that you can make one big table and just draw in all kinds of cells and rows. You can put stuff just about anywhere you want it. Does this confuse the browsers or does it really matter?

disastermaster

AndyB's picture

They have: 344 posts

Joined: Aug 1999

The same quantity of code takes the same time to load no matter what the code is.

The differences are in the speed with which your browser renders the code. Netscape differs from IE in that it needs all of the table content available before it starts rendering the table. So - three small tables will seem to appear faster than one big table.

sersun's picture

They have: 32 posts

Joined: Aug 2001

NS 4 can have some serious slowdown when you have tables nested 4 or more deep. I think it is better, more flexible design to use nested tables than trying to fit the whole page in one table with rowspans and colspans.

Netscab's terrible table rendering abilities are fixed in version 6.

sersun

sersun

Keegan's picture

They have: 300 posts

Joined: Aug 2001

From the way you design Disaster I can see tables will be in your present, and future (future)

Tables in DW respond differently while you design if they are nested, or not nested.

If I have a table that has multiple columns and rows and it is not responding correctly as I add the sliced out images, I will pull some images out, nest a table and put the images back in and it works. Nesting is important. When I am working with a lot of sliced images, I start with one table. Normally my top slice determines the width of the table, which is why I design the site totally in Photoshop, then slice it out and "Make it work" hence why I said in an earlier post that the image I see in Photoshop is not neccesarily the result in the browser.

As I peice what I hope will come out of photoshop I experiment with various uses of nesting and empty nesting =)

Custom web sites are just that, we are all here because we determined that our templates, arent templates in the corporate template idea. Most people mistake this in thinking that a template (When they first get into site design) is just a basic cut and dry site. POOEY! (Yes I said pooey) The templates we first see are just crappy templates. I believe site design is just as photography and canvas is to the world, just in a digital medium. You do it because you love it, and your goal is to help those websites that suck look a little better.

That is one thing that everyone on this forum has in common. We are all joined at the hip when it comes to utilizing their computer for digital wonderment. We all must have been able to draw at one point, but found that paintbrush just did not cut it.

Photoshop is king!

Shall we dance! Shall we Dance!

Quick, what is that from.

...

... think

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...

Photoshop and I! oops The king and I (Yul Brenner) Ok I have talked enough..

K

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