Tableless Website?

flimsy031 posted this at 12:17 — 4th February 2009.

They have: 13 posts

Joined: Feb 2009

Hi Everyone,

Would it be better to make website table less? Has anyone ever developed website completely table less?

And, what's the purpose of making a site table less?

Hope, I will have some good inputs from you guys. Thanks...

Flimsy
RIA Development Company
Flash Banner Design

decibel.places posted this at 13:29 — 4th February 2009.

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

Hi Flimsy,

This Wikipedia article is a good summary of the pros and cons of using tables.

Table-based layout was a very web 1.0 method of achieving specific layouts, along with transparent spacer images - but it was a kludge, not really using HTML as it was semantically intended.

Table-free layouts may load faster, and they are much easier to modify, and are much more precise, and more compliant with accessibility requirements. Using css you can hide and reveal or overlap elements, make them draggable and more, things you cannot do with the table layout.

You may also want to read about separating content from presentation which is common with CMS sites.

Many Drupal themes are table-free - the TWF website does not use tables (you can check yourself by viewing the source)

webwiz posted this at 16:53 — 4th February 2009.

He has: 629 posts

Joined: May 2007

There is also this 2003 article that explains more.

BTW - "table less" is a misleading term. HTML is about meaning - using Hn tags for headings, P tags for paragraphs, and ... tables for tabular data.

Cordially, David
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