What is your opinion on the trend towards tableless CSS designs, and the idea that all formatting should be removed from the content. I use some css for site design, but sometimes find the pressure to use all CSS can drag out completion time in order to hack my way around browser limitations. If you would share your well-qualified opinions, I would be most appreciative.
here is your answer http://www.amazon.com/HTML-Utopia-Designing-Without-Tables/dp/0975240277 Code (markup):
tableless design via CSS can be great, but there is no reason not to use tables when the data/information being displayed calls for it. I use CSS and divs for just about all designs today because it's easy (for me), but when I have data that needs a table, I give it a table. Focus on creating good looking websites, noone's going to grade you on "cheating" by slipping a table in there.
Table-less is how I design my websites and how I always will design them, If you learn the basic's and general jist of the language you will find it alot more flexible and useful to you. I used to use tables but the of course times change and now there are plenty of tutorials on the web that can help you with your table-less designs. I would highly recommend table-less ---- phish3rz
I second Neesha's book. It really shows a newbie how to use CSS to position stuff (at least generally). Page layout with CSS is hard until you see how it works. That book does some very basic layouts. Their explanation of floats is very bried but the illustration is in my head to this day.
I was hard core table user until just over a year ago then I thought hold up lad there may be something in this CSS stuff as your using style sheets anyway. (it's true sometimes I talk to myself like a farmer) Anyway although at first you may think it takes longer to make it work in CSS once you understand it, it is way faster, way more efficient. And you can change whole websites by just editing the style sheet. Now that is just beautiful in my opinion
There are times when divs are more efficient and times when tables are more efficient. Since both are valid CSS containers I use both depending on which container does the best job. Here's an example. There are all sorts of schemes for doing a multi-column layout with divs where all the columns stay the same height while the content varies (dynamic content, fluid height). None are as efficient as using a table. This doesn't have anything to do with separating content and formatting. Tables employ CSS classes and id's just like divs do. The end user doesn't care what kind of CSS container you use as long as it works correctly.
most of my design work thus far has been css as it's easier for me to envision when planning ahead... except for one page. it was a page with a banner on top, three image links on the left and three mini headers with descriptions on the right. i've tried before with css and getting the page to work with IE6, 7 and FF simultaneously while looking the same was such a pain that a quick 4 row table was the only reasonable option... all the browsers looked the same right away! although, tweaking the code for browsers on larger projects is def. faster than developing a massive table for a more complex page (in my experience). just go with what your gut tells you.... that is, until the world switches over to a single version of a single browser.
Heck, the end user doesn't care if you used Voodoo glowskullz so long as it looks good on his/her machine and doesn't get any customer (site visitor) complaints.
I've used to count on table design only, but since we have had a new trend rising towards the CSS layouts, tableless, div, or whatever you call it I started to learn CSS, its very simple as well as it makes your template much cleaner but when you view the CSS file, its an ugly thing, contains so many variables and settings that you feel lost in a .css style and not sure what to edit. (Talking about premade styles for various Open Source templates..)
^this book saved me: HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS by Rachel Andrew and Dan Shafer. It only gets into the basics, starting out with someone's PSD and the HTML code. I never used tables but that makes no difference, they don't compare tabled layouts, simply show how to make basic setups based on someone's PSD. EnPassant, template CSS sheets are almost always super heavy and bloated (they want the buyers of the template to comment out and back the things they want to use). A serious web page builder can make their own CSS sheets lovely and clean.