Web Site Discussion Thread

[seen]

This probably wont effect Melf, but I was very disappointed to find ipowerweb does not allow you to point multiple domain names to your site. That really screwed my sister in law over, as I had her site running in my space before I switched to ipowerweb. I should have looked into it before hand, but I've never seen a host before that doesn't do this...

Incorrect, it does allow domain aliasing. It is done through additional services, and you have to pay $8, I think. I have both tastudio.net and tastudio.com pointing to it, the main one is .com.

EDIT: Also, I would suggest to use tables with CSS, but css and styling in general can be very mechanical looking, just like a lot of php interface generated sites. If you want your site to look like a message board then it's your choice.

[Diff-chan]

EDIT: Also, I would suggest to use tables with CSS, but css and styling in general can be very mechanical looking, just like a lot of php interface generated sites. If you want your site to look like a message board then it's your choice.

LOL that is ridiculous. Its not about the tool, its what you do with it. You can, and there are example websites all over the net showing this, make websites that look EXACTLY the same with CSS as they do with tables. Those are mostly done to show how viable CSS is - the added flexibility means you can go beyond the old site.

[seen]

Instead of just talking, can one of you give me an example site where CSS really do replace tables. Also, I bet I can find some tables in there, it may not be a traditional slice type tables, but almost every webpage barring one that only uses layers will have tables in it. You gotta group things somehow.

[Masaka]

Melf, apologies in advance for bringing this into the thread. If you want us to split off, feel free, and we'll start a stylesheet thread somewhere else. But if you're getting into designing your own page, this may be info you're interested in anyway.

Instead of just talking, can one of you give me an example site where CSS really do replace tables. Also, I bet I can find some tables in there, ...

http://www.meyerweb.com/

Look at the source and find me a table tag that is being used for layout purposes. Hell, find me a table tag at all.

Other examples:
http://www.positioniseverything.net/...olcomplex.html

There are a ton of examples on this site in general. I've actually used a modification of this style on some sites I've done.

http://www.csszengarden.com/
The best demo of why CSS is the way to go. Change the entire look of the page by changing stylesheets. Not just the color of links on the page, but the entire look and feel.

That site alone demonstrates the #1 reason to use stylesheets for layouts over tables: Separation of design from content. I'm no designer. As a programmer, I'm more interested in making sure what I'm doing works. With stylesheets, I can turn over the basic html I generate to a designer and he or she can give me back class and id selectors to use that turns my drab HTML into something people might actually want to see.

Once the bulk of programmatic work is done, if people want the entire look to change, there's very little actual work to do. Everything can be controlled from a stylesheet file, rather than having to pick apart table tags.

...it may not be a traditional slice type tables, but almost every webpage barring one that only uses layers will have tables in it. You gotta group things somehow.

Layers? Nobody is using <layer>s these days, unless you're talking about z-indexing with CSS, and that's almost exclusively used for DHTML.

Using tables for page layout was a hack. A necessary one a few years back considering where browser technology was at the time, but still a hack. They don't lend themselves well to changes in resolution and font size, are a pain in the ass to maintain and are just very inflexible. But people, for the most part, are stuck with the notion that you "have" to do layout with tables. That just isn't the case.

Are tables still useful? Of course! For displaying tabular data. But browsers have matured to a level that you just don't have to use them for that purpose.

CSS has 2 problems that in the big scheme of things, are fairly minor. There are still compatibility issues with some of the selectors. Both IE and Mozilla engines do some oddball things when certain selectors are used together. Some of these come from one browser or the other trying to be helpful when sheets aren't quite correct. Some of them are just blatent misinterpretations or incorrect implementations of the specification. Some are due to vague definitions in the specification itself. However, I've yet to run into anything show stopping though...not even close.

I'm sorry to preach on this subject, but I can't think of a single reason to continue to use tables for layout instead of stylesheets, other than the fact that it is what people are used to using.

I can see the "but what about older browsers!" argument coming, but I'll head that off right now. Stylesheets in older browsers (Netscape 4.7 and earlier, IE 4.0, etc) are often broken. But in this age of easy browser detection, different stylesheets can be loaded depending on the browser, or completely ignored. What the user will get is often plain, but you know what? It degrades fairly nicely into something that's perfectly viewable to those people. Writing for the lowest common denominator is fine, but why not then enhance for people who are actually keeping up with the times?

Please note that I'm not saying that good looking web pages can't be done with tables. I'd hope that'd be fairly obvious. However, so much more can be accomplished with stylesheets. The sites I listed above all have links to other sites with examples, and detailed how-tos for everything.

Again, apologies for the evangelism.

[seen]

Well, thanks for the examples. But as you say yourself, the compatibility leaved a lot to be desired. I am also a programmer who is versed in design, and I use CSS to style a website, but I would not go as far as creating an entire website in this even though it may lend itself to be easily modified, and I doubt this too. I've visited one of your sites and the menu was way off to the right, a CSS mishap perhaps.

And don't snicker at compatibility between browsers, it blatantly states on one of those sites that they employ a hack for a certain browser and that another one has padding problems. This I am assuming is just regular shit not the 2% of the ones that are just into cheap CSS tricks.

Bottom line to me. CSS = good for styling, with tags that work across all browsers.
Tables = still the way to go to make your stuff look consistent across ALL browsers.

[Wolffen]

For a real world example, Wired.com has converted to a tableless layout, if I remember correctly. The only table code in the source for the main page is for the stock market data.

[lithium]

The best demo of why CSS is the way to go. Change the entire look of the page by changing stylesheets. Not just the color of links on the page, but the entire look and feel.

Commonly called the MVC design pattern. It's very powerful, but CSS is not the only thing that can accomplish it. All content in my site is pulled from a database, the view (look and feel) is kept completely seperate. They're glued together at the last minute with PHP. Offering me the same power as above, and then some. I can use CSS in there too if I desire. Far more powerful than static content and stylesheets alone.


Oh and thanks for the heads up on ipowerweb, seen.

[kabuki]

Commonly called the MVC design pattern. It's very powerful, but CSS is not the only thing that can accomplish it. All content in my site is pulled from a database, the view (look and feel) is kept completely seperate. They're glued together at the last minute with PHP. Offering me the same power as above, and then some. I can use CSS in there too if I desire. Far more powerful than static content and stylesheets alone.

XHTML + CSS + PHP + MySQL =

[Masaka]

Commonly called the MVC design pattern. It's very powerful, but CSS is not the only thing that can accomplish it. All content in my site is pulled from a database, the view (look and feel) is kept completely seperate. They're glued together at the last minute with PHP. Offering me the same power as above, and then some. I can use CSS in there too if I desire. Far more powerful than static content and stylesheets alone.

XHTML + CSS + PHP + MySQL =

My latest site uses PHP classes to generate its content and write a lot of my HTML for me (mainly from a spontanous desire to dabble in PHP). Back when I was just getting started, we kept templates in SQL Server and pulled them out per page.

It does require a lot more knowledge and software though. I was trying to stick with examples that used as simple an environment as possible.

1and1.com sucks ass if you want a Database-driven site. ipowerweb.com is pretty good. I suggest lunarpages.com as I've had the bext experience with them (and they actually e-mail you when they make upgrades to their servers!).

I actually need a host for the new site, and was looking at iPowerWeb, but I'll check out lunarpages too.

[seen]

I took a look at that book you mentioned, kabuki. And all it reaffirms is that the guy doesn't care for browsers which don't fully support his precious CSS. Well, you may want to experiment with this but I don't want to play russian roulette with my sites and clients, of hoping it will work on browsers. That's crap. If it was supported more across the board then maybe. In a few years perhaps.