5 ms·

In my own experience I find them to be very inflexible and unpredictable. There are still scenarios when you need them though, so I wouldn't call them 'poor pr

In my own experience I find them to be very inflexible and unpredictable. There are still scenarios when you need them though, so I wouldn't call them 'poor practice' so much as something that should only be used if it makes sense.

Paul_D_Santana 13y ago
What is the most optimal method to use instead of tables? [Edit] Added to my original post.
- jdwissler 13y ago
  It really depends on what you are trying to do, I don't really know how to answer the question, it is too broad. But like I said, I don't think tables are 'bad'. I think the main stigma against tables was that back in the old days they were used to layout pages that had column layouts, but I didn't program back then so I don't really know.
  - lowboy 13y ago
    Using tables for layout is bad, full stop, no quotes. Tables for tabular data are the only reason you should use the <table> element.
    - jdwissler 13y ago
      What qualifies tabular data? GMail uses a table for laying out emails, is that tabular? (Maybe it is, I don't know, which is why I'm asking.) What if you have an element which has 5 children that are in a row and you want the one in the middle to take up all the remaining width while the rest just take the width they need? I'm actually curious because I haven't figured it out. (Besides using table cells that is)
      - lowboy 13y ago
        It's tricky to define exactly, but I like this article's take on it: http://webdesign.about.com/od/tables/a/aa122605.htm http://webdesign.about.com/od/tables/a/aa122605.htm A list of emails can be thought of as tabular data. In Gmail, you have columns (selection, star, important, participants, subject, and date) with one row per email. That's a table without explicit headers. Yeah, with current css specs in browsers you need to resort to table-cell stylings like display:table-row and display:table-cell. But that can be done without using actual <table> elements.
        jdwissler 13y ago
        I see. I don't think we actually disagree on anything, but were just thinking of different semantics. I should have qualified that I rarely use the table tag and use display:table-cell. I was thinking of them as effectively the same as using a table for layout.

Paul_D_Santana 13y ago

What is the most optimal method to use instead of tables? [Edit] Added to my original post.

jdwissler 13y ago
It really depends on what you are trying to do, I don't really know how to answer the question, it is too broad. But like I said, I don't think tables are 'bad'. I think the main stigma against tables was that back in the old days they were used to layout pages that had column layouts, but I didn't program back then so I don't really know.
- lowboy 13y ago
  Using tables for layout is bad, full stop, no quotes. Tables for tabular data are the only reason you should use the <table> element.
  - jdwissler 13y ago
    What qualifies tabular data? GMail uses a table for laying out emails, is that tabular? (Maybe it is, I don't know, which is why I'm asking.) What if you have an element which has 5 children that are in a row and you want the one in the middle to take up all the remaining width while the rest just take the width they need? I'm actually curious because I haven't figured it out. (Besides using table cells that is)
    - lowboy 13y ago
      It's tricky to define exactly, but I like this article's take on it: http://webdesign.about.com/od/tables/a/aa122605.htm http://webdesign.about.com/od/tables/a/aa122605.htm A list of emails can be thought of as tabular data. In Gmail, you have columns (selection, star, important, participants, subject, and date) with one row per email. That's a table without explicit headers. Yeah, with current css specs in browsers you need to resort to table-cell stylings like display:table-row and display:table-cell. But that can be done without using actual <table> elements.
      - jdwissler 13y ago
        I see. I don't think we actually disagree on anything, but were just thinking of different semantics. I should have qualified that I rarely use the table tag and use display:table-cell. I was thinking of them as effectively the same as using a table for layout.