- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 09:57:57 -0800
- To: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Cc: David Poehlman <poehlman1@home.com>, Scott Luebking <phoenixl@sonic.net>, <lucy-ples@mtu-net.ru>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
At 8:12 AM -0500 12/25/01, Charles McCathieNevile wrote: >Just so we realise that this isn't an area where there is someone with all >the answers: > >CSS, definitely. CSS is uch friendlier to older browsers than tables. >(Especially to older browsers still in relatively wide use, like lynx). Not really. If you're talking about old, old browsers, and you give them something like <div>s with CSS-P, it will flow it together in an old mess. If you're talking about old, old browsers, and you give them <table>, at worst it does the same as lynx -- flows it together in one big mess -- and at best it will lay out the page exactly as intended. Here's why tables are better than CSS -- the semantic meaning is more clear. In CSS, _any_ element can be used for layout purposes; most commonly it's <div>, the absolute most generic tag in the lot, short of its close cousin, <span>. A <div> or a <span> can mean, literally, _anything_. Now, take <table>. A <table> can be one of two things: It can be a layout table, or it can be a data table. Distinguishing between the two, if coded correctly, is not all that hard; data tables, for example, rarely are designed to fill the entire screen within a <body>, while layout tables usually don't have captions. Therefore, <table> is a _lot_ clearer, within the markup, at indicating "this is a bit of markup which could be either a layout table or a data table" -- two choices. CSS-driven layouts use elements which could be _anything_, from generic style groupings to content groups to layout groups to indications of language change to anything else. --Kynn -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire http://kynn.com/resume January Web Accessibility eCourse http://kynn.com/+d201
Received on Tuesday, 25 December 2001 13:26:56 UTC