Re: Columns

Jacques Steyn writes:

> There is still no COLUMN (I'm not talking of a table column, but
> newspaper column) element in the W3C recommendations, so authors use the
> TABLE element to get the effect of columns. The W3C recommends that
> tables should not be used for layout purposes -- but do not practice
> what they preach as the W3C main page consists of tables. But if there
> is no COLUMN element, what can one do to get the effect? Until such time
> as there is a COLUMN element authors will continue to use the TABLE
> element.

Or until CSS support becomes more widespread.  Note, BTW, that if you
want to replace your layout tables, but don't want to work out how to
do it in CSS, the quick and dirty solution is to replace TABLE with
DIV STYLE="display:table", TR with DIV STYLE="display:table-row", and
TD with DIV STYLE="display:table-cell".  (In fact, tables and
table-rows are implied if they're left out, so you only need the
display:table DIV if there's more than one table in a row, and the
display:table-row DIV if there's more than one row in a table.  :-) )
That tells CSS2-aware browsers to do the layout as if there were a
table there, but without abusing the TABLE structure.  Of course, this
is a new feature in CSS2, and nobody supports it yet, but the more
it's used, the more incentive there'll be for browser makers to
support it.  (And since most browsers already have table display
algorithms anyway, they should have little trouble supporting it.)  In
the meantime, your layout "tables" should have been constructed to
degrade gracefully anyway.
					John T. Whelan
					whelan@iname.com
					http://www.slack.net/~whelan/

Received on Friday, 25 September 1998 17:13:13 UTC