NYCPHP Meetup

[Rob Marscher]

Usually if you avoid using tables for layout, you can drastically change 
the layout of your page without altering the html.  If you keep to the 
indended use of the html tags, then the page should look somewhat ok if 
you turn off your styles altogether (which is maybe how it would look 
for someone using Netscape 4 or some other ancient browser).  You can 
also supply different layouts for other uses like printing or for mobile 
devices without changing the html.  I think screen readers for visually 
impaired people read table html elements expecting it to be some type of 
data.  I can't say that from experience though.  So if you don't really 
care about those things, I'm not sure there's anything else wrong with 
using tables for layout except you'll have young "know-it-alls" who just 
got out of their html development class saying that you have really bad 
code (happened to me before).  You also can't put those cool xhtml/css 
compliant badges on your page ;)

That's crazy about Outlook 2007.  It's extremely hard to make consistent 
looking html emails.  A lot of people require/expect them, but most web 
email clients will strip css and alter the html in other ways, plus 
pretty much none of them will display images without the user clicking a 
button to say it's ok.

 From the article, "Bring on PDF email. I'm ready." - that would be 
perfect except for the bloated file size of the email do to needing to 
embed images and everything in the pdf.

-Rob

Cliff Hirsch wrote:
>>> I have to admit though... avoiding using tables for layout can really 
>>> rack your brain in some situations and take more time to implement.
>>>       
>
> So what's wrong with tables for layout other than all that "not
> semantically correct" religion stuff? It seems to me that both
> approaches are essentially flawed as they both require hacks. It's hard
> for me to justify css/div religion when the browser client space is
> still so screwed up.
>
> And -- get this -- I just read that Outlook 2007 dumped its IE HTML
> rendering engine for Word's rendering engine, which will further break a
> whole heck of a lot of html emails. 
>
> See:
> http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=156&format=
> html#5
>
> Cliff
>
>