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Web Site Design - Design Issues
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I thought I should add a page on the issue of "tableless" layout, as it is such an in-thing among web designers these days.
If you are baffled by what this is all about, I will explain. In the "old days" tables were used to layout pages - infact this site does so at present. The problems were, however, that pages were hard to maintain because of the amount of table code which had to be mixed in with the actual page content in the HTML code. From the point of view of design, it was very hard to acheive anything other than a rather flat, angular, boxy design. Designers found ingenious ways around this by, for example, using background images which contained the curves, the extra dimensionality, etc. However, the net result were rather complex designs which were very hard to modify.
Along came "tableless layout" which seemed to be the answer to the designer's prayer. The concept behind this is the separation of content from style. Unfortunately, browser support for tableless layout has been very poor, especially the ubuiquitous Microsoft Internet Explorer. The dream of easily modifiable, versatile and simple layout has not thus been acheived. My own feeling is that tableless layout is so tricky to implement properly that it is not necessarily the best option in all circumstances. Much depends on what one is trying to achieve. If you wish to have a site which gets away from a boxy grid-like structure AND whose design can be changed quickly and easily, whose content you wish to update with the miniumum of fuss (assuming it is not a CMS-based site), which is maximally search engine friendly, and which must meet web accessibility guidelines, then I would suggest you specify tableless layout. However, if you are on a tight budget, and such considerations are not vital, then you may find a traditional tabular layout does the job.
browser considerations >
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alasdairbroun.org.uk
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