Webpages with CSS are nothing without HTML ^_-

Perhaps my fault, but the thread thinking has deviated into assuming tabled designs make no use of CSS. This is far from the truth.

CSS by itself does not make sites more accessable, or search engines more effiicient. Using CSS may make sites more accessable, or it may make them less accessable.

Consider, a user with moderate long-sightedness; who prefers to view pages without any stylesheets atall. Not by overriding certain stylesheet rules, but by completely overruling stylesheets.

Anything now that uses CSS to re-order page content in a "tabular fashion" fails immediately and to the user, un- interpretably. Any organisiton of data is now as the document would read in markup, with markup-standard headings, fonts, and positions where elements are used. Tables noteably, still hold data in the same relative place.

Consider now, that instead of overulling stylesheets, the user reads a site with tables with their screenreader. The screenreader is optimized to deal with tables intelligently, as a table can be logically split into columns and rows, and read in a user specified order, perhaps with an aural repeat of headings on every other row for clarification. Even visually, a linearized table can still be interpretted using a reading convention rather than a series of reading assumptions.

A site using CSS to rearange content will hit a potential problem, depending on the screenreader used. Unfortumately, screenreaders are not a very well developed end of the software industry; ones I have tried only read in markup-order, and do not respect relative positioning of text blocks with respect to reading order. Of course, this favours well organised content. But it doesn't take CSS into account whatsoever (aural CSS rules do apply, but visual rules for the most part do not apply, and/or are not well standardized).

Using CSS makes your code as easy to understand as your code without CSS is easy to understand. If your code is not easy to understand, CSS will make it no easier. If your code is easy to understand, a lack of CSS will not make it more difficult.

It is good practise to keep the data and presentation layer separate, CSS and HTML are both presentation layers. Lynx sees HTML as the only presentation layer. Lynx doesn't care what your CSS stylesheet says. DIV hacks make Lynx-viewed pages vertically enourmous, tables are interprettatable in Lynx, because they are displayed as indented lists.

Finally, you shouldn't do anything to keep up with trends, by definition, a trend is in passing.

And even more finally, you can't move "on" to CSS. You can move "in" to CSS, but if you jump onto CSS and think you can leave HTML behind, you'll be more than a little marooned.

Personally, if I could design pages in Excel, I would. Excel has a predisposition for automation, and a concept of value transference across multiple dimensions through an infinate choice of functional gateways. Excel + CSS would kick a$.

Easy there Dennis Miller. No need to get all esoteric and completely literal (I think it goes without saying that you must have HTML) on everyone. This may be the first time ever that I was offered a chance to look at Excel on such a philosophical level. Thanks, but no thanks. Back to the point... Web technologies grow rapidily and will continue to be one step ahead of accessible browsing technologies. (Need we not forget that older screen readers could not parse tables correctly) This all comes down to what the designer prefers in the end. Tableless layout should be learned as another approach, because who knows if it will fade away or become the standard....

Well. I can't debate unless I'm permitted to be completely literal, and to take things said as completely literal. Anything else would be, or result in the necessity for an assumption, would it not?

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Hey. Overall apologies; I'll even drop out of the debate mode. I absolutely agree it's down to designers to chose, and has always been.

I should warn, I'll probably always argue about this when it comes up. Perhaps it's because I've never heard a good reason to change my mind, and the same reasons always come up.

Personally, I minimize the use of tables wherever possible; but sometimes, CSS and minimal markup alone is just too darn unreliable across browsers/with variable content. If it doesn't work today, it isn't working.

As roryt said, he finds it quicker to get a result with CSS alone. For the most part, I find it quicker to get a result with tables. I understand CSS, I just find it unsuitable after multiple attempts, when trying to do things that to me seem simple, and easy, with tables; including the entire structure of a page. I visualize the entire page as a tabular data structure. And thus I conform to the W3Cs recommendation.

Perhaps that is the fault of browsers, perhaps that's a fault of gaps in the specification of CSS. Perhaps it's a fault in my use of CSS.

If I don't like a table, I get rid of it. But I don't aim to design with, or without tables. I just want to get my prototype/concept, onto the web, ASAP, and have it look the same everywhere.

And I suppose that's what all web designers want.

Well said!

Personally, the only places i use tables are when I am displaying data that has to be set in rows, because then it just makes sense to do it that way. Otherwise my markup just gets so messy that it becomes unreadible and less productive.

because search engine likes it very much and you can make it compatible more with all browsers.

Untrue on both accounts.

Search engines couldn't care less if your site is tableless. They don't know the difference and it in no way indicates the relevance of a page. Going tablesless just means less code for them to sort through to find the content.

Only modern browsers support CSS enough that tableless designs can be used. Generation 4 and earlier browsers either can't handle them or handle them so poorly that they just don't work. Even generation 5 and 6 browsers have some issues with tableless design that requires a designer to know what they can and cannot do.

On the modern browser point: the large majority of people will have the latest version of their browser or at least on version back. But then again different browsers do display tables differently, the skill is to build the website so that it doesn't.

There's definately more output variety when it comes to some of the CSS placement/overflow rules in modern browsers than there is with table display rules, regardless of defined document type.

Tables are certainly more reliable when it comes to backwards display compatibility; there's not much that can go awry with a table: until you hit a text-only browser that is...

I disagree that everyone has the latest version of their browser... That's like assuming everyone uses Windows XP, and every WindowsXP user will be on Vista when it comes out publically.

I have a partition on this computer that boots Win98 with an IE version maybe before 5. MS have discontinued Windows 98 and ME support, so there's no neccessity for them to continue realeasing browsers that are compatible with Windows 2000 or lower. Luckiliy, I have more than one operating system on this computer; but not everyone has that luxury.

I haven't been on that partition since I installed the OS there, but it would be interesting to see how it renders newer standards of page..

It definately does pay to know, or at least be able to work out what you can and cannot do with or without tables, and it probably pays to define your target audience quite early in a project.

All though there is alot of sense in what you have just said. I did have some logic in mine.

1. An operating system costs money, and alot of it, whereas browsers are mostly free and available quickly.
2. People who access the internet have an internet connection which means they will probably be notified by ms every 10 mins to download the latest updates, including browser updates.
3. People that have win 98 will most likely have ie6 if they are on the internet which remember is the only way they are going to view your site.

What i am trying to say is that browser compatibility should not be much of a worry when switching to css design, because most things can be fixed.