The Underscore Archives

On 06/02/07, Steve Roome <steve at pepcross.com> wrote:
> Seems to me like a complete waste of time and energy. But, can the
> combined wisdom of underscore find any examples of a table based site
> that doesn't work because it's NOT all divs and css. (not just becasue
> they missed all the closing tags). I've never seen one, yet all these
> webheds keep harping on about it, about ten years on! *Snore*

I really don't want to dignify your rant with a response, but - hey -
define "work" ;) Looking "right" in a desktop browser is such a
limited vision of the web it's untrue.

I want my markup to be meaningful. I want it to use a presentation
layer that adapts to the device viewing it. I want advanced
interactivity. I want *no-one* to be excluded from my content (subject
to them using a HTTP 1.1-capable user-agent). I want attractive,
usable design, at minimal bandwidth cost.

All this is possible with Web Standards - (X)HTML for markup, CSS for
layout, DOM Scripting for interactivity. Not all of these are possible
with table layout techniques that were only invented/discovered
*because at the time there was no alternative at the time*. Now there
is, and it's entirely churlish to think that, because there's no
superficial difference in the rendering of a table-layout page vs a
CSS-layout one, this stuff doesn't matter or is some kind of cargo
cult.

> Anyway, most websites, imo, probably ought to be just one big imagemap
> [*3] per page.

And that's useful how, exactly? You must use lynx now and then, Steve...

> We've all got enough bandwidth now anyway.

Except when you're on your mobile, paying by the MB.

>         Steve - as belligerent [*2] web hating techie.

Come on in, the water's lovely. You just have to lighten up a bit ;)

> 3: Yes you can have ALT tags for all the blind folk who spend their
>    spare time surfing the web for corporate brochureware and nekked
>    chicks, which of course happens a lot.

Your biggest "blind folk"? Googlebot...

Tim