Comments on: CSS 3 column layout – the holy grail!?

By: Stefan Mischook

Stefan Mischook — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:51:10 +0000

It’s all about the audience that you want to reach. Yes, you can ignore the IE crowd and thus ignore about 60-70% of the traffic for most websites. It’s your choice.

You can use tables and have it work in all browsers but then you may have trouble with some hand held devices and if you want to change the structure of your pages you will have more work than otherwise.

That said, I think this argument is overstated because it is rare indeed that websites change their structure so fundamentally.

All this is moot these days: there are plenty of free to use CSS based web templates that solve the layout problems for you.

… That is to say that you DON’T need to use tables for page-level layout anymore.

Stefan

By: Trond Torkildsen

Trond Torkildsen — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:45:29 +0000

Tables and hacks, what’s the difference?
Using hack with CSS to make it work smoothly is not an ideal solution for sure.
Normally the questions for hacks come when the web-site doesn’t come out good in IE.
And the reason for this is Microsoft’s unwillingness to follow standards and of course users who du not keep their browsers up to date.
So what is the solution to this, apart from don’t care about stupid IE users with old insecure browser? Well on way is using tables. In my opinion this is also a kind of hack and no better than the “real” hacks used with CSS.
Using tables may solve some browser troubles, just like other hacks, but it will surly create new troubles when the need for change come sooner or later.
A “keep it simple” approach when it comes to layout will in many cases create the best user interface and make hacks and tables unnecessary.
And why should every web page run smoothly in prehistorically browsers or even in new browsers not up to the main standards?

By: Christopher Wassall

Christopher Wassall — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:24:41 +0000

A little late, but still…

This has been a problem for a long time now and it won’t be getting better any time soon; as long as people are still using browsers as old as IE5 (not many, but they are out there), hacks, conditionals (better hacks) or tables are the only options, at least for commercial sites.

But then there was a good point raised by oldog about usability, which takes tables back off the list. New browsers are forcing us to write new hacks, too. This is a bad situation to be in!

By: Stefan Mischook

Stefan Mischook — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:35:34 +0000

Hi Kat,

Try using IE conditional comments:

http://www.killersites.com/blog/2006/ie-conditional-comments-video/

This will allow you to make the required changes to your layout (for IE 7) without affecting other browsers.

Stefan

By: Webmistress M/K

Webmistress M/K — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:21:19 +0000

I too am in this quandry. It seems that everything in my css styles look fine……except in IE7. I hate the idea of using HTML tables, but it seems that I do not possess much of a choice, especially given that I have images that must fit in the right and left columsn with a width that is not my choice to decide.

Kat

By: Pony2u

Pony2u — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:57:19 +0000

I am using the Holy Grail as put out by Alistapart.com. My problem is, that when I use anchor tags to reference with in the same page once the anchor scrolls down, the content above it goes away and I can’t scroll back up? Now if I anchor back to the top of the page it’s fine, but since there are several areas where I used anchors that would be kind of redundant! Can anyone offer any help?

By: oldog

oldog — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:09:45 +0000

I hear a lot of talk about design and function and standards, but I haven’t seen anybody mention useability.
I work with the disabled population everyday and nothing annoys me more than information that is inaccessible for everyone.
Standards, while you can groan and complain, are there for this purpose as well, not to make a webdesigner’s life easier (honestly, get over yourself!).
Next time you want to impress someone with an intricate table layout, try asking a blind person using a screen reader to test it for you.
CSS, while it’s not perfect, does what it’s supposed to do, separates structure from content and it does it for a reason.

By: Stefan Mischook

Stefan Mischook — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 04:49:25 +0000

Shawn,

Thanks for the positive remarks regarding the book, but alas, I did not write the book. You’re thinking of David … I’m Stef.

I took over killersites.com several years ago and all the content on the site is my own.

About CSS:

I thinking that table based design is not required these days. Still, my complaints about CSS hacks and the fact that CSS has a lousy model for page-level layout still stands.

CIAO

Stefan

By: Shawn

Shawn — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 03:38:49 +0000

As a “old guy going back to school” in ‘99, one of my classes was on web design and your book, Killer Web Sites, was required reading. Read it from cover to cover many times with my new found love for building web sites. HTML and tables… had it all down to a t, fixed, liquid and all, even down to *gasp* Netscape 4. Along comes CSS and wow, now I can move my data at will, layer graphical elements without worry, add content much quicker than breaking items into td’s and tr’s, colspan’s, etc. Now, I didn’t jump right to CSS, because tables were pretty solid, once you learned the ins and outs… but, it’s the same for CSS. Once you know what to avoid, there is a lot to be gained. I understand the programming side, and such, but from a graphic web designer, CSS is by far the choice for me. Just thought I’d throw my two cents in… And thanks for the guidance early on in my career. Your book is still recommended reading in my mind.

By: Stefan Mischook

Stefan Mischook — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:10:46 +0000

Yes,

I put together a web site template site at:

http://www.webshapes.org

.. Therein you will find a bunch of css templates with no hacks.