[thelist] Table-less CSS Design and XHTML

Gary Bland Gary at star-chaser.com
Thu Jun 27 17:24:01 CDT 2002


Hershel Robinson wrote:

 >
 > I would now like to approach the site manager with the idea of table-less
 > CSS design *now* while the site is still being developed.
 >
 > I myself am BRAND NEW to both CSS design and XHTML and am in the
process of
 > learning both.  Any pointers are appreciated.
 >
 > Thank you,
 > Hershel Robinson
 >

A little advice, *Do Not* attempt a table-less design for the first time
on a large project. Since it is going to be your first try, you will be
asking the project manager to increase development time by at least 50%.

You can do all the reading you want about table-less design. It will
help,  but only marginally. Nothing will prepare you for the large
amount of experimentation you will have to do. Even if you were to
eliminate NN4 you would still have to deal with IE5-6 on Windows and Mac
both require workarounds and IE5 windows requires hacks. The easiest
browsers to deal with are Mozilla 1.0 Netscape 6+ and Opera 6. All of
them still have bugs that you will have to deal with.

Before going to your project manager, try a little experiment of your
own. Grab one of the more complicated web pages from the project that is
designed with tables. Then try to make it table-less, still keeping the
layout of the table design. If you can do this without a large time
investment and make it work cross-browser and cross-platform, then you
may be ready to ask the project manager for a change to table-less design.


Gary
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