Web Development

28-Nov-06 13:42

I am generally aware that the use of tables is discouraged and have even seen an ad for a web developer stateing "Table-less layouts and CSS tips and tricks a must". Curiously, when I took a look at the source for their site there was one table specified.

Can anyone tell me the reason for not using tables? Confused | :confused:

I'm on-line therefore I am.

JimmyRopes

MatrixCoder28-Nov-06 14:06

MatrixCoder

28-Nov-06 14:06

Good question. Tables were at one time used to align parts of web pages, organize text and display data. But now, CSS makes the whole alignment process easier by using containers and alignments. Tables are to hard to manage, and the code for a table tends to get messy and hard to manage. Plus, you don't have nearly as much control over tables as you do style sheets, and they don't look very modern either, just a big block in the middle of your web page.

Besides, the purpose of HTML has changed over the years. It's mostly used now as just a shell for CSS, Javascript and all other web languages.

Another good reason for using CSS is, if you have an external Style Sheet, you can easily change the styles for table in several pages (for example, a menu). When otherwise you would have to go through each individual page and change the table.

JimmyRopes28-Nov-06 14:13

28-Nov-06 14:13

Thanks for the information. Cool | :cool:

I'm on-line therefore I am.

JimmyRopes

George L. Jackson28-Nov-06 14:15

George L. Jackson

28-Nov-06 14:15

Tables are for displaying a matrix of information such as a database table or a spread sheet. They are very rigid, slow down page rendering and clutter your code. They are hard to maintain over time.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/practicalcss/[^]

JimmyRopes28-Nov-06 14:26

28-Nov-06 14:26

Thanks for the link. Cool | :cool:

I'm on-line therefore I am.

JimmyRopes

Guffa28-Nov-06 15:47

Guffa

28-Nov-06 15:47

Tables was used for layout at the time that there were no alternatives. It's a hack to do layout without any tools for layout. It was very useful at that time, but that time is not now.

The default behaviour of a table is to adapt itself to it's contents, and it was left up to each browser to figure out how to do it, which resulted in that each browser does it a little bit different. This behaviour that has to be defeated completely when using them for layout by specifying an exact size on all the cells, but people did put up with that because the benefit was that it was possible to do layout, and there weren't any alternatives around.

Today there are alternatives. You can use html to structure the information and css to do the layout. That allows you to separate the information from the presentation, which benefits load times, maintainence, search engine indexing and accessibility.

The table tag still has a purpose, of course, and that is it's original purpose; to make tables.

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b { font-weight: normal; }

George L. Jackson28-Nov-06 16:10

George L. Jackson

28-Nov-06 16:10

Sweet, sweet table making time!

Guffa28-Nov-06 16:39

Guffa

28-Nov-06 16:39

Ahh... the nostalgia... Yes, there's where the table based layouts belong... Smile | :)

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b { font-weight: normal; }

JimmyRopes29-Nov-06 2:30

custom web combobox component options only work if I use

29-Nov-06 2:30

Guffa said; "The default behaviour of a table is to adapt itself to it's contents, and it was left up to each browser to figure out how to do it, which resulted in that each browser does it a little bit different"

Good point.

I'm on-line therefore I am.

JimmyRopes

howardjr28-Nov-06 8:54

howardjr

28-Nov-06 8:54

I've written a custom web combobox component that supports explict options in the web-page as one way of suppling choices for the drop-down list:

<cbo:ComboBox runat="server" id="ComboBox">
	<asp:ListItem Value="1" Text="one" />
	<asp:ListItem Value="2" Text="two" />
	<asp:ListItem Value="3" Text="three" />
	<asp:ListItem Value="4" Text="four" Selected />
</cbo:ComboBox>

Aestheticly, it would be much nicer, and easier for the users of my component, if the items could be defined as:

<cbo:ListItem Value="1" Text="one" />

How can I do this? Can custom web components be nested?

Thanks.

Tooltip window

texan_wiz28-Nov-06 6:38

texan_wiz

28-Nov-06 6:38

Hi all,

I want to create a tooltip window much like IntelliTXT on this web site..where I can have more links and some animation...

Any ideas?

Thanks

Re: Tooltip window

shefali_sinha29-Nov-06 7:41

shefali_sinha

29-Nov-06 7:41

Check out http://fijiwebdesign.com/content/view/82/77/

More on http://www.java2s.com/Code/JavaScript/Ajax-Layer/TextFieldToolTip.htm

-Shefali

A race between onClick & onChange

Malcolm Smart28-Nov-06 5:14

Malcolm Smart

28-Nov-06 5:14

Hi
Sorry for long post.

I have an edit box, and next to it, two elements, a tick, and a cross. The idea is the user types in the edit box, clicks the 'tick' image when they're happy, or the 'cross' when they want to cancel their change.

But...I also have an onChange event on the edit box, so if they click on another edit box (I have loads of these - not my design - honest!), the new value is stored. I *have* to store the value (via ajax) after each edit. Everything works fine, or it looks to work fine. They enter data, click the tick, it saves. They enter data, click on another edit box, it saves. But if they click the cross, hey - it saves. The onChange event is called on the editBox before I can respond to the onClick event on either of the two images.

So, they click on the cross, the onChange event is called on the edit box, I save the data. WRONG. Is there anyway I can tell that they have clicked teh cross before the onChange event is fired, or in the onChange event, check to see if the onClick event of the cross is pending?

Any help much appreciated.

----
I just want you to be happy;
That's my only little wish...

Shog⁹28-Nov-06 6:07

Shog⁹

28-Nov-06 6:07

Malcolm Smart wrote:
Is there anyway I can tell that they have clicked teh cross before the onChange event is fired, or in the onChange event, check to see if the onClick event of the cross is pending?

No. And even if you could, it'd still fall apart if they tried to tab over to the cross link (stopping briefly on the tick in the process). (You did make them tabstops, right?)

One way you could make this work is to postpone actually saving the data until they've started editing another field (or clicked the tick icon, of course). Alternately, you could store the previous value, and change the cross link behavior to just store that, overwriting whatever was previously stored. Another way would be on the backend - keep track of the previous value for each field, add a method of rolling back to it.

Malcolm Smart28-Nov-06 10:27

Malcolm Smart

28-Nov-06 10:27

But I never get the onClick event for the cross img element. I just get the onchange for the edit box and nothing else. I have tried returning true and false (not at the same time Blush | :O

) ) to the onchange event hoping the click event would bubble and the click event of the cross would fire but no such luck. I am already holding the old value but have no idea when the user clicks on the cross!

<div class='ForumSig'></div>

Bradml28-Nov-06 12:12

Bradml

28-Nov-06 12:12

Why do you save with the onchange event? If it is because the user will lose data if they save anything else at the same time?

Create a temporary database that you can save information in.

Brad
Australian
By contacting your lawyer you negate the right to sue me.

Malcolm Smart28-Nov-06 20:28

Malcolm Smart

28-Nov-06 20:28

The save isn't an issue. The issue is I am 'missing' or 'losing' the onclick event of the element because the onChange event of the edit control is being fired. I would like to capture both events. If I don't catch the onChange event, I get the onClick event of the . If I catch the onChange event, I don't get the onClick event. I need both.

Regards

Angel
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