Related
I'm trying to extend the VisualEditor by adding custom functionality.
It was pretty easy to add stuff which is realized with a single HTML-tag without parameters. But now I try to add textcolor. I tried to replicate the LanguageAnnotation as that's pretty similar (using span lang=.. while I want span style=color:..).
But it looks like there are a lot more things which I have to change here & I don't understand.
I'd be very grateful for any kind of help here.
Edit: To provide more information: Currently I am trying to replicate the .toDomElements function which I struggle with because I can not find the place where to modify the exact tag syntax (style instead of lang).
Well, I'm not sure if it's the best possible solution, but I've managed this problem by replicating the LanguageAnnotatation, including the widget-system (I chose it because it was the closest one to what I wanted to accomplish as it uses CSS and the span-tag).
I've replicated the following classes, adjusting the attributes (language has lang and dir attributes, my color-annotation only the color attribute):
ve.ce.TextColorAnnotation.js
ve.dm.TextColorAnnotation.js
ve.ui.TextColorContextItem.js
ve.ui.TextColorSearchDialog.js
ve.ui.TextColorInspector.js
ve.ui.TextColorInspectorTool.js
ve.ui.TextColorSearchWidget.js
ve.ui.TextColorInputWidget.js
ve.ui.TextColorResultWidget.js
It works pretty good imo. The only problem I see right now (and which I am working on next) is that with this implementation, text (or background)-color can only be applied to text, but not to tables (only when marking the text inside a cell).
This question already has answers here:
Why not use tables for layout in HTML? [closed]
(66 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
What is the best practice when building our web page div or table?
Someone says the div is recommended, but I found it is not easy to control the size and alignment with div.
What is your opinion?
It depends entirely on what you're wanting to display:
<DIV> and <SPAN> is for page layout
<Table> is for displaying tabular data (such as data points etc)
The days of using <table> for whole page layouts is gone - and you should be discouraged for using them for this reason.
HTML tags are meant to be semantic. This means describing the data it contains - not how to display it (this is for stylesheets to handle)
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with TABLE - it's just that it was historically overused for the wrong thing. In general, try to use TABLE for true tables of data, use DIV and SPAN for logical block or inline containers of content.
Tables should only be used to display data in a tabular way. For layout and design it is best practise to use divs and stylesheets.
Controlling the divs using stylesheets can take a while if you're not used to it, but it's quite easy to pick up.
You'll be thankful you did it later when the client wants the whole site redesigned and it means you don't have to undo the entire page in order to make the required changes.
First read this: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/08/from-table-hell-to-div-hell/
In my opinion (which I'm sure some people will groan about subjective questions being asked on Stack Overflow), but I prefer using div's. A div tag is one tag, a table takes many tags to create a correctly marked-up table element.
A lot of websites in the 1990s were built with tables, but the thinking nowadays in to use divs.
I would say that div is definitely the industry standard for website layouts. They can be quite cumbersome to work with at first but once you get your head around how they are positioned then you will never look at tables again.
Try this tutorial for moving from tables to divs. http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Style-Sheets/DIV-Based-Layout-with-CSS/
I would like to convert HTML to plain text but retain the minimum structure.
All sections which contain stuff only the browser needs to see such as <script> and <style> to be stripped completely.
Convert all block tags to <div> and all inline ones to <span> or remove inlines completely without leaving whitespace and turning anything delineatd by block levels into paragraphs with two linebreaks.
The idea is to turn random web pages into something suitable for natural language text processing without artefacts left from naively removing markup artifically break words up or making unrelated blocks look like sentences.
Any binary, library, or source in any programming language is OK.
Is there a standard source preferably machine-readable with a full list of elements defining which are block, which inline, and which are like <script> and <style> above?
The list of HTML 4 Block-level elements is here: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/block.html
The most popular HTML parsing libraries for Perl are HTML::Parser which is a SAX-style parser and HTML::TreeBuilder which is more DOM-like.
Beyond that, you'll have to decide which elements are important and which are not based on what you're trying do to.
You may want to do some research yourself. Then, when you run into a problem, ask a question related to the problem. This sounds more like specification for a project that you want someone to do for you.
For starters, websites use tags for all sorts of things, and the problem is very complex. You would probably want to save information in h# and p tags, but you also may want to save div tag information if they use the id tag. In short, you'd have to write rules for each website you encounter, or employ some sort of fuzzy logic.
Instead of doing it on a tag by tag basis, why not try detecting sentences and grammar, or things likely to be in headings, and choose tags that include those things while stripping out the rest?
Here's my own tool to solve this problem in Perl using HTML::Parser as a github gist: html2txt.pl
It's unfinished and perhaps slightly Windows-centric but I thought I'd share it since a few people have viewed my question here. Feel free to play with it.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 13 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Why not use tables for layout in HTML?
I know everyone is all about DIV's and css and against tables now days, I have always used tables because they are so easy for me to visually see what I am doing while building, I am just now ventruing into the DIV world.
So my question are tables completely replaced by div's generally? I notice on the source of stackoverflow it is mostly DIV's but still uses tables as well, so I am guessing that tables must be used sometimes?
Below is an image of something I am trying to accomplish, most of it is coded but some of it is added in on photoshop, so far I have it all done in div's however what I have is only the background cells which are a list item and the photos, what I am missing from my code is all the text areas and it would be super easy for me to position the text areas within a table cell but since like 80% of the object is done with just css and divs I am not sure if I should just try to finsih it with just div's or if a table inside the comment div's would be the way to go.
I noticed on this page that the ansers are a table inside of a DIV
alt text http://img2.pict.com/e0/4e/de/1486585/0/screenshot2b15.png
To be semantically correct, tables should only used for tabular data and not for laying out a page.
David Dorward brought something to my attention in a comment. According to the HTML 4.01 Specification's section on Tables in HTML Documents:
Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control layout rather than tables.
Theres a lot of fervent zealotry regarding this notion of semantic content, which is fine and all but the only problem is that it's hopelessly naive.
Fact: there are some things that can be done trivially with tables that either can't be done in "pure" CSS, are extremely difficult in "pure" CSS, have some nasty side effects in "pure" CSS or have serious cross-browser issues.
I did my CSS3 Wish List and in compiling that list I realized some things I've been able to do with tables since HTML 3.2 a decade ago I still can't do with divs.
I'm all for having a semantic layout. Nice ideal. But until it can do everything it's trying to replace then the thing it's trying to replace will have valid use cases.
divs are used instead of tables in most of the sites. But you can use tables in some situations where design using div will be complicated in a cross browser way.
For eg vetical aligning contents inside div will be a big problem as compared to that in table cells.
In this page also you can find table tags being used.
Tables will only be rendered to the screen after all the cells are finished processing.
Take a look at the following questions also.
Why not use tables for layout in HTML?
DIV’s vs Tables or CSS vs. Being Stupid
Yet Another Divs vs Tables Question: Forms
I think a lot of people will argue that "tabular" data, or data that can best be expressed in rows and columns, should be kept in a table, but that divs were invented to replace tables as large layout elements. In my personal opinion, tables were always used as layout elements in a way that went beyond their intended purpose. That's not to say that people don't still misuse divs, for example
<div align="center">To replace a <center> tag</div>
I'd say check out A List Apart, specifically Their section on layout for tips on how to use modern compliant css-based design.
edit : My point was that this is the INCORRECT use of a div tag. In this example, you would use a style such as "text-align:center" or apply that style to the tag itself, but in this case there is no reason to wrap your text in a block-level element, because text by default is inline, so you would be better off with something more like this...
<p class="center">This is a centered paragraph</p>
and then in your stylesheet
.center { text-align:center; }
Thus, the following:
<div>Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday</div>
<div>Work | Work | Work | Work | Play</div>
May be compliant but it looks terrible, and you'd be better off doing :
<table>
<th>
<td>Monday</td><td>Tuesday</td><td>Wednesday</td><td>Thursday</td><td>Friday</td>
</th>
<tr>
<td>Work</td><td>Work</td><td>Work</td><td>Work</td><td>Play</td>
</tr>
</table>
Tables are appropriate for tabular data, but divs + CSS is preferred for general page layout.
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=TablesVsDivs has many good reasons why, as well as some counter arguments.
Like Korey and Thomas said, it's better to use table to represent tabular data.
If you want to make website layout in pure CSS, you can take a look on these CSS frameworks, which ease the task :
http://elements.projectdesigns.org/
http://960.gs/
http://www.blueprintcss.org/
http://elasticss.com/
http://www.yaml.de/en/
http://bluetrip.org/
http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/
There are a lot of css frameworks out these, just find the one which fit your needs..
Update : Here is a more complete list of css frameworks.
Tables should only be used for tabular data. To figure out if what I am dealing with is tabular I ask myself "would I put this in Excel or Word if it?"
Bill Merikallio & Adam Pratt wrote a funny and informative article Why tables for layout is stupid. They also detail where tables should be used and when.
Tables as means of describing the structure of tabular data have not been replaced.
Tables as means for describing presentation have been replaced, but not with divs. They have been replaced with stylesheets in associate with whatever element best describes the semantics of the content. A div has no semantics associated with it, so it is used if there is nothing better.
It certainly depends. The Golden Rule you must remember is that the XHTML/HTML document file it's meant to describe content and flow.
Everything that is design should be (whenever it's possible, there are some certainly some case scenarios where we can't control it, like when CMS appear on the game) controlled using a CSS file.
Now, how can we reach the most semantically and pragmatical result? As with everything, it depends. Using XHTML/HTML tag elements instead on just relying on for correct content display it's the recommended way.
Notice that I've said tag elements. DIV is just one of them, but just replacing with whenever a or / tags exists is not enough. In fact, that will push you over "divitis" (the useless employ of divs for everything!) and WILL make your job hard. Try checking most tags and use them whenever seems correct.
Sometimes it's a pretty subjective matter as to what qualifies as a content or another tag. Just in this question someone asked if this content would be considered tabulated data (the one that tables are supposed to be used for), but I think that whatever content you must order and filter (and you can copy and paste on Excel without worries) it's worthy material.
Everythin else, it's mostly always just some interesting layout display that should be worked on with CSS and other tags.
Some people will say it's too much work and not worth it. I disagree. Though learning how to work with CSS/divs nuances it's somewhat different at first, you'll soon learn the twist of it.
Good luck and remember that we are always learning new stuff, so don't worry on question everything.
My recommendation would be to really learn HTML. Use the element that actually relates to the content. If it is a list of items, use one of the list tags. If it is data entry, use a fieldset tag. There aren't that many tags to chose from yet so many are neglected. If you simply replace all your table layout formatting with DIVs, your tag soup might be a little less chunky but you can still choke on it.
In terms of performance side, table(s) will only get rendered once the end tag () is reached, so if it is a table contains 100s of rows, you will see that table appears in the browser little later. This is not true for DIVs.
I posted on meta-SO about their tables: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3110/when-did-so-start-using-tables-for-layout/3547#3547
In short, I think it's fine since it is tabular data.
You should check Elastic CSS Framework you can layout an unlimited combination of columns very easily and position them with its helpers, check out the documentation.
cheers
CSS is great and all, but I mainly use it for styling, not layout. I and countless other developers still use tables every day for building web pages, and will for the foreseeable future.
If you want to use absolute and relative positioning for layouts, go for it. If not, you are not evil or stupid for not doing so. The main thing to look out for when using tables is preventing table nesting hell IMO.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 13 years ago.
I am developing a "modern" website, and I'm having a lot of trouble getting the CSS to make everything line up properly. I feel like they layout would be a lot easier if I just used a table, but I've been avoiding <table> tags, because I've been told that they are "old-fashioned" and not the right way to do things.
Is it okay to use tables? How do I decide when a table is appropriate, and when I should use CSS instead? Do I just do whatever is easier?
The answer is yes, it's fine to use tables. The general rule of thumb is that if you are displaying tabular data, a table is probably a good way to go. You should generally try to style your table with css as much as you can though.
Also, this pie graph might help you:
alt text http://www.ratemyeverything.net/image/7292/0/Time_Breakdown_of_Modern_Web_Design.ashx
EDIT: Tables are fine. For displaying data. Just like my second sentence stated. The question was "is it ok to use tables". The answer is - yes, it is ok to use tables. It is not illegal.
Since even though it's implied to use tables for data in my general rule of thumb, apparently I must also state that the corollary is that it's not ok to use tables for anything else, even though the poster already seemed to grasp this concept. So, for the record, the general rule of thumb is to not use tables for laying out your site.
Tables should be used to represent tabular data. CSS should be used for presentation and layout.
This question has also been exhaustively answered here:
Why not use tables for layout in HTML?
Essentially - if you have tabular data, then use a table. There's really no need now to use tables for layout - sure, they were often considered 'easier' but semantically the page is horrid, they were often considered inaccessible.
See some discussion:
css-discuss
and a particularly comical URL - shouldiusetablesforlayout.com
In the 'modern' approach of tables it is not about using table tags or div tags, but about using the right tag for the right purpose.
The table tag is used for tabular data. There is nothing wrong with using it for that!
For using CSS, there are a lot of tutorials and guides (good and bad) around. Indicators of a bad tutorial are: lot of use of blocks (divs) that only make sense for the layout and not for the content. Good signs are the ones that advise to use the right tags for the right content and teach you how to make up that tags.
Tables are only appropriate for tabular data. Imagine you have to add some spreadsheet like data, where you have clear row/column headers, and some data inside those rows.
A product comparison, for example, is also a valid table item.
I believe that tables are OK for display of rectilinear data of arbitrary rows and/or columns. That's about it. Tables should not be used for layout purposes anymore.
In general, HTML markup should describe the structure and content of a web page—it should not be used to control presentational aspects such as layout and styling (that's what CSS is for). A <table> tag, like most have already said, should represent tabular data—something that would appear as a table of information.
The reason why people rag on tables so much is that in the old days, there was no such thing as CSS—all page layout was done directly in HTML. Tags were not thought of as describing content—all anyone really cared about was how a tag would make things look in a web browser. As a result of this, people figured that, since they could organize things into rows and columns, tables must be good for laying out elements of a web page. This became a really popular technique—in fact, I'd wager that using tables was considered the preferred method of laying out web pages for quite some time.
So when people tell you that tables are "old-fashioned," they are specifically referring to this abuse of the <table> tag that was so popular back in the old days. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with HTML tables themselves, but using them for web page layout just doesn't make sense nowadays.
(Plus, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, layouts done with HTML tables are very inflexible and hard to maintain.)
its ok to use tables when you are showing data in a grid / tabular format. however, for general structure of the site, its highly recommended that you use css driven div, ul, li elements to give you more lucid website.
If you anyways decide to work with tables, you must consider the following cons :
they are not SEO friendly
they are quite rigid in terms of their structure and at times difficult to maintain as well
you may be spending little extra time on div based website, but its worth every minute spent.
The whole "anti-Table" movement is a reaction to a time when deeply nested tables were the only method to layout pages, leading to HTML that was very hard to understand.
Tables are a valid method for tabular (data) layout, and if a table is the easiest way to implement a layout, then by any means use a table.
Table is always the right choice when you have the need to present data in a grid.
Quoting Sitepoints's book HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables using CSS
If you have tabular data and the appearance of that data is less important than its appropriate display in connection with other portions of the same data set, then a table is in order. If you have information that would best be displayed in a spreadsheet such as Excel, you have tabular data.
I would say no for using tables to construct your layout. Tables make sense only for actual tabular data you need to represent. If you spend enough time figuring the CSS out you will find its easier then using tables for a layout. Just remember: Tables for displaying data. CSS for page layouts.
Tables are just that: Tables.
They are frowned upon because they should not be used for layout, as has been the fashionable thing to do before browsers could position stuff properly.
If what you want to markup is, in fact, a table, then use a table. Other than that, try to stay away.
One small thing: Aligning two parts of text to the exact same line that won't move apart (think, username and post date). There using a table is IMHO an option.
First get it working. Then get it perfect.
Get the layout done in some way before making it perfect or better.
How many people per day will go to the page you are working on? A million? or 20 ?
How much time are you going to spend on CSS issues instead of other issues? Does your boss want you to spend this much time on the issue? Does he/she know what you are doing?
Absolutely. I don't know where CSS zealots invented the idea that tables are not naturally used for "layout". Tables have been used for laying things out since their invention, whether those things be numbers, words, or pretty pictures. That's what they do. Moreover, table is part of all versions of (X)HTML so there are no deprecation concerns.
Absolutely.
All that HTML offers was originally intended for you to define the markup of your page. In my book, absolute and relative positions of elements on a page belong to markup. So both divs and tables are very much suited for this task. Pick up what works best for your particular need.
CSS adds many styling possibilities and also layout tricks but it complements HTML options not replaces them.
There is actually a very fine line between seeing something as a markup or styling issue. CSS proponents would say that with CSS you can relocate and reshuffle completely all big and little pieces of a page. I cannot however imagine putting header below, footer above and making things appear in reverse order.
Take an example. You design a notebook. You know where to place major components, mainboard, cooling system, keyboard, display and ports. You may certainly wish to rearrange a little bit port connectors, on whic side and in which sequence they appear, but you don't really expect to put display where the keyboard is, put keyboard on the lid, make fans blow to your face and have all connectors on the botom to be reached through holes on your desk.
Using tables can make it slightly difficult to rearrange elements on a page. This might be true. However, in most cases you know in advance how approximately your page should look like and you would not want to change everything drastically. if you can't say it before your begin your work you probably have no clear idea what you are doing and what for.
Moreover, only tables possess elastic properties, which allows the to stretch to the width/height of their content. Nothing else of HTML/CSS can be used to do that.
CSS design on one side allows you to create quite adjustable designs. On the other hand, it locks you out from designing a page adjustable to its content. Both wins and losses.
Table is also the only tool to make very complex and precise interfaces. For example, the page SO is very simple. It probably can be done with pure CSS. In the meantime, have you seen any enterprise-class software like CRMs, SRMs etc? That multitude of buttons, text field, check boxes, dropdownlists all precisely located on a screen? Good luck achieving that kind of complexity with just CSS. And these layouts migrate from desktop applications into web each day (keyword: software-as-a-service).
So choose what suits best your current need and don't trust those CSS lovers. Actually don't trust any fanatics at all.