Before anyone close this question or complain... I've been looking all over StackOverFlow site but couldn't find anything straight foward about tables and forms.
I have a form which has at least 20 to 35 labels and text boxes, in different categories. So to start using CSS for each element would be too much.
For some reason, I'm feeling like using tables to align all the fields with their respective labels, since some labels will be larger than others (i.e. 'First Name' is a larger word than 'Age'), and so the layout would be distorted. And I can't start applying css for each label and text box (circa 20 each... that's 40 individual css rules).
Unless someone can give me some techniques, I'll be greatful.
I know CSS is good for forms but what about the very big forms?
So long as you use the cascade to your advantage, there is nothing wrong with CSS for forms.
In fact, I recommend it over using table.
Just set up some base rules...
input {
padding: 3px;
float: right;
}
Then handle the exceptions to your rules...
input#age {
float: none;
}
Forms are not tabular data, simple forms just superficially look like they are.
CSS is just fine for long forms. Have styles for most data. Then more specific styles for short bits of data and/or long bits of data, and so on. Don't style everything individually.
try using UL and LI instead of table, such as explained in the following article Click to see article
It provides the CSS too.
You wouldn't need 40 individual CSS rules. You could have one rule for all the labels, and one for all text boxes.
BUT - having said that - this sort of layout, where you have two columns of stuff, and you want all the stuff in column 1 (the labels in this example) aligned with each other, and all the stuff in col 2 (the text boxes) aligned with each other, while keeping the rows aligned - well that's exactly the sort of thing that the the good ol' table excels at.
I am a big advocate of CSS, and I believe that abuse of tables (to layout a page for example) is evil, evil, evil - but I would definitely go with tables on this one.
At the end of the day, it's all about preference and functionality. My personal preference are divs/CSS. The cascading nature of CSS, and cleanliness of the code, etc..
But hey, if you like tables - shout it from a rooftop!
You can use jQuery Masonry.
As far as I can see, it will achieve the layout you need and all you have to do is add classes and single line of JS code.
You can create good, accessible forms using CSS without too many CSS rules (for the alignment part, anyway). You basically just need to set the width of all the labels -- with one rule -- and define how they interact with the input elements. There a nice article at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/forms/ (just the first one I found, I'm sure there are many others).
For a form IMO i'd rather use a table its cleaner. Use CSS for your websites layout. But again thats my opinion...
Related
Bootstrap's page about responsive design says this:
Responsive utilities should not be used with tables, and as such are
not supported.
Being new to web development, I am not familiar with what this is talking about. It seems that there is a general aversion to using <table>. Is this true?
Also, the quote as phrased doesn't make sense to me. Shouldn't it read like this?
Tables should not be used in responsive utilities, and as such are
not supported.
Tables are very structured elements. A <td> can only ever be a column. You couldn't change it to suddenly appear like a row or float it somewhere, etc., etc.
HTML, in responsive design, shouldn't define what something should look like (or where it should appear to a degree) that's CSSs job. the HTML should simply group text and other elements. So a HTML <table> and all it's associated tags breaks this paradigm.
CSS display now contains table like elements: How is a CSS “display: table-column” supposed to work? so this removes the need to embed <table> tags and allows you to use the more generic <div> tags and their like, thus now it's a <div> that looks like a <table>, there is nothing to stop you making this appear as something completely different simply by updating the CSS. You could even make it look different for different audiences, etc.
hope this helps a little.
It's not really true in the latest browsers, but traditionally it's been hard to unstyle a table in CSS to not have a table layout.
So while a table might be the correct semantic element for your tabular data, pragmatics meant that if, in some responsive design profiles, you want the data to be displayed in a linear format, it just couldn't be done, except by using JavaScript to rip the table markup out and replace it.
Try table, tbody, tr, td {display:block; } - (JsFiddle http://jsfiddle.net/Z26GF/) in various browser (e.g. compare IE10 with IE9 behaviour) to see what I mean.
(The more I learn about Bootstrap, the less I like it. It seems to encourage a number of bad HTML practices. This is one of them)
Is there a semantic CSS or HTML property/attribute to show a table with rows & columns swapped?
In other words, I would like to write the code one way, but have something that flips the rows with columns, and vice versa.
Looking around, I only found JavaScript ways to swap them, but in my case — that's not what I'm looking for. (If there isn't a CSS/HTML solution, then I would rather refactor the code.)
Sorry, but no there isn't.
You might be to achieve something close by rotating the whole table by 90 degrees, and then rotating the cells by 90 degrees the opposite direction. You'd probably also need to manually set the height and width of all the elements to make it look sensible.
That would be a major hack, though; I really wouldn't recommend it.
There aren't any other CSS solutions to this; certainly not a "standard" one. It's not exactly a standard thing to want to do.
I understand your concern, but at present, the answer is no:
There is no clean way to do it with HTML and CSS alone. (Although rotating the table's cells 90° is definitely interesting.)
This situation has a few options, as you suggested yourself:
Refactoring your code (e.g. recoding the table manually, with a script/automation, or doing it in Google Docs spreadsheet and exporting as HTML — used to be possible a few years ago.)
Either using JavaScript to do the switch if you don't want to refactor; or using JavaScript as a function to switch back the refactored code — just in case you're looking to have a button on your site that says, "Flip Table".
Trying the proposed and experimental method of rotating the cells with CSS.
It will depend on what you want and the specifics of your implementation. I would say that progressively-enhanced JaveScript is clean code in most people's books (but in this case, it wouldn't degrade gracefully because people who visit without JS would see the original HTML table). Search engines will pick up JS as well.
But there ARE in fact at least two different CSS solutions.
There is this solution by David Bushell (using flexbox):
http://dbushell.com/2016/03/04/css-only-responsive-tables/
And this solution (using float)
tr { display: block; float: left; }
th, td { display: block; }
http://jsfiddle.net/XKnKL/3/
Not that I'm aware of. Looks like you want to do something like this:
How to invert (transpose) the rows and columns of an HTML table?
I've want to know what is the best practice or approach in dealing with multiple and complex columns with a form inside.
here's an example of the form I'm dealing with
How to properly write a HTML markup for this? If I wrap every form element with a 'DIV' for every column it would take a lot 'DIVs' and styles; and the width for every column that is not repeating.
So what I did is, I put all form element in the table. And I think that is not the standard way to do it.
If your in my shoes,
How would you deal with the columns with non-repeating width?
There is no standard for complex forms, but there are plenty of blog posts claiming to have figured out the perfect way to approach this problem. Most of them are well thought out, but ultimately you have to pick the one you're most comfortable with. I have some suggestions though:
Check out the US postal service change of address form. It's surprisingly well done
If you have lots of forms, using a grid system like 960.gs, blueprint.css, or YUI grids (shudder) is an easy way to implement a form. However grid systems are definitely considered bloat if that's the only place you'll use them.
Do a search for "tableless forms" on Google. You will see a lot of different implementations. Choose the one you like.
I would probably put each form element in a list item within an unordered list (I think semantically, it is a list of input elements that need to be filled in.)
I would then add classes to them for positioning and width etc - the columned ones would need to be given a width and floated left...
so:
<ul>
<li class="iName"><label for="name">Full name:</label><input name="name"/></li>
<li class="iEmail"><label for="email">Email:</label><input name="email"/></li>
etc etc...
</ul>
I believe this would be semantically correct and the most accessible way to do it.
I've seen quite a few answers on this site which advocate using tables for a design because it can't be done using CSS and Divs... when in actual fact it can be done with a bit of ingenuity.
What are examples of things that genuinely can't be done?
The only one I've ever come across is vertically aligning a box within another box.
*edit: I suppose I'm mostly interested in unachievable layouts using CSS2
Vertical alignment of blocks or text.
Having elastic containers that stretch to the width of their content.
Having several "rows" with the same structure where "cells" are synchronized in width throughout all rows.
Having several "columns" synchronize their height (up to the length of the longest text block).
These are quite basic designer needs that appear in even basic design concepts.
Cells/columns issues can possibly be solved with CSS if you take IE8 into account, but it will be many years until its wide spread (even IE7 in 2-3 years hasn't reached the desired market share).
As for "ingenuity", it is not that good thing in software development. Tricks that your colleagues and you yourself after a couple of months will not be able to understand usually build up that code base that everyone either is scared to touch or determined to refactor/rewrite completely.
Remember the KISS principle. The simpliest way you do this, the more reliably it will work.
The answer to this question depends on a number of things:
How backwards compatible do you need to be? Including IE6 will decrease the capacity of pure CSS; and
How much of your site is fixed-width and/or fixed-height. There are certain things in CSS that become hard if not impossible in variable width and/or height situations.
Side-by-side content is a problem for CSS. You can use floats for this but if the sum of widths exceeds the width of the container, the tail end floats will fall down below. Tables are more capable in this regard as they will squeeze columns where possible to make things fit and cells will never be split onto new rows.
Vertical centering you mentioned. Its trivial with tables and hard or impossible (depending on compatibility and fixed or variable heights of the container and the item) in pure CSS.
You may also be referring to hover content. IE6 only supports the :hover pseudo element on anchors. Javascript is required for that browser for :hover-like behaviour.
Basically if what you need to do can be done fairly trivially with pure CSS then do it. If not, don't feel bad if you have to use tables despite all the anti-table fanatics (and they are fanatics) jumping up and down in horror.
If you want a relatively simple exmaple of this check out Can you do this HTML layout without using tables?. This is a conceptually simple layout problem that is trivial with tables and noone has yet posted a solution meeting the requirements with pure CSS.
"... when in actual fact it can be done
with a bit of ingenuity."
How about 'avoiding the need for ingenuity' as a thing that's hard to do in CSS.
;)
tables should be used for tabular data! We should always try to use the correct HTML for the given content in which to markup. So not just div's (span, ul, li, dl, strong, em ... etc) This ensures that the content is not just looking right but is right (for SEO and accesibile reasons)
By not using tables it allows us to transform the content from one look and feel to the next without having to change the HTML, see Zen Garden
For now though with current browsers CSS table like layouts can be done but are tricky. there are techniques to get round many of the issues, weather they are done though global wrappers with background images, or positioning fixes... where both articles also refer to using Javascript to progressively enhance a page to get those additional classes you may require.
or of course you could use some XSL as a middle ware to help do formating if processing from a CMS.
Alternate row colors in a table without manually (or with the aid of a script) assigning alternate styles to each row.
Determine one element's position relative to another. For example you can't use CSS to determine which position one box is in a bunch of floated boxes using the same class. Would be nice to for example know if one box is the first box floated, or the second, or the last.
Handle widows. A widow is a word that dangles off the end of a paragraph, that is a single word starts the last line on a paragraph. It's a big nono on print design, but in the world of web it's hard to control.
Floating elements in multiple columns, where text in each cell can expand the height of the element, but the entire row below must be pushed down if this happens.
--- --- ---
|AAA| |BBB| |CCC|
--- --- ---
--- --- ---
|AAA| |BBB| |CCC|
| | |BBB| | |
--- --- ---
--- --- ---
|AAA| |BBB| |CCC|
--- --- ---
An image cannot placed in exact center of a cell with align attribute.It can be done with some brute force .
Sounds obvious but you can't change content with CSS, it can only be used for styling.
Rory, I think you're absolutely right. Vertical alignment can be done with line-height, and creating lay-outs in CSS really isn't that hard. In fact, it's far more flexible when using absolute/relative positioning and floats.
People still using tables for design should really brush up with the current standards.
Going on topic, with CSS3 coming up it's hard to think of stuff CSS can't do. Image manipulation, content manipulation, advanced selectors, it's all going to be possible. But if I had to name one thing, it's that with CSS you can't (and won't) be able to rotate elements.
I was unable to use a transparency to create a variable-height text area across all pages. I believe it's impossible. I ultimately just wrote a quick javascript function to reset the height after the page load, to get the layout to work. See http://peterchristopher.com to see what I mean by transparency for the text area.
There is absolutely nothing tables can do that CSS can't.
There seems to be a common misconception that HTML & CSS should be easy. It isn't. If you find yourself wanting to use tables then its your CSS skills that need improving not the technology (although the technology does obviously have plenty of holes that could do with improving).
I generally use a manual process:
Look at the page, figure out the semantic elements, and build the HTML
Slice up the images I think I'll need
Start writing CSS
Tweak and repeat different steps as necessary
Got a better approach, or a tool?
I have a fairly natural way of coding. The key is to treat the page like a document or an article. If you think of it like this the following becomes logically clear:
The page title is a top level heading
Whether you make the site title or actual page title the h1 is up to you - personally I'd make About Us the h1 rather than Stack Overflow.
The navigation is a table of contents, and thus an ordered list - you may as well use an ol over a ul.
Section headers are h2, sections within those sections are h3s etc. Stack them up.
Use blockquotes and quotes where possible. Don't just surround it with ".
Don't use b and i. Use strong and em. This is because HTML is structural rather than presentational markup. Strong and emphasis tags should be used where you'd put emphasis on the word.
<label> your form elements.
Use <acronym>s and <abbr>s where possible, but only in the first instance.
The easiest: always, always give your images some alternate text.
There's lots of HTML tags you could use that you probably haven't - address for postal addresses, screen code output. Have a look at HTML Dog for some, it's my favourite reference.
That's just a few pointers, I'm sure I could think of more.
Oh, and if you want a challenge write your XHTML first, then write the CSS. When CSS-ing you aren't allowed to touch the HTML. It's actually harder than you think (but I've found it's made me quicker).
Well, when I build a website I tend to try and forget about the design completely while writing the HTML. I do this so I won't end up with any design-specific markup and so I can focus on the semantic meaning of the elements.
Some pointers how to markup things:
menu - use the UL (unordered list) element, since that's exactly what a menu is. an unordered list of choices. example:
<ul id="menu">
<li id="home">Home</li>
<li id="about">About</li>
</ul>
if you'd like an horizontal menu you could do this:
#menu li {
display: block;
float: left;
}
Logo - use a H1 (heading) element for the logo instead of an image.Example:
<div id="header">
<h1>My website</h1>
</div>
And the CSS (same technique can be applied to the menu above if you would like a menu with graphical items):
#header h1 {
display: block;
text-indent: -9999em;
width: 200px;
height: 100px;
background: transparent url(images/logo.png) no-repeat;
}
IDs and classes - use IDs to identify elements that you only have one instance of. Use class for identifying elements that you got several instances of.
Use a textual browser (for instance, lynx). If it makes sense to navigate in this way, you've done good when it comes to accessibility.
I hope this helps :)
I essentially do the same thing Jon does, but here are a few other ideas:
Use Guides in Photoshop (and lock to them). Figure out all of your dimensions for each box/ region ahead of time.
Collect all of your dimensions and color hex values into an info file (I use a txt file) that you can easily reference. This will reduce your alt-tab tax and selecting colors in Photoshop multiple times.
After all my Guides are in place, I slice out the entire website into my images folder, starting with photos and grouped elements, and ending with the various background tiles/images, should they exist. (Tip: Use ctrl-click on the layer preview to select that layer's content).
Notes on using Photoshop:
Use Guides or the Grid.
Use the Notes feature for any pertinent information
Always use Layer Groups for similar elements. We need to be able to turn entire regions off in one click. Put all 'header' content in one Layer Group.
Always name your layers.
You can put each page template in one PSD file and use nested Layer Groups to organize them. This way we don't have to setup all of our guides and notes for each page template on a site.
No shortcuts :) but everybody works slightly differently.
This tutorial that popped up in my feedreader yesterday shows the process from start to finish and might help people who have never done it before but as you are an old hand it's just about streamlining your own methods.
EDIT:
The listapart link certainly is more automated for 'flat' designs where both imageready and fireworks have had pretty good support from day one and it's got better and more semantic with every release but if you have a more complex design it's the twiddly bits that make the design what it is and these have to be done by hand.
I just thought it was worth pointing out that in addition to the excellent advice you've had so far I'd recommend getting a printed version of the design, using a red pen to mark up all the block elements on the design you think you can spot and sitting down with the designer for half an hour and talking through how they envisioned their design working for the use cases that don't fit the static design.
What happens when more text is put in the navigation?
Is this width fixed or fluid?
Is this content pane to the right fixed height or fluid? If it's fluid why did you put a background on it that can't be repeated?
You have a border extending down the page that breaks two otherwise connected elements. Visually it makes sense, but semantically I not can't just use an li to house both those elements. What do you think is more important?
It'll also help you spot potential problems that you might otherwise not have realised were going to be issues until your elbow deep in css.
Not only does it make your job easier after a few times doing it your designer will get a much stronger sense of what is involved in marking up their work - some designers have real trouble comprehending why something they think looks visually very simple will take a few days of css tweaking to make work.
Some of the designers i know, usually uses Illustrator to make the design elements.
This page shows how to do it a little more automated.
Also, get to know the "Layer Comps" feature. I use this for changing button states.
Create layer comps for normal, hover, and active.
In each of these, set up the effects/color overlays and visible layers which belong with that state.
Save for web: go to a different folder for each state, unless it's easier to rename each slice (otherwise your hover button slices will overwrite your regular slices).