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).
Related
I am modifying a website that currently uses a <table> for a price list.
Because tables obviously don't break + wrap, on a mobile device the right hand side of the table disappears of the right side of the screen.
I'd like to use CSS to make this price list responsive, so that when the browser runs out of width it renders the next column underneath. This is simple enough if I stop using a single table and use float:left, but in this case I want the name of the cottage to be repeated (the first column) when a horizontal break occurs.
Is this possible? If so, how would I achieve it?
Peter, a better way to construct this to do what your aiming for is not to use the Table element at all.
Instead, use a series of div elements and give them the display type "table-cell" on the individual divs, along with "display: table" and "display: table-row" where needed for for rows and the overall table.
See: http://www.senktec.com/2014/01/using-css-display-table-cell-for-columns/
For an example.
Once you've broken things down into indidvidual div's, your then free to place those divs where you see fit, You could with a little bit of re-layout in the structure of the divs, put a new set down below the the first part of the table as you mention in your question.
However, once your using div elements, this actually opens up a more interesting way of doing things, by using FlexBox and more specifically "flex-wrap".
Flexbox and it's wrapping modes will do exactly what your trying to achieve, you just need to make the parent container "display: flex", add a flex wrap css rule, and the immediate div children of the container will take care of themselves.
Flexbox is fully supported by ALL mainstream browsers these days, and the various table display modes have been around since HTML4, so your not going to have an issue with any of it working. Flex also largely works on IE11, with a few minor edge cases (I implemented an online designer for a company 3 years ago when flexbox was first introduced and the target was IE11).
With the individual div approach, and if your targeting reasonable recent browsers you can actually go one step further and use CSS media queries to adjust things for different display widths
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Media_Queries/Using_media_queries
and you can even now do some feature detection is CSS too
https://css-tricks.com/using-feature-detection-to-write-css-with-cross-browser-support/
The only thing I can't come up with a possible solution for in pure CSS is the repeating of the cottage names column, although I suspect you might actually be able to conjure something up using "data attributes" and css rules targeting those attributes to get the text of the column name into an "element::before" pseudo css rule of some kind, I'd need to sit and spend a day playing with that idea to come up with anything concrete though.
At work we had a situation in which a client required a web front for one of our products. None of use are web developers but since I was finishing up on my previous project I volunteered to give it a base.
I have spent the last week or so reading up on best practices and asp.net web forms. Based on requirements we settled on HTML 4 / ASP.NET / CSS 2.1. The customer is going to use the latest browsers so I got to concentrate on nice clean layout.
I have been working on samples using the 960.gs system and I am finding it pretty handy to lay out content without too much trouble, but, I have a major issue.
With all of the tutorials I have seen, they tend to stop or become quite vague as soon the inner most content layout is reached.
Is there any best practices here? or is there any tutorials regarding laying out the inner most content.
What I am talking about for instance is laying out the following:
<div id="question_1" >
<asp:Label runat="server">Question 1</asp:Label>
<asp:Label runat="server" >What is the name of the guy from the other thing?</asp:Label>
<asp:RadioButton runat="server" Text="Yes"></asp:RadioButton>
<asp:RadioButton runat="server" Text="No"></asp:RadioButton>
<asp:DropDownList runat="server"></asp:DropDownList>
</div>
The above html represents a fictional question object. This would be on a list of questions page, much like a survey. Currently, because I can't find the info I am pretty much using css to absolutely position the elements since, because I am using a grid system, I know the width of the box that this div is contained in.
EDIT: By absolutely positioned I mean within the containing element not the page as a whole... Just to clear that up.
From a form layout perspective there are two things to consider: usability and accessibility. Usability defines things like labels going on the left, fields on the right. The exception in this case being with radio buttons and check boxes when the label goes on the right.
Accessibility, defines that each field should have a label tag; fields should be logically grouped etc.
The RNIB have a collection of articles on web design which touch on accessibility and usability. Personally I think they are a great place to start.
EDIT:
Meat & veg answer: The ideal coders (should) try and achieve to style the form but maintain the flow, i.e. ensure that labels for text fields are styled to appear to the left but appear before the field in the HTML.
So, yes it is good practice to:
Wrap each label/field pair in a div, allowing you to clear/position this separate to other pairings.
Make the label display:block with a fixed width and float:left
Don't forget to add required * - I usually use a span within the label so I can control the style of the required * separately.
Use <fieldset> tags to group and style sets of label/field pairings
Unless you are trying to create a highly stylized form, avoid absolutely positioning anything you don't have to. I find that as soon as I absolutely position one thing, I have to absolutely position others for consistency so you should always first try and find a solution which allows elements to control the position of subsequent elements
I know developers who still use tables to arrange their forms. Is this bad? Yes, but it works and for a temporary solution or small, rarely used form this might be an appropriate trade-off.
Scott on Writing has a nice article on basic form styling. This guys is awesome and knows what he is talking about.
And also there are jQuery tools for creating nicer more responsive controls:
jQuery UI
Multi select
See the picture above. Each navigation tab needs to have 2 pixels separation on either side and line up exactly with the header image on the edges.
Now they would like to introduce a 5th navigation tab (and possibly a 6th). Is it possible to code this in a way where you could stick a 5th or 6th tab in there and everything would resize appropriately with lists or tables or some other solution? Still keeping the 2 pixels separation and lining up with the edges exactly? I wasn't sure if it was possible or you would just have to define the widths each time for each tab based on the math involved to line it all up correctly flush with the edges.
I think the best way is to emulate table behavior with CSS. So you can use a list, and still get table behavior.
ul {
display:table;
}
li {
display:table-cell;
}
Here is a demo displaying this with CSS and proper markup. Here's a demo of how it looks with an actual table. I'm not certain on IE<8 support for this CSS, so it may be something to be aware of.
UPDATE: Confirmed: This is not supported on IE6 or 7 natively. You may be stuck with tables or hard-coded widths if you want to support those browsers. There may be a javascript fix to support these display values but I'm not aware of it.
EDIT: I realized my demos were sloppy, so I made another that actually addresses your point about the margins, it uses the :first-child selector to remove the margin from the first link, giving the evenly distributed appearance. http://jsfiddle.net/wesley_murch/pe6wd/3/
It may not be easy. One of the requirements in most implementations of css horizontal menu type displays is setting a fixed width for each element. If you try and do percentages, things start to come apart. However, any thing is possible.
Have you tried looking at LESS or SASS so you can do simple math in CSS?
This is the first time i am properly coding in HTML,CSS. in my code i have used whole lot of div's to position and also to put the content in place. i am not sure if i am coding the right way. i have loads of contents too in a single page. here is the link to my code i have used.
http://jsfiddle.net/32ShZ/
can you please suggest. is it really bad in structure and shape?
Absolutely not. You don't want to go overboard though (it's called "div soup" when you do). If you find that a div has no purpose but to hold a background image, or to clear a float, etc that means you've done something wrong. By using wrappers (e.g. 3 levels deep of div tags for a content area that has some backgrounds, etc is OK), you can properly achieve any layout that you need without resorting to "div soup". Take a look at http://www.digitalperfections.net/ for an example of good (x)HTML with a lot of div tags.
To further expand, and answer the question about your code specifically, I noticed one thing right off the bat: <div id="divider"></div> - this is bad because you're using this div purely for non-semantic purposes (for decoration only).
The general principle is use as less HTML for layout as possible. And try to give Style to your page with the help of CSS. So if a minimum number of divs can achieve your task, you should go for it. This helps to make page lighter and maintainable. But yes how small structure (HTML) you can have in your page depends on your experience and design.
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).