Hi I am new in the forum. I have been designing in layers for a while now, I trash the tables and use it only for actual table layout, like calendars, or numerical grids.
However, I guess I got a problem. Display, how can my layers achieve the flexibility the tables gave me when resizing a window or just displaying them on multiple screen resolutions.
layers (as far as I know) doesnt adjust that easily. I also have a problem with the difference of static, relative and absolute on the CSS-P.
Any links, referals, comments, or PM are welcome...
Re: When to use tables
However, I guess I got a problem. Display, how can my layers achieve the flexibility the tables gave me when resizing a window or just displaying them on multiple screen resolutions.
It really depends on what you are trying to achieve, and is difficult to give an answer based on such a broad question.
I always recommend http://www.w3schools.com/. It is well worth doing the html and CSS tutorials.
Regards
Day
When to use tables
jza,
I can understand where you are coming from. I have been redesigning some sites and trying to do without tables. Generally I haven't had too many problems using floats etc. except when it came to checking for lower resolutions (640x480 for example) then the layouts got a bit messed up.
Recently I got the book "Eric Meyer on CSS" and it was a real eye-opener. In it there is a liberal use of tables with css. It is still a huge improvement over using only html/tables etc. for layout. I guess that if all browsers were CSS compliant and were consistent then we could use only CSS in practical terms. As it stands it ain't impossible but sometimes not overly practical.
I suppose it depends on how strictly you want to adhere to the tables are for tabular data only belief. "Eric Meyer on CSS" is slowly convincing me that there is a middle ground.
When to use tables
I recently did a redesign of all the phpBB templates to get rid of tables.
http://portal.portland.co.uk
This works in all the major browsers and resizes quite well to 640x480
A lot of the CSS is still in the source code because the template was adopted before it was completed, however you can see what is possible without tables.
When to use tables
I'm with techdav on this one. The times when you want a nicely aligned gallery look... I've found many solutions that come close to, but not actually achieving, the table layout. So on that page, there's a table. It's probably the only example I can think of where I have non-tabular data that I would like to 'look' like a table, to be honest.