A. Extremely

A colleague asked me this a couple of week ago. Surely someone has managed this before – let’s Google it. To my surprise this has been a major issues for web programmers for some time, probably since the introduction of CSS and HTML 4. It’s not fashionable or PC anymore to be using the <table> tag for laying out stuff – naughty, naughty.

After googling some more and reading quite a number of posts arguing for and against the poor old <table> tag, I didn’t really come across a good solution, particularly trying to emulate a fluid table with borders. Some used background images, some use  fixed widths and others ignored the borders. Stealing some ideas from those posts, I thought I’d take on this challenge and after some work, got something kind of working.

It’s not really a simple solution compared to using the <table> tag and there were a few times I thought of giving up and throwing my CSS book out the window but I can at now proudly say I have a solution.

But my final conclusion is:

a). Use tables for tabular data;

b). Use divs for layout where possible, especially if you have an elaborate design of overlaying images and text;

c). Go ahead and use tables if you are not bothered too much about accessibility or upholding semantic web standards,  it’ll be a lot quicker and you’ll lose alot less hair (that is if you haven’t lost it all already getting your site to work in IE).

Here is my example..

http://www.fire-cube.co.uk/div_table/div_table.html

don’t believe me? try it.

CTO = Clean Toilet Officer
CFO = Clean Floor Officer
CEO = Clean Everything Officer

Please send your Resume immediately along with a 1000 word essay detailing why you are the best fit for this position.