Throwing Tables Out the Window
“Those who were at Digital Design World in Seattle this year saw me present a session titled, ‘No More Tables, CSS Layout Techniques’. In that session, we reviewed proper use of tables, and a few pointers for styling them with CSS. Then we turned to tableless layout, reviewing examples and an overview of the two basic approaches (positioning and floats). Half way through the presentation, I switched gears and announced weíd be converting a real-world example from tables and spacer gifs to a pure CSS layout. I could have created a fictitious example to work with in the presentation. But that idea would have seemed too contrived. If I created my own example, it would have been nice and tidy. Everything would have rendered exactly as I wanted it to, staying free and clear of any ìtrouble spotsî I already knew to avoid. Fictitious wasnít good enough. I wanted a real challenge. So I chose the site of a small, local-to-the-Seattle-area company I thought a few of the attendees in the audience might be familiar with: Microsoft.”