[Webpro] tablelessness

[Mike S. Krischker]

At 13:52 31.01.2005 -0600, you wrote:
>I'd say as an end-user of a content heavy, high-end website, it holds
>pretty true.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: webpro-bounces at webdesign-list.com
>[mailto:webpro-bounces at webdesign-list.com] On Behalf Of r937
>Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 1:50 PM
>To: Mailing list for professional webdesigners
>Subject: Re: [Webpro] tablelessness
>
> >  We all want grids!
>
>that's not true

When designing a web interface, I'm thinking in horizontal and vertical
references, groups and blocks, which as a whole makes a more or less
loose grid. It's just a help to put things in a virtual order, it's not
as strict as it sounds, and you don't see the grid in the end product.

Now why can 'tablelessness' be so difficult for designers? Divs, floats
and (negative) margins are not appropriate means to describe the visual
design of an interface. They are very incapable as design 'handles'.
They describe the (code) flow of a document and don't help the user
visually to find what she's looking for (which is the aim of any
webdesign). That's where tables were much more useful.

On the other hand, tables are inappropriate for device-independent web
layouts. There might be our dilemma: That the W3C doesn't make their
standards for designers, because they see the web as device independent
anyway... but that the customer wants design, because websites are mostly
seen on computer screens (and still very rarely on fridges, for instance).

There is no such thing as a hack-free code - ?

Mike