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TABLES
are for TABULAR DATA and not meant for Web
Page Layout where as CSS is more suited for
this.
- Last
time I checked, most websites use a database
to store data. And databases
are just a bunch of tables in the first
place. Hence, tabular data that will somehow be eventually displayed back onto a webpage in some type of
tabular form that has at least 2 columns and
2 or more rows..
And, as far
as I know, the shopping cart has at least
2 columns, the name of the
product and the price. (But it's usually
more than two columns: description, quantity,
etc). But I want to point out to CSS elitists
that this shopping cart is not a block
of text, or a paragraph.
So, if you are going to build a website,
you are going to need tabular data in the first
place, and if not now, it will eventually.
Tabular data comes in all forms:
- contact
lists
- shopping carts
- calendar
dates
- address
books
- forums
- digital
picture photo album (5 pics x 5 pics)
- search
results
- employee lists
- phone numbers
- product
catalogs
- guest books
- statistics
- auctions
- real estate listings
- dating lists
- customer orders
- reports,
etc
Anything you can do (and did) in Microsoft
Excel you can expect to be done with tables;
which just so happens to be all of the good
stuff that people visit websites for
in the first place.
BUSINESSES KEEP RECORDS, HENCE TABULAR DATA
And the last time I checked, Oracle,
Microsoft, Siebel and IBM still sell databases.
I also know that all businesses on this planet
have to keep
records and make transactions. And
I don't know of any business that doesn't have
a set of "BOOKS" to
see if they are making a profit or a a loss.
In other words, TABLES of data are going to
be kept and you are going to need <TD> and <TR> tags.
NEWSPAPERS,
BOOKS, MAGAZINES USE PARAGRAPHS, MARGINS and
WHITE SPACE; HENCE TABULAR DATA
Publications
use invisible and visible vertical and horizontal
lines, HENCE TABLES, so that things LINE UP
so you
can READ
IT more easily. With CSS-P, you have to define the coordinates for all those lines, so CSS-P will have plenty of
numbers, in fact TOO many numbers to work with
and they better make sure the numbers all match
up correctly.
THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE READS FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO
BOTTOM; HENCE FOUR SIDE OF A RECTANGLE, HENCE,
TABULAR DATA
The words on this page read from left to
right, top to bottom.
hence the path or shape of a rectangle. Your
eyes move along the shape of a rectangle. The same can be said for non-english languages, right to left, top to bottom. You can save space, like paper by having your
document in a organized format. Readers can
find things in a web page when it's organized
in a tabular format via invisible vertical
/ horizontal lines and layout.
MARGINS, LEFT, CENTER RIGHT JUSTIFICATION
Page layout
uses margins, white space, balanced text, etc
to make things more readable for the user.
To make sure these margins, white space, etc
are working and done right, there are HORIZONTAL
and VERTICAL LINES, HENCE TABLES that things can go in. It's called ORGANIZATION.....TABLES
ASSISTS IN ORGANIZE THINGS....
With CSS-P there is NO ORGANIZATION, so CSS-P
have to do it themselves in order for their
pages to look right. Lots of time savings there,
huh?
A
closer look at the SPEED of CSS TABLE versus
REGULAR TABLE
[this comparison section has been moved here]
*THE REASON FOR CSS PURIST'S HOSTILITY
A lot of
these CSS purists don't even have a data-driven
site so they have no appreciation of what you
can do with a database. Sites like, csszengarden.com
have no database or data and definitely not
e-commerce. Plus, their own personal website
typically has a
bunch
of static pages anyway. They have no idea that
after the 10 minute FLASH commercial,
people ( or users) actually want to do something
practical besides being entertained.
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