Posted by Brian Cryer on 07/11/07 14:57

"dorayme" <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
news:doraymeRidThis-B34A6E.21594911072007@news-vip.optusnet.com.au...
> In article <APOdnaKf17HOWAnbnZ2dnUVZ8sCsnZ2d@pipex.net>,
> "Brian Cryer" <brian.cryer@127.0.0.1.ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>> To be honest though, and whilst I do mostly use this technique, there are
>> still times when using a table for part of the layout is just so much
>> easier.
>
> Meaning, I assume, that the basic skeleton be a table with 3
> cols. If you do only this and from there on do not use tables for
> layout, within the columns, it is no big crime and has much to
> recommend it in actual practice.

I still have some pages on my website that use a two column table for laying
out the entire page. The disadvantage of using a table for controlling the
page layout is that the browser won't render anything until it has read to
the end of the table. This means that where the table is used to control the
page layout that it won't render anything until it reads to the end of the
page. So performance wise, its not a good idea. That said, I've not done
empirical testing with Mozilla or IE 7 so there is scope for browsers being
more intelligent and rendering sooner than they used to be.

Whatever, I do agree that using tables is "no big crime and has much to
recommend it in actual practice."

Where I tend to use tables occasionally for layout now is where I want a few
items lined up (for example in a 2 x 2 grid), and its just so easy in a
table.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian

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