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PHP, CSS, and migrating from table-based design

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PHP, CSS, and migrating from table-based design Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) forum discussing all levels of CSS, including CSS1, CSS2 and CSS Positioning. CSS provides a robust way of applying standardized design concepts to your web pages.

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  #1  
Old April 29th, 2004, 11:00 AM
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Question PHP, CSS, and migrating from table-based design
Like many PHP programmers, I've been migrating from table-based design to CSS for a few websites now, but there's still a problem I've yet to get around.

Most dynamic websites have at least one page that displays a number of dynamic results that need to be displayed in a tabular format. That is, you need to display variable results in orderly columns and rows. Traditionally, this has been done with html tables. No problem. Tried and true.

But WC3 has recommend the migration away from tables. Thus, I feel like I'm a "bad" web developer when I resort back to using tables for the dynamic results on my otherwise CSS-based page.

Question: since this is a problem that many PHP programmers currently face, has anyone found a good resource for information on this problem? Is it even possible?

I've purchased several CSS books and have combed through many websites, but I've never found information relevant to the dynamic design that we PHP programmers face.

In fact, the O'Reilly book seems to indicate that it's not possible to achieve tabular layout without using tables:


Quote:
Tables are unique, compared to the rest of document layout. As of CSS2.1, tables alone possess the unique ability to associate element sizes with other elements--all the cells in a row have the same height, for example, no matter how much or how little content each individual cell might contain. The same is true for the widths of cells that share a column. There is no other situation in layout where elements from different parts of the document tree influence each other's sizing and layout in so direct a way.

- p.331, Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition by Eric A . Meyer, (c) 2004, O'Reilly Media, Inc.

So before I give up my search, I thought I'd post to this forum to see if anyone has found a good solution.

Many thanks,
Steve Stringer
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  #2  
Old April 29th, 2004, 11:55 AM
TuxLives TuxLives is offline
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If you do some reading I think that you will find that the recomendaton is to get away from tables when the data therein is not tabular data.

EG: Welcome text, about us, etc

But, when your have data that is designed that way, say results from a query for books, you, in fact, want it in a table. The reason being, that while it is a bit of a pain for non visual browsers to deal with the table definitions, the information is then known to be related the way it is laid out.
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Old April 29th, 2004, 01:24 PM
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The idea is to move away from using tables to control layout. They are still to be used for tabular data.
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Old April 29th, 2004, 08:41 PM
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JeffCt is exactly correct...
Theres no way you would be able to formulate data dynamicly with 100's of rows without a table...
I'd love to see someone try it though...
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