Comments on: What If Table-Based Layout Had Never Been Born?

By: Ross Johnson

Ross Johnson — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 16:41:38 +0000

I agree completely! That would have been the very best situation. I still think it would have caused some people to shy away (although much less) simply because of the complexity of CSS-P vs Tables. Even though css is a pretty easy and intuitive scripting as is.

Then again… maybe Microsoft and Macromedia could come up with an easy method of aproaching it in wysiwyg baby steps?

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:48:36 +0000

You are correct, but WHAT IF…

Would Dreamweaver, et al, have made a WYSIWYG solution that handled CSS properly? The reason entry level designers used tables was NOT because they understood table based layout, but because that is what Frontpage and Dreamweaver produced.

By: Ross Johnson

Ross Johnson — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:55:05 +0000

I hate to say it, but I think table based designs help develop the web to the level that it is now in terms layouts. While the hard core coders probably would have had no problem picking up CSS-P (even in the more buggy stages than today), those who liked the idea of web design but were shy on the debugging/coding/non-wysiwyg side would probably have dropped the idea all together instead of using tables as a stepping stone.

By all means table based layouts should no longer be used anymore, and browsers should actually use and render CSS properly, but it did act as an easy step into the web design/development community for a lot of people. The larger group in the community helps develop the web as a whole.