If you must use tables…

Posted on 3/24/2004 by Matt

Use them properly.

Isolani does a great job with a succinct, easy to understand Guide to creating accessible, structured tables for your tabular data (the only thing for which you should be using tables).

Comments

http://www.individualandcommunity.org anomie

… to creating accessible, structured tables for your tabular data (the only thing for which you should be using tables).

How do you reconcile having to be cross-browser compatible with the strong desire, as stated above, to only use tables for tabular data? (I agree with the sentiment, btw.) Esp. in higher education, I’d think that some compromises would need to be made.

Also, great site!
http://www.mattheerema.com Matt

The need to be cross browser compatible does not conflict with using tables ONLY for tabular data anymore. All modern browsers support CSS based layouts.

The need to support Netscape 4 is NILL. There are many great articles on that subject out there, I have a few of them linked here.

Thanks for the comment on the site. :)
http://www.individualandcommunity.org anomie

How about supporting IE for Mac ? We have lots of that browser type in my school.

Try using CSS float for that audience. :)

Glad to hear that maybe this is not a concern in all higher ed locations.
http://www.mattheerema.com Matt

IE for Mac is my second biggest headache with Web design (first being IE for PC).

We don’t support anything lower than IE 5.2 for OSX. Not ironically, Microsoft doesn’t support ANY of its IE browsers for Mac anymore.

Floats in IE for mac can be a headache, but there are hacks out ther eto get around stuff. Perhaps I shall dig up a few and talk about them here.