This Weeks Tip & Trick - Proper Use Of Tables

[Greenguy]

Taken from the newsletter dated Friday Aug 6th 2004.....

I recently added a rule to the Link O'Rama stating that your site has to fit lengthwise into an 800x600 monitor. We have really been cracking down on this & have seen a couple of very common errors being made by numerous submitters:


1 - Setting The Tables To 800 Wide
This is a bad idea, since, oddly enough, an 800 wide table does NOT fit onto an 800 wide monitor. Think about it - you have the border from the browser as well as the scroll bar eating up some of the pixels. Set your tables to 750 wide & you'll have no problems, unless........


2 - Setting Cell Widths That Total Up To Over The Total Width Of Your Table
If you have a table that's 750 wide & put 4 cells in it, each one 200 pixels wide, the table will then of course blow up to 800+ pixels. Setting fixed cell width's inside a fixed width table is very tricky. I suggest using %'s instead. So, using the above example, set your cell width's to 25% & your table will still be 750 pixels wide.


3 - Setting The Tables To A % Of The Monitor
Sometimes we see sites that have the tables set at 80% for the width. While this may look good at whatever screen size you are looking at things on, not everyone has the same screen size & thus, others will not see the same layout that you see when you are designing the site. Design the sites so that you will see what everyone else see's & set the table to a fixed width.


4 - Align Everything The Same
This is a big pet peeve of mine. When you set up the properties on the tables & cells, set them all up so that they are all aligned the same way. We constantly see recip tables that are 3 rows with 3 columns, but the cells are not all centered & thus, one recip loads on the left, the next loads on the right & the last lines up in the center of the cell. If the site looks like you slapped it together in 10 minutes, the surfer's not gonna spend more than 10 seconds before they click the back button. This also applies to those recip tables that don't fit into your cells (those of you that build free sites know what I'm talking about) Either adjust your layout or edit the recip (as little as possible) so that things line up in a pleasing manner. If you have a 750 wide table with 4 cells set at 25%, don;t jam a 200 wide recip table into one of the cells, cause it'll look fucked. Take the extra 5 minutes & adjust your page.


I'm not going to say that I am some sort of "Table Making Guru" LOL - but if you have a question on something or need advice on an existing site, please post them in this thread.