CSS for XXX site design?

[Joe Pineapples]

I notice that not many adult sites I come across are made from pure css, instead they all seem to still be made using the tables method.
Is there a valid reason for this?
Cross browser compatibly issues regarding css perhaps?
I would be interested in anybodies views on this subject.

thanks

[jayeff]

I suspect the main culprit is simple laziness. There are no positive reasons to keep coding with tables and plenty of reasons to code correctly.

Usually it's part of poor coding in general. Before I update someone's site I validate the existing code and there are always dozens, sometimes hundreds of errors. It's especially foolish when you consider how much effort some people put into other aspects of SEO, yet they don't bother to get the basics right.

[Maj. Stress]

The last time I looked tables were not deprecated for html 4.01 transitional. So what's the problem with tables?

[Joe Pineapples]

Hi, I don't see a problem with tables if thats what you feel comfortable using. There are a multitude of people that would give you a multitude of reasons for NOT using em, but I aint one of em. Although I will say that tables do take longer to load than CSS driven sites.

Personally I prefer to use CSS, now I feel have a good understanding of coding the stuff. The biggest problem I find is the browser compatibility issues between ie and firefox, and if your using ie on a mac then you can forget it!

At the end of the day its all about the bucks (or pounds) Tables will load no matter what crappy browser someone is using, whereas CSS wont load properly on some older browsers or looks all messed up. Hence the punter with the crap browser probably wont buy from me.

I have an important project on the drawing board, and I cant decide to use css or or go back and use tables...hmmm

[SirMoby]

Tables were designed specifically to store data in cells and are perfect for creating a gallery of thumbs. So for the gallery part of our business tables still make a lot of sense.

When it comes to entire page layout CSS offers some great features and webmasters might want to start looking at it though.

Since so many browsers implement CSS differently, webmasters still need to learn some CSS hacks and until those are gone tables will still have a foot hold for page layout.

[Joe Pineapples]

Hmm yeah, I can understand completely for thumb gallery's now you mention it, especially when the auto thumb making software generates tables.

Still dosn't explain the total dominance of tables in actual site design when it comes to the adult business tho. I might be inclined to go with jayeff's explanation.

CSS is a minefield when starting out so if tables work, and can be seen in all rubbish or old browsers then why not carry on with them?
CSS probably isnt quite ready yet or the browser arnt.
When I start seeing CSS more frequently implemented in porn sites thats prob an indication that things are changing.

Hmm Im still not sure which way to go with this new site, although i bending back towards tables, perhaps with some CSS here and there.

thanks for all your input.

[jayeff]

Originally Posted by Joe Pineapples

CSS is a minefield when starting out

To create a display of thumbnails in CSS is basically as simple as stating the width of the thumbs and the box into which you want to "pour" them. Thus instead of

<table><tr><td>linked_image_here</td><td>linked_image_here</td><td>linked_image_here</td></tr></table>

you can have

<div>linked_image_herelinked_image_herelinked_image_here</div>

Not only is the code dramatically less, but if I want to change the number of columns, I just change the width of the div in my stylesheet and I'm done. No messing around deleting or adding td's. Almost everything from Comus to Thumbnailer can be persuaded to use divs instead of tables.

What are the consequences? Im most cases, total code will be reduced by 20%-25%, which means less bandwidth. It also means that when search engines look at your site, the ratio between content and code is improved (by more than the superficial saving, since your stylesheet should be separate and is therefore not seen as part of the page by the SE spiders) and that is good news. Less code also means faster loading, but load speed will be increased further because browsers cannot display tables until they have calculated how they should be displayed.

And there is the rub. As I mentioned in my earlier post, most people do not write good code. If people coded properly, using things such as table-layout:fixed, most sites using tables would load faster than they do. But people leave out dimensions, put things in which aren't needed which may make the browser run through some unnecessary "thinking", etc. But even if table-based designs are coded properly, they cannot load as fast as table-free designs.

It's worth people checking their sites at http://validator.w3.org and if there are a lot of errors, they could be costing you something in terms of visitors and SE scores. If that bothers you enough to want to do something about it, does it make more sense to learn how to code well in old-style HTML or to put the same effort into current coding standards?

[Joe Pineapples]

Thats great mate.
Actually my site did jump up google when I changed it from HTML to pure CSS. (as I had hoped) I cheated a bit and used a lot of absolute divs to reproduce the original site design quickly, but the code was a cleaner and shorter, it all validates.

Jayeff the CSS thumbs technique sounds very interesting.

[Schpork]

Well, ofcourse there are a lot of sites that were made with tables, you can't blame them for sticking with it, that kind of restyle could bring lots of trouble.. Another reason might be that not everybody knows CSS well enough to code whole sites in it yet, f/e I dont, but I don't really need to at the moment so I probably won't learn it just yet and since you can just as well make the sites with tables I think thats exactly what other people are thinking. Fact is alot of people are lazy

[ronnie]

Originally Posted by jayeff

I suspect the main culprit is simple laziness. There are no positive reasons to keep coding with tables and plenty of reasons to code correctly.

Suspect is a good word. I for one don't do design everyday or that often, nor do I do it for a living, as most other webmasters. For me and I guess many other webmasters, just finding the time to learn it, usually more important things such as traffic, trades, ads, reviews, ect, ect. Not that CSS is not important, it's all a matter of time.

For those that know and do CSS, creating a layout may be simple, for the rest of us, it can be a big mess and end up taking so much time, time we don't always have.

[Maj. Stress]

Originally Posted by SirMoby

Since so many browsers implement CSS differently, webmasters still need to learn some CSS hacks and until those are gone tables will still have a foot hold for page layout.

You nailed it with that statement. When you have 1000's of sites out there and a browser updates and hacks no longer work the way they were originally intended, you have one hell of a mess to fix.

I like tableless design myself. The pages load very fast and use little bandwidth. I do use a lot of css on my free sites but I'm staying with tables on them.

[MightyMidget]

For me to really care, I think I'd have to see something really impressive done with CSS first. So far I haven't. And by impressive I don't mean a 20% save on code, I mean something visually stunning that just couldn't have been done with tables! Every time I see some CSS design I think "Well that could be done with tables too".

I know I shouldn't think like that and I know I should be impressed by vague promises of improved SEO, but I'm just not because I'm too geeky. I didn't learn to code 68k assembler so I could save a few bytes on my floppy discs, I did it so I could spin those vector graphics in real-time!

Ok, so basically that was a long way of saying that if anybody has a few links to visually impressive CSS-based sites, I'd love to see them. Doesn't have to be porn! If they look cool enough, I'll learn CSS tomorrow.

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by ronnie

For those that know and do CSS, creating a layout may be simple, for the rest of us, it can be a big mess and end up taking so much time, time we don't always have.

I tend to think that many designers that praise CSS don't test their work that well. I purchase designs often and those that claim that CSS is easy usually have cross browser errors that I need to fix. Those that claim it's not so easy tend to write better CSS and will still use tables now and then

[Licker4U]

If tables load faster and there is a code reduction of 20-25% that's reason enough for me. I'm already using CSS for all my background colors and images, table cell and image borders, and all fonts. I'll just pick up more as I go along. I think of it like SSI. Never used it until about 2 1/2 years ago but can't live without it now.

[jayeff]

The separation of document layout from document structure has been discussed since 1990 when HTML first appeared. Tim Berners-Lee wrote his NeXT browser/editor to use a style sheet, but decided it was up to each browser to decide how to best display pages. For the next few years, the major browsers went backwards in terms of styling abilities as each sought to gain market share via proprietary implementations.

Ironically the first CSS working group which eventually led to the standards we use today, was formed in 1997. That was the same year that David Siegel published his book about HTML layout (using tables for data display) and everyone jumped on the bandwagon. A usable CSS standard which modern browsers could all handle (albeit with some differences in interpretation) did not appear for another 5 years.

CSS is not simply about doing away with tables. The fact is that document styling which has been common in the bricks-and-mortar world for hundreds of years and which is possible in even the simplest word processors, is just not available via HTML. Nor will it ever be, because it was recognized before the internet ever came along that it is hugely inefficient to store electronic documents with styling embedded in the content. So changes in future, now that there are usable CSS standards, will be to eventually eliminate even the few styling options which were built into HTML.

All of which is the first reason I find myself defending or promoting CSS at regular intervals. CSS+HTML isn't easier to learn than plain HTML, but nor is it any harder and thousands of hopefuls visit webmasters boards every year. It doesn't make sense for these newcomers to put time and effort into learning code which is inherently limited, instead of code which will let them do pretty much anything they can imagine.

My second reason is that after discussions about building traffic and which sponsors to use, making sites load faster and more search-engine friendly are high on the list of most popular board topics. There is something very flawed about people looking for clever tweaks in these areas, without getting the basics right first.

Simple logic says it is faster and cheaper to deliver lean code and we know that browsers have to work relatively hard to display tables. As far as search engines are concerned, much is guesswork, but it is not guesswork that they are looking for content and that code only gets in the way.

Finally, most code is rubbish. Every day I get asked to help solve layout problems and the first thing I suggest is validate existing code because often that will provide the answer. I don't recall even once seeing a clean site, the best have dozens of errors and most, hundreds. Compliant sites are not some abstract concept, but the best way to ensure that your visitors can all see what you intend them to see. That surely is a basic aim which any (commercial) webmaster should shoot for and a major side benefit of people switching to modern design standards is that many have also begun to routinely validate their code. The first site of mine I ever validated had more than an hundred errors, whereas now I'm disappointed if my first draft has even a handful. That improvement in my own knowledge has made my work faster and easier.

Yes, there are browser incompatibilities, but here's a heads up: not all are confined to the way that CSS is handled. Secondly, the number of gotchas is very small, they are all recognized and often avoidable. If not, widely known solutions exist. Does CSS somehow force people to check the correctness of their code and ensure its compatibility? Of course not, no more than HTML does, so certainly there will be sloppy coders in both camps. That's a reflection on the people, not on the code they use.

http://csszengarden.com/
http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/

[ronnie]

I totally agree to the advantages of CSS, but calling most webmasters Lazy is not always the correct answer.

I dont think there is any defending needed.

When I started I never heard that CSS was better and why, so of course I learned html. If you wanted a website, you had to build html pages, so thats what I did. Standard practice.

[jayeff]

Originally Posted by ronnie

Lazy is not always the correct answer

I have been in business for 35 years. One of the things I learned very early is that all the technical/formal knowledge you need to run any business is in the public domain, accessible to everyone. Why then do the great majority of businesses (in any industry) fail while outstanding successes are so few they can be counted?

There are lots of reasons. Lack of capital is a common cause. But take an objective look around the boards sometime. Most questions are asked either to save looking for answers, or because people want shortcuts. Not only that, but look at the nature of the questions: the vast majority relate to the purely superficial aspects of our business, the laboring if you like. There are many people who have been in this industry for a decade and don't know any more about business principles, marketing, etc., than the day they started. The closest most boards ever get to business (as opposed to industry) posts, is if someone asks about offshore banking.

To get back to the topic of CSS, over the next year, many who continue to code without it, will spend more extra time on their coding (especially if they do a reasonable amount of maintenance on existing sites) than it would have taken to learn CSS. So sure, I read the rationalizations for not taking that time, the same way as I read the rationalizations for working without financial goals, business plans, etc. In most cases, IMO such ommissions boil down to laziness. It may not be diplomatic to say so, but I'm not big on diplomacy, and inserting the word "suspect" is about as good as I get at it.

Okay, that's an opinion. It may not be shared and even if it is, it could still be wrong. What is certain however, is that to compete in this industry now and in future, people are going to have to be more professional than anyone dreamed about a decade ago. The excess of demand over supply, which made it easier to stay dry in a monsoon than not make money in online porn, is long gone. Part of being a professional - again, in any industry - is choosing the right tools for the job and learning how to use them properly. In our industry, CSS is one of those tools.

...which is all far more than I imagined I would end up writing when I first posted in this thread. I think that is more than enough from me on this topic

[Licker4U]

CSS, like SSI, thumb making software, etc. is a tool. The more tools I know how to use the better off I'm going to be in the long run.