Item — HN Reader

I tried, and evidently failed, to make it clear that I am not in any way advocating a return to table based layout. I'm just frustrated that CSS is so much harder than table based layout to actually implement.

When I see similar frustrations expressed elsewhere, they seem to be roundly condemned with comments of the form "no, CSS is EASY" yet any suggested workarounds for specific problems supporting that theory are of diabolic complexity.

1 comments

Thanks for clarifying. I just think that a valid case for the shortcomings of CSS can be made without even mentioning tables. And to be honest, now that I really know CSS, it is easier than tables. Tables might be easier when you're dealing with a single page, but any site that has even a slight variation in layouts will be much easier with CSS.

It sounds like much of your frustration has to do with browser inconsistency, which isn't necessarily CSS's fault. Getting things to work on Firefox 3 is fairly easy. Getting it to work on you client's Windows 2000 desktop is not.

"Tables might be easier when you're dealing with a single page, but any site that has even a slight variety in layouts will be much easier with CSS."

That's a valid point. Nonetheless I think that it is also valid to consider the ease with which tables can be used to express layout as a metric for what CSS ought to aspire to.