Best Examples of Tableless Web Designs?

[ManagerJosh]

It appears that Tableless Webdesigns are the biggest thing since the wheel at the moment, so I was wondering if we could get a list of sites with excellent examples and designs using the tableless method.

I'd be interested in seeing what they did and how they did it.

[MrNase]

Well, that's just a small assortment of websites but... enjoy
http://www.tmxcommunications.com/
http://www.rocketstarcafe.com/
http://sparkle.photobug.org/
http://www.pechanga-nsn.gov/page?pageId=1
http://www.qohs.org/
http://www.uppercanadahockey.com/
http://www.joonsfamily.com/home/
http://www.monc.se/
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/
http://www.treecrop.com.au/index.htm
http://www.newezra.com/xhtml/home/
http://leftjustified.net/
http://www.garyleib.com/
http://hivelogic.com/
http://www.redhatwine.com/
http://www.yourtotalsite.com/
http://www.arcadiabluffs.com/
http://www.adampolselli.com/
http://coda.co.za/
http://zeldman.com
http://simplebits.com

[Lacrosse Boy]

Maybe I'll sound uninformed when I post this, but what is with tableless designs anyhow? Someone the spacing always looks a bit odd to me. Is it just a trend, or is there some reason why these sites are all going tableless.

I created a tableless design for my blog jsut for fun, but I think that spacing looks odd, but this appears to be something that is with all the tableless designs that I've seen.

[Zachery]

Tables are "old and bad" is basicly what the current move is, they are made for tabluar data, and not design, CSS and XHTML can take designing a website to a whole new level

However, using tables is not bad as long as they are not nested, at least thats my reasoning, there are still some limits on CSS based designs due to the fact CSS is still a growing technology? (standard? whatever).

[MrNase]

Well not all tableless designs look the same

You are right, there's a clear trend to those kind of websites but that has nothing to do with tableless. Using layers to build a website is so much more flexible.

check out www.csszengarden.com .
You'll be surprised how different a website could look like with just another stylesheet.

[Lacrosse Boy]

That's interesting.

Currently I prefer tables. I don't know why they would be considered for only tabular data unless you are using the Lotus 1-2-3 mentality. I actually prefer websites that have tables as opposed to those ones listed.

Is this just a trend?

[Zachery]

Yes and no, table tags are rather old, so its a good trend, you should be able to do basic tableless designs (nothing fancy). As i said above, as long as you dont make a habbit of making your whole site one huge table of tables you'll be good

[Lacrosse Boy]

Well I've tinkered around with that in my blog.

None of my websites are a plethora of tables or are redundant, so I don't have to worry.

Maybe if more websites go tableless and it's better supported by browsers I'll consider it for my two sites. But right now I think that I am perfectly fine.

[Zachery]

Thats my point as well, why go out o0f your way to design a really cool site that 5% of the population can view correctly (yes thats an exagertion ) In 3 years i think we will see less and less of tabled design and more CSS as CSS3 support in browsers roll aroun with Longhorn and the next generation of other OS'ses

[MGM]

Thats my point as well, why go out o0f your way to design a really cool site that 5% of the population can view correctly (yes thats an exagertion ) In 3 years i think we will see less and less of tabled design and more CSS as CSS3 support in browsers roll aroun with Longhorn and the next generation of other OS'ses

Why bother doing CSS if you already know the HTML way? I mean, who cares if we use 100 tables nested within one another as long as it works for the design, am I right? The user isn't gonna look through the source and say they hate the site because it doesn't use CSS and the source is all confusing. As long as the webmaster can read it, then that's all thats needed

MGM out

[Wayne Luke]

Why bother doing CSS if you already know the HTML way? I mean, who cares if we use 100 tables nested within one another as long as it works for the design, am I right? The user isn't gonna look through the source and say they hate the site because it doesn't use CSS and the source is all confusing. As long as the webmaster can read it, then that's all thats needed

What happens when a new device becomes the prominent access to the Internet? Out of the Billion Cell Phones in use, how many of them can use your website with its table-generated design? If you wanted to cater to these people how much work would be involved?

With a CSS layout, you can alter the design based on the device or even the width of the user's web browser. For instance, on a site I am building currently, the available space increases according to the width of the browser. Which can be done with tables and using percentages but I also have a minimum width of 770 px and a maximum width of 1000 px for the entire layout. You can't do that easily in tables.

Or what if it is viewed on a small screen like a PDA or Cell Phone. With CSS, you can eliminate images, move navigation, change the layout from a 3 column to 2 column or even a 1 column design based on the device. With CSS, you can adjust the voice and timber of the sound given to the user on their screen readers. With CSS you can reformat your page for the printer without providing an alternate page of HTML for printing. This is where the power of the layout comes in.

If you only want to work on websites that work on a computer monitor at specific resolutions then use tables. If you want to design web applications that can work on any device (current or future) than use CSS to create your layouts.

However, I do agree there are limits. I don't follow a strict table-less design methodology because the web browsers of today are in an in-between state and don't quite get CSS completely.

[Sn2]

Why bother doing CSS if you already know the HTML way? I mean, who cares if we use 100 tables nested within one another as long as it works for the design, am I right? The user isn't gonna look through the source and say they hate the site because it doesn't use CSS and the source is all confusing. As long as the webmaster can read it, then that's all thats needed

MGM out

The file size of the page can be significantly reduced when using CSS, also bandwidth will be saved when browsers cache the stylesheet.

[Kayn]

Here's my first all CSS design.

http://collectiveunderground.com (needs some tweaking in Firefox and Opera)

I really like the CSS tableless route, but tables do have advantages, like... tabular data, or when you just need to throw something together real quick. Y'know?

[MrNase]

The only tables I use are in Excel

atm Iam redesigning my personal website (www.mrnase.de) and it will be (as usual) without tables

[Dean C]

You'll find loads of great designs over @ www.cssvault.com