Are Tables Fashionable Again?

I read an interesting article lately about a technique entitled TILT. The methods employed are nothing new, just a simple use of JavaScript and Tables. In fact, one might call the usage of tables for layout old-fashioned, antiquated and outdated. There have been numerous articles and books written about CSS layout in recent years, so much so that any self-respecting web-designer wouldn’t even think of going back to tables.

Yet, the fact remains that there are many people like my parents, who still use Windows 98, and are surfing the web with clunky old versions of Internet Explorer. Worse yet, are the people that are still using Netscape 4 not because they have to, but out of preference.

So, as a web designer, you have a few choices to make: » Cater to the elitism found among the designer community, and ditch support for the older browsers, or » be friendly to Mom & Dad by developing sites that still work in their older browsers. It is of course possible to do both, by using a variety of CSS hacks.

However, this type of development is tedious and time consuming, so often designers choose the easier option of going standards-compliant and leaving the others out in the cold. But what if there was another, better way? What if it was possible to add a sort of legacy support to older browsers, giving them a tried-and-true table layout, while still providing new browsers with the cutting-edge design? According to Dimitri Glazkov, now you can – read on…

• glazkov.com/blog/archive/2005/05/02/476.aspx

Note: To my parent’s credit, they are now using Firefox.