thank you sam - the table man

WindAndWaves wrote:

I often work with tables and I found that I am confused on where I should be
placing the following elements:

width
height
valign

Those are attributes, not elements. More importantly, though, you don't
want to be using those particular attribures. They deal with
presentation, something which HTML was never meant to do.

On a guess, you're using a table to lay out your page. If so, read
<http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?Tableless_layouts>.

In article <2njt8bF1klo3U1 (AT) uni-berlin (DOT) de>, eurleif (AT) ecritters (DOT) biz
says...

I often work with tables and I found that I am confused on where I should be
placing the following elements:
Those are attributes, not elements. More importantly, though, you don't
want to be using those particular attribures. They deal with
presentation, something which HTML was never meant to do.
On a guess, you're using a table to lay out your page. If so, read
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?Tableless_layouts>.

Your just blowing smoke here. This guy has no intentions of
listening to anyone until they say "why yes, put those "elements"
here....
--
WebcastMaker
The easiest and most affordable way to create
Web casts, or put presentations on the Web.
www.webentations.com

"WindAndWaves" <access (AT) ngaru (DOT) com> wrote:

Sorry to bother Doormouse, but why don't you specify it, is there any
specific reason for that?

Height is controlled by content (or by CSS). Content is always paramount.
Also, the height tag has never been valid HTML, AFAIK. The width tag,
however, I do use from time to time and will validate as HTML 4.01
Transitional.

If you absolutely must have a certain height, you can use a spacer or
CSS. A spacer will always work - regardless of whether your CSS works or
not. CSS gives better control and can hold comments, too.

Spacer GIF:
* make transparent in several convenient sizes (5, 10, 25 pixels for
example).
* can be any width/height that you want.
* many of the same benefits as CSS, plus ultimately very backwards-
compatible

CSS:
* much greater control possible
* comments possible, easy maintenance
* one-stop shopping for presentational control

The Doormouse

--
The Doormouse cannot be reached by e-mail without her permission.

Webcastmaker <info (AT) uselessemail (DOT) com> wrote:

You have your answer. Notice how everyone gave your the same answer?
Use CSS. You just don't like the answer.

A spacer works too.

The Doormouse

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The Doormouse cannot be reached by e-mail without her permission.

On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 15:05:24 +1200, "WindAndWaves" <access (AT) ngaru (DOT) com>
wrote:

I often work with tables and I found that I am confused on where I should be
placing the following elements:

width
height
valign

could I put all of them in the TD tag and leave the TABLE and TR tag blank?

It's time you learned to read a DTD
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/dtd.html

or the version with notes
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/ta...tml#edef-TABLE

The great thing about HTML (and pretty much all net protocols) is that
_you_ can read the real protocol definitions for yourself and for
free. Don't get it second-hand from some hack journalist's book, read
the genuine article.


Reading these, you'll find that only the <td> has width and height.,
and <tr> doesn't. <table> also has width, but that's the width of the
whole table, not a cell.

The align (horizontal) and valign attributes apply to both <tr> and
<td>, with scope applied much as you might expect.

There's also the <colgroup> and <col> elements, which are much
under-used. I've seen people nest tables to do things that were easily
and more simply done with <colgroup>, just through sheer ignorance of
their existence. Commonly you'll want to set alignment for a column
of <td>s (sometimes a width too) and using a <col> avoids the need to
repeat this on every <td>


As for CSS, then there is no reason why you _must_ do this. No reason
at all. It's not "better" to do this in any way - only if it gives you
some concrete advantage as a result can you talk about there being "a
benefit of CSS".

CSS is also a damn nuisance unless you understand it. Tag soup can be
a mess, but so is half-hearted CSS that's used by people who don't
know more than how to replace <font> with it.

The most obvious CSS benefit for tables is that it gives you more
dimension units to choose from. Rather than just pixel or percentage
units (or auto-size), you can also use ems or cm etc. In a world of
varying screen sizes, using ems instead of pixels can be a valuable
usability improvement.

If you have many table cells to worry about, using the class attribute
and some CSS can save you a lot of repeated width or alignment
settings. Otherwise you can use in-lined CSS with the style
attribute. Don't forget <col> either - it still works with CSS.

--
Smert' spamionam