Okay guys, I really need you all to pull out the stops here.
The company that I work for (and let me tell you, it's a huge one) are releasing a new content managed intranet in the next few weeks, and by being sneaky and clandestine I've managed to get hold of the templates for some of the pages.
Let me tell you, I was amazed. Absolutely dumbstruck in fact. All of the templates - ALL OF THEM - are based entirely around nested tables. Even, and you'll love this I'm sure, the lists that are on the pages are done using tables with the left column containing a '-' and the right column containing the text. They also, of course, have completely separate templates that you can get to through the "print friendly" option on every page.
Well as you can guess I was quickly away working on converting one of their templates to CSS: their 3 column layout became beautiful floating things with negative margins; their navigation became an unordered list; their breadcrumbs became an unordered, inline list; the print stylesheet took away the need for "print friendly" versions of the pages. It was beautiful - and I reduced the file size from 40k to 12k to boot!
Now I sent this off to them with a cover note saying "I am far from a half decent CSS programmer. What I come up with is poached bits of other people's code and half guesses as to what's right. But it is at least CSS - and it's a step in the right direction". But surprise surprise, they're not listening to me.
So, after all that, this is what I want. I want you, the good people of this board, to give me the absolute corker reasons why they have to abandon this table based layout (oh by the way - they've set the "width of all templates to 960 pixels" - which goes off to the right of my screen...) and listen to what I'm telling them. I want links to authoritative sources, government decrees, good examples, any sort of reason you can come up with as to why they cannot proceed as they plan.
And in return, you'll get a major industry player finally using technology that's been around for donkey's years, and makes things easier for everyone.
Please - help me! Join me in this fight!Okie-Dokey-Diddly-Poky; Here's my reasons:
Smaller file-size
Faster transfer rates
Browser friendly
W3C Compliant
Works for braille browsers
There's some more... I just can't think of them!
And some links:
CSS Zen Garden (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://csszengarden.com/">http://csszengarden.com/</a><!-- m -->) (You can get some quotes from there).
Take a look at all of the sites listed here (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=%2Bwhy+%2Bis+CSS+better+than+tables%3F&btnG=Search">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search</a><!-- m -->).
Hope this helps.If you want me to help convince them, go ahead and send me an email (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ryanbrill.com/contact.php">http://www.ryanbrill.com/contact.php</a><!-- m -->). I'll use what little influence I may have to try to help you convince them.
I wrote this article (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ryanbrill.com/archives/why-use-web-standards/">http://www.ryanbrill.com/archives/why-u ... standards/</a><!-- m -->) on some of the benefits of using standards. Also, this one (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html">http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html</a><!-- m -->) is a great place to point non-believers.
Here is a list (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/">http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/</a><!-- m -->) of some of the benefits of using web standards.Hi -
Don't bother to tell them. I've heard that it's best to just knock them out with a wonderful design.
Then they'll stop griping.
ElOriginally posted by LJK
I've heard that it's best to just knock them out with a wonderful design.
A baseball bat works just as well.
Can I say that?Read my "A word of thanks" in this forum. By removing nested tables I reduced a site by 800khttp://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.htmlOriginally posted by pyro
Also, this one (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html">http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html</a><!-- m -->) ...YepIt's THE FUTURE
It's ATTRACTIVE
Can change the look without damaging the contents
It's all around in the web
It's works fastlol, i say screw it. i bet there getting paid alot fo rthis right? well i say start yor own little temporary company and come up with a bunch of designs, then tell your boss to compare the 2. you will win
Maybe these people are concerned of how much it'll cost. Then maybe you should tell them how much they will $ave. thanks for your thoughts and links guys. I've also looked at taking a "stronger" line - particularly the story about the sydney olympic committee getting sued for not making their site accessible: I've a feeling that might make them sit up and take notice.
Does anyone know of any governmental guidelines (US is OK, but UK / EU law would be preferable) that I can throw at them? I have a few bits from the W3C and how people should be achieving AA conformity (which it's quite difficult to do if you're using tables for layout) but I've still not really got anything that will blow their socks off (apart from my re-designs, of course).
Also, what about things telling them that they have to produce valid XHTML? (Many of the pages don't even validate, let alone get A conformity at W3C...)http://www.euroaccessibility.org/Disability Discimination Act
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml">http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-frien ... ents.shtml</a><!-- m -->
also
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessuk/If">http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessuk/If</a><!-- m --> it's a company intranet, most likely everyone will be using IE6 on Win2k or XP on a consistent screen resolution. I'd be more concerned if this was a public site.Originally posted by toicontien
If it's a company intranet, most likely everyone will be using IE6 on Win2k or XP on a consistent screen resolution. I'd be more concerned if this was a public site.
agreed - but not everyone in the company has the same standard of eyesite, and there's also the concern of what happens if they buy us all 19" monitors and we go to 1280xwhatever resolution. Suddenly the intranet has to be redesigned to fit everyone's new screen!Have them do the math. Even a modest 20-page intranet that has fixed-width tables (for instance) would take, at roughly 5 minutes a page, 100 minutes, or just under 2 hours for one person to resize. With CSS, you change every page on the whole site in under 5 minutes. Oh, your printer-friendly pages need to be smaller than A-4 size, too? Better double that 100 minutes to 200, for each 'printer friendly' secondary template. But probably within the same 5 minutes (and we know we're being generous with the time) of change for the original web pages you can also change the secondary printer-friendly templates by changing that one li'l ol' CSS. That's over 3 hours of time saved, enough to rewrite your resume and apply for a job with a company that has common sense enough to do simple math.gentlemen, start your engines:
We will be using CSS for the actual website when it goes live. However, for accessibility reasons we do still have to use tables for layout purposes, to ensure compatibility with older browsers. There is a small but significant percentage of visitors to our website who use browsers which do not recognise CSS, and they would have problems looking at our pages if we did not use tablesSorry, this is for our internet site now, not our intranet (that will no doubt be the same).
Lots of stats in your responses please - I want to knock his socks off...All the stats you need:
* <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thecounter.com/stats/">http://www.thecounter.com/stats/</a><!-- m -->
* <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp">http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp</a><!-- m -->
CSS-capable browsers:
* IE5 and newer
* Netscape 6.2 and newer (6.0 - 6.1 was buggy)
* Mozilla
* Firefox
* Opera 7 and newer (6 and older was buggy)
* Apple Safari
They make up about 99% of the browsers used. Also consider that Netscape 4.x and IE4 is kicking the Hell out of six years old. As a Web designer, would you want to use a six year old version of Photoshop? Would a graphic designer want to use a six year old version of Adobe Pagemaker or QuarkXpress?
Honestly, tell people to upgrade their browsers at the company. They're free.
I used to be the Online Editor at Central Michigan Life's Web site (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cm-life.com/">http://www.cm-life.com/</a><!-- m -->), the online edition of CMU's (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cmich.edu/">http://www.cmich.edu/</a><!-- m -->) student newspaper. We went XHTML/CSS more than a year ago. I would give data transfer stats for that, but the content of our front page increased dramatically (and thus the amount of data transferred).
Give them these sites:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.csszengarden.com/">http://www.csszengarden.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.espn.com/">http://www.espn.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.aol.com/">http://www.aol.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.macromedia.com/">http://www.macromedia.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.lycos.com/">http://www.lycos.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cm-life.com/">http://www.cm-life.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.seminolechronicle.com/">http://www.seminolechronicle.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thegramblinite.com/">http://www.thegramblinite.com/</a><!-- m --> - not live yet
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thedakotastudent.com/">http://www.thedakotastudent.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dailytarheel.com/">http://www.dailytarheel.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dailytitan.com/">http://www.dailytitan.com/</a><!-- m -->
All CSS layouts.
The company that I work for (and let me tell you, it's a huge one) are releasing a new content managed intranet in the next few weeks, and by being sneaky and clandestine I've managed to get hold of the templates for some of the pages.
Let me tell you, I was amazed. Absolutely dumbstruck in fact. All of the templates - ALL OF THEM - are based entirely around nested tables. Even, and you'll love this I'm sure, the lists that are on the pages are done using tables with the left column containing a '-' and the right column containing the text. They also, of course, have completely separate templates that you can get to through the "print friendly" option on every page.
Well as you can guess I was quickly away working on converting one of their templates to CSS: their 3 column layout became beautiful floating things with negative margins; their navigation became an unordered list; their breadcrumbs became an unordered, inline list; the print stylesheet took away the need for "print friendly" versions of the pages. It was beautiful - and I reduced the file size from 40k to 12k to boot!
Now I sent this off to them with a cover note saying "I am far from a half decent CSS programmer. What I come up with is poached bits of other people's code and half guesses as to what's right. But it is at least CSS - and it's a step in the right direction". But surprise surprise, they're not listening to me.
So, after all that, this is what I want. I want you, the good people of this board, to give me the absolute corker reasons why they have to abandon this table based layout (oh by the way - they've set the "width of all templates to 960 pixels" - which goes off to the right of my screen...) and listen to what I'm telling them. I want links to authoritative sources, government decrees, good examples, any sort of reason you can come up with as to why they cannot proceed as they plan.
And in return, you'll get a major industry player finally using technology that's been around for donkey's years, and makes things easier for everyone.
Please - help me! Join me in this fight!Okie-Dokey-Diddly-Poky; Here's my reasons:
Smaller file-size
Faster transfer rates
Browser friendly
W3C Compliant
Works for braille browsers
There's some more... I just can't think of them!
And some links:
CSS Zen Garden (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://csszengarden.com/">http://csszengarden.com/</a><!-- m -->) (You can get some quotes from there).
Take a look at all of the sites listed here (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=%2Bwhy+%2Bis+CSS+better+than+tables%3F&btnG=Search">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search</a><!-- m -->).
Hope this helps.If you want me to help convince them, go ahead and send me an email (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ryanbrill.com/contact.php">http://www.ryanbrill.com/contact.php</a><!-- m -->). I'll use what little influence I may have to try to help you convince them.
I wrote this article (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ryanbrill.com/archives/why-use-web-standards/">http://www.ryanbrill.com/archives/why-u ... standards/</a><!-- m -->) on some of the benefits of using standards. Also, this one (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html">http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html</a><!-- m -->) is a great place to point non-believers.
Here is a list (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/">http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/</a><!-- m -->) of some of the benefits of using web standards.Hi -
Don't bother to tell them. I've heard that it's best to just knock them out with a wonderful design.
Then they'll stop griping.
ElOriginally posted by LJK
I've heard that it's best to just knock them out with a wonderful design.
A baseball bat works just as well.
Can I say that?Read my "A word of thanks" in this forum. By removing nested tables I reduced a site by 800khttp://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.htmlOriginally posted by pyro
Also, this one (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html">http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html</a><!-- m -->) ...YepIt's THE FUTURE
It's ATTRACTIVE
Can change the look without damaging the contents
It's all around in the web
It's works fastlol, i say screw it. i bet there getting paid alot fo rthis right? well i say start yor own little temporary company and come up with a bunch of designs, then tell your boss to compare the 2. you will win
Maybe these people are concerned of how much it'll cost. Then maybe you should tell them how much they will $ave. thanks for your thoughts and links guys. I've also looked at taking a "stronger" line - particularly the story about the sydney olympic committee getting sued for not making their site accessible: I've a feeling that might make them sit up and take notice.Does anyone know of any governmental guidelines (US is OK, but UK / EU law would be preferable) that I can throw at them? I have a few bits from the W3C and how people should be achieving AA conformity (which it's quite difficult to do if you're using tables for layout) but I've still not really got anything that will blow their socks off (apart from my re-designs, of course).
Also, what about things telling them that they have to produce valid XHTML? (Many of the pages don't even validate, let alone get A conformity at W3C...)http://www.euroaccessibility.org/Disability Discimination Act
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml">http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-frien ... ents.shtml</a><!-- m -->
also
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessuk/If">http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessuk/If</a><!-- m --> it's a company intranet, most likely everyone will be using IE6 on Win2k or XP on a consistent screen resolution. I'd be more concerned if this was a public site.Originally posted by toicontien
If it's a company intranet, most likely everyone will be using IE6 on Win2k or XP on a consistent screen resolution. I'd be more concerned if this was a public site.
agreed - but not everyone in the company has the same standard of eyesite, and there's also the concern of what happens if they buy us all 19" monitors and we go to 1280xwhatever resolution. Suddenly the intranet has to be redesigned to fit everyone's new screen!Have them do the math. Even a modest 20-page intranet that has fixed-width tables (for instance) would take, at roughly 5 minutes a page, 100 minutes, or just under 2 hours for one person to resize. With CSS, you change every page on the whole site in under 5 minutes. Oh, your printer-friendly pages need to be smaller than A-4 size, too? Better double that 100 minutes to 200, for each 'printer friendly' secondary template. But probably within the same 5 minutes (and we know we're being generous with the time) of change for the original web pages you can also change the secondary printer-friendly templates by changing that one li'l ol' CSS. That's over 3 hours of time saved, enough to rewrite your resume and apply for a job with a company that has common sense enough to do simple math.gentlemen, start your engines:
We will be using CSS for the actual website when it goes live. However, for accessibility reasons we do still have to use tables for layout purposes, to ensure compatibility with older browsers. There is a small but significant percentage of visitors to our website who use browsers which do not recognise CSS, and they would have problems looking at our pages if we did not use tablesSorry, this is for our internet site now, not our intranet (that will no doubt be the same).
Lots of stats in your responses please - I want to knock his socks off...All the stats you need:
* <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thecounter.com/stats/">http://www.thecounter.com/stats/</a><!-- m -->
* <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp">http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp</a><!-- m -->
CSS-capable browsers:
* IE5 and newer
* Netscape 6.2 and newer (6.0 - 6.1 was buggy)
* Mozilla
* Firefox
* Opera 7 and newer (6 and older was buggy)
* Apple Safari
They make up about 99% of the browsers used. Also consider that Netscape 4.x and IE4 is kicking the Hell out of six years old. As a Web designer, would you want to use a six year old version of Photoshop? Would a graphic designer want to use a six year old version of Adobe Pagemaker or QuarkXpress?
Honestly, tell people to upgrade their browsers at the company. They're free.
I used to be the Online Editor at Central Michigan Life's Web site (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cm-life.com/">http://www.cm-life.com/</a><!-- m -->), the online edition of CMU's (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cmich.edu/">http://www.cmich.edu/</a><!-- m -->) student newspaper. We went XHTML/CSS more than a year ago. I would give data transfer stats for that, but the content of our front page increased dramatically (and thus the amount of data transferred).
Give them these sites:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.csszengarden.com/">http://www.csszengarden.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.espn.com/">http://www.espn.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.aol.com/">http://www.aol.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.macromedia.com/">http://www.macromedia.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.lycos.com/">http://www.lycos.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cm-life.com/">http://www.cm-life.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.seminolechronicle.com/">http://www.seminolechronicle.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thegramblinite.com/">http://www.thegramblinite.com/</a><!-- m --> - not live yet
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.thedakotastudent.com/">http://www.thedakotastudent.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dailytarheel.com/">http://www.dailytarheel.com/</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dailytitan.com/">http://www.dailytitan.com/</a><!-- m -->
All CSS layouts.