This page is driving me nuts!

[Tim]

Yes, that's right: this page is driving me nuts.
I'm trying to take out all the nested tables used in the display topic page, and so far I'm failing to recreate it.

I'm not going to lie, I'm posting this on behalf of YaBB and SMF. I've tried it a couple of times, and it frustrated me time and again.
Anyone want to give it a shot?

[[Unknown]]

Heh.

I can't imagine the display screen not using nested tables and looking the same.  I can see it using less, but not none.

It would use a lot of floats or something... I don't see a way to make it work in IE 5+ and not use at least a few tables.

Thing is, I don't really care THAT MUCH.... so it uses a few tables.  Until Microsoft decides to fix IE (and that will never happen.), and it's been like 5 years SINCE they fixed it, nested tables are going to be - in cases like this - unavoidable.

But, be an idealist if you must - I wish you luck in your endeavor, you WILL need it.

-[Unknown]

[Tim]

I thas nothing to do with idealism, it's the challenge that interests me.

[[Unknown]]

In that case, are you wanting it to work in IE or are you satisfied with Firebird...?

-[Unknown]

[Gobalopper]

I got it down to one nested table with my YaBB SE board. I probably could have got it down to zero but I didn't bother at the time as it would have taken too long and the one I did have didn't work in Opera.

[[Unknown]]

But did it look the same?  And work in IE4??

-[Unknown]

[Gobalopper]

Well you could read it in IE4 but it didn't look the same as newer browsers. I normally don't bother with IE4 since according to Google it is used about as much as Netscape 4.

[Fizzy]

This peaked my interest so I checked my logs to see how many IE4 users I get

MSIE 4.0  (2)
MSIE 4.01  (2)
MSIE 5.0  (65)
MSIE 5.01  (57)
MSIE 5.16  (11)
MSIE 5.23  (6)
MSIE 5.5  (952)
MSIE 6.0  (4899)


IE4 seems pretty much redundant now.

[[Unknown]]

What in the crap? 5.23 and 5.16?  Did I miss something?

I know all the computers at my school and many workplaces use Windows 2000 and MSIE 5.0, and you can't upgrade it.  So... if not 4, IE 5 support is at least needed.

-[Unknown]

[SparkieGeek]

What in the crap? 5.23 and 5.16?  Did I miss something?

Bit of Googling reveals IE 5.23 is a Mac browser, I guess the same is true of 5.16..

[Acf]

Could be updates...

[[Unknown]]

What in the crap? 5.23 and 5.16?  Did I miss something?

Bit of Googling reveals IE 5.23 is a Mac browser, I guess the same is true of 5.16..

Oh right... I should have remembered that.

Meh... if it works on IE 5, I'm happy... on IE 4?  I'm ecstatic!

-[Unknown]

[mephisto_kur]

Keep in mind that IE5 for Windows and IE5 for Mac are two different animals.  In fact, IE5 for Mac is one of the most compliant browsers out there.  Which is why it makes even *less* sense that every Windows version including and after 5 is such crap...

[Shoeb Omar]

Keep in mind that IE5 for Windows and IE5 for Mac are two different animals.  In fact, IE5 for Mac is one of the most compliant browsers out there.  Which is why it makes even *less* sense that every Windows version including and after 5 is such crap...

probably different sets of developers?

[Jack.R.Abbit™]

I guess I'm just in the group that does not see the big deal about getting rid of tables.  I'd rather people use less frames than less tables.  At a previous employer, about 3 years ago, we actaully ran some case studies about how far we could nest tables before it became an issue.  We did some really jacked up table structures as well... lots of colspans and rowspans... even some colspans and rowspans that over lapped.  I don't know any specific load times or anything because I didn't actually run any of the tests, but the end result was that it really didn't matter what you threw at the browser until you got up to some rediculous amount.

Beyond that, if your particular coding style is to use lots of divs and CSS to achieve the same result as nested tables, fine by me.  I just dislike it when people bash others (not suggesting anyone here has done that!) for using tables... it really is more of a design preference.  And last I checked, <table> had not been deprecated...

Keep in mind that IE5 for Windows and IE5 for Mac are two different animals.  In fact, IE5 for Mac is one of the most compliant browsers out there.  Which is why it makes even *less* sense that every Windows version including and after 5 is such crap...

I beg to differ.  On a new site I'm working on, of the 15+ different browser/version/os combos I tested on the only two that required me to "hide and hack" parts of the CSS to get it to render properly were IE5.x (Mac) and, as expected, Netscape 4.x (both PC and Mac).  Of course I'm not really using a full range of CSS so maybe I just found the parts that only IE5/Mac has problems with.

[Tyris]

yeah, with one of the major layouts I've completed recently... it worked in Mozz, IE for PC, Operah, and then had a small display bug in IE Mac

[Jeff Lewis]

Same here, it's the Mac browsers that I have issues designing for...

[[Unknown]]

This site has mainly only had problems with IE5 for mac.... (except the google ad, but that doesn't count.)

-[Unknown]

[Tyris]

I havnt actually seen the bug my site outputted... but apparently the background didn't display past the first screen-height.

[Tim]

hahaha, I've cracked the secret!

I ended up splitting it up in several tables.

The first one for the topic name and controls (reply etc etc)

then I opened a <div class="bordercolor" style="padding: 1px; padding-top: 0px;">

After that the table holding the post would go

closing the div tag

and then opening a new table for the bottom post controls

check out the result:
http://www.yabb.nl/cgi-bin/sp2/YaBB.pl?num=1069677846/0#2

[Acf]

Looks great tim no nested tables any where

[pulpitfire]

look in the lower right hand corner of your header.

[Tim]

is this like one of those guessing games?

If it's about the header being stretched a bit, that's not the final version

[pulpitfire]

is this like one of those guessing games?

If it's about the header being stretched a bit, that's not the final version

This is what I see...

[Tim]

oh, well, uhm, that's still on my list, but since it's not a top priority (because it's such an easy fix) I probably won't fix that untill the new beta

[pulpitfire]

have you ever tried the php/mysql version of YaBB?

[Tim]

Well, I've been with YaBB since the summer of 2000. I've done support there and then did the website and package lay-outs. In November 2001 I redid the html code of YaBBSE, I started on that about a couple of weeks after Jeff and Joseph started it and when only a select few knew about it. Right now I'm working on YaBB's SP2 and when I reorder my schedule I'd like to do a couple of templates for SMF

So, yeah I've been around the YaBB (SE) and SMF block