Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

tableless three column layout

Options
  • 15-01-2005 11:09pm
    #1
    evilhomer
    Registered Users Posts: 1,464 ✭✭✭


    was thinking of going to a tableless three column layout for a site i am designing. either bluerobot one or the noodle incident one now both of these have CSS2 in them and will not work in ie4 or ie4.5 from what i have tested.

    in ie4.x the content is still viewable so these people are not excluded from finding any information they require, it just won't be pretty for them.

    what i want to know is, is it time to go to css and not worry so much what the content looks like in a browser as old as ie4?


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    JustHalf
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,525 ✭✭✭JustHalf


    I don't worry about getting IE4 looking pretty, just like I don't worry about getting Netscape 4 looking pretty.

    Unless your demographic has a very unusual browser distribution, there's no point. Just make sure that all that fancy CSS isn't required for the page to function, then hide it from v4 browsers.


  • Options
    #3
    dahamsta
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 16,659 ✭✭✭✭dahamsta


    That's not what he asked though, is it?

    AFAICR the Glish layouts are backwards compatible, but I wouldn't swear to it. Best way is to suck it and see.

    adam


  • Options
    #4
    JustHalf
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,525 ✭✭✭JustHalf


    I think it answers his question, but obviously he's the authority on that. Read the last line though.

    To make it clearer:

    IE4 is crap. IE4 usage is extremely low, even less than NN4. Unless you have very skewed demographics, it's not worth the hassle to work around the bugs in this (by todays standards) incredibly broken browser. A plain, unstyled page, which uses smart XHTML which is readable and usable with the default browser styles, is fine.

    If it's important that the page looks the same in IE4, you're better off using tables; the bad tables at that (with tons of nesting and slicing). But that's something which is only important depending on your demographics... if IE4 use spikes for some horrendous reason in your user base. It's unlikely to.

    Supporting the browsers that people actually use is hard enough.

    The statistics from W3Schools ( http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp ) show negligble IE4 usage up to July 2002 (0.5%). After that, it presumably reduces so much that they don't bother including it in their tables.

    But let's take that figure. Is getting a pretty design to 0.5% of the audience worth:

    1) The extra bandwidth cost for using tables, to ensure it looks right?
    2) The extra work needed to make the table based version?
    3) The slower page loads for those using "modern" browsers?
    4) The less accessable pages?

    I say, no.


Advertisement