As a Computer Progrmmer and web designer based in the united states, I have watched with interest as the battle between those who promote table layouts and those who prefer CSS has raged on. Tabless layouts have grown more popular and most web design professionals I know seem to be making the big switch to CSS and I wonder if that is the case with the nigerian web design industry. I for one always design my sites using tables but I reproduce the same design using CSS just because I know it will be the standard professionals have to conform to in the coming years

ah ah ah

I dont care css or table I use what I am happy with.

Do what you like and make sure your site looks good.

I may get some flack for this but sometimes table layout just seem easier to work with

I love tables

Cactus, remember that portion of the bible that says (paraphrasing), "straight and broad (and I will add "easy" is the road that leads to hell" 

There was a time I would fight to the death to get people to do things the web standards way.  Call it growing up, but I don't do that anymore.  Why help the competition?  If that is what floats your boat, I wish you well.  I made the switch to CSS layout backin 2005, after a visit to Nigerian cyber cafe and seeing how slow a popular site was at the time.  Also, in interviews, if you dare say you use tables for other than tabular data, you might as well kiss that job good bye.  Of course you could argue that you say otherwise just to get the job but come peer review time, you go c ncho 

No more than 4 months ago, I did a site for a local house of reps guy in Nigeria.  The site had so many tables that it took forever to open on a T1 connection in the states.  The guy told me that he couldn't even open it in Nigeria and so wanted "a professional" to redesign it.  To cut a long story short, the site was redesigned and all tables replaced by DIVs.  The kicker?  I reduced the download time from 65 seconds to 32 seconds and this was even given the fact that I used lot of jquery plugins, with the main jquery file taking up 55KB.

So in conclusion, I stopped trying to convince people to make the switch.  I will stick to CSS and whatever new technologies come out b4 I retire and let people use whatever they want to use and offer advice only when sought after.  My motto for 2009 is "Live and Let Live".

you don make so much money wey u wan retire now ooo

i don't want to say much other than, i use CSS if am designing some certain website and i just feel comfortable using my own kinda style ain't talking about Table or whatever,  whatever i wanna use any given time, i make sure i optimized the hell outta the website, so you don't have problem navigating, loading and stuff like that. This website i did along time ago is an example of what am talking about http://www.smsnaija.com/ now how much more clients asking you, i want a WOW website in other words make my website smoky and all that.

Now its left for the designer to know what and what to do to make the website very fast when loaded on the internet. maybe you are to use PS or FW to make the design, slice it, put CSS and FLASH, JQUERY and all that where necessary and making this load fast. check http://www.soundcity.com/smva/ pretty slow for me

How much more the feel that Nigerians are crazy about.

yawa-ti-de:

I will stick to CSS and whatever new technologies come out b4 I retire .

did i hear retire

as for me i still use my loving table for now but planning seriously to switch to css in some months time. yes, css have alot of advantage over tables but tables help to get the work done and when it comes to designing a complex layout ( table is the answer ). there is one reply of keher i love so much, i think the site says it all.
www.giveupandusetables.com

@ smartsoft
wetin be the style abeg tell us now. make me too fit dey use am

Techpro, no shortcut at all just do whatever makes you happy, just have it that CSS Rocks

you sure cos me i dey look joomla, very soon i go dey use am small for some of my jobs. na work no let me get time to read.

I have stopped using tables. CSS is lighter, and the pages is easier to maintain. And now, i can convert a css based template into joomla template
in a matter of minutes, following a tutorial i read somewhere. Tables are more complicated, you need to figure out where one TD stops, and one TR starts, and where one table nests the other. . . . . .but with css, your codes are more readable

wow dhtml!  In a matter of 3 posts or so, you are sold, he he. Welcome to the club.

yawa-ti-de:

Cactus, remember that portion of the bible that says (paraphrasing), "straight and broad (and I will add "easy" is the road that leads to hell" 

oh my, am the last person for a theistic reference. I crossed the bridge.

thinking about browser compatibility issues. it is a pain really. wish all browsers use same engines.

Ehm, but who bought dhtml?

Yeah, I have been pretty much doing the same thing for 10 years now.  If not for the passion I have for it, I would have dumped it long time ago.  I recently read an article calling what we do a mystery and as long as when you tell people you are a web developer, they ask, "what is that" or look like at you like a goat in the headlights, your job is safe.  After reading that, I stopped complaining.  After all, the economy is bad

Theistic reference?  Okay, let me rephrase, "good things don't come cheap" 

dhtml, I bought you: hook, line and sinker

browser compatibilities? Yeah I know what you mean.  I personally follow the Graded Browser Support published by YUI.  Also, as of last month, I stopped supporting IE6 on personal projects.

I do backward compatibility when necessary. My preference is FF. Now a goat in the spotlite is another thing entirely.

u shd do backwards compatibility *all* the time, within reason of course, with respect to what browsers are used the most

I support the top desktop browsers by default. I am tryin to improve on my mobile phone support. That is another story entirely.

FF just seem to magically get things right but IE, something always gets screwed.

This is my dream. If this can happen. it will be delightful.

I wish that, Microsoft abandons its IE and fully adopts FF as default browser.

I know this may not even happen because of how tied in IE is to windows OS. But sometimes I just wish. So no one will worry about fixing, patching for IE.

yeah cactus, that'll be day. First though, we have to find a way to convince the web populace. If they can be convinced, then demand for IE falls and they disappear

I recently read a book which said something about this that makes sense - FF and Netscape beat IE until IE7 and IE8. Now that those 2 are more web standards-compliant, it is up to us the web developers to give IE a reason to either upgrade even more or let FF to run the show again. This can only be done though by **complying to web standards**. By so doing, IE is forced to upgrade in order to remain relevant. As long as we kow tow to IE, we will continue to hack our way through. Of course as they say, tis easier said than done and besides, who will be the first to "jump ship"?

Microsoft should pay all current users of IE 100$

That will take care of switching to FF