Nick Toye

Totally agree. I'm basically talking about widening the gap between professional designers and those who advertise that they can create a site out of Word. Trust me, I've seen the advert in my local enterprise centre.

Who are the Web Design Elite? Andy Clarke, Andy Budd, Dan Cederholm? Have you ever spoken to these guys? They don't see themself as such. Ok they write books and do talks, but they are just the same as everyone else. There principles are the same as everyone. They have clients that you may get or who I may get. They are just basically talking about how we should be doing things. Its not an opinion to not use tables as layout, its a matter of fact. Tables were not created by the Tim Berners Lee for layout, they were created for tabular data. Don't get me wrong, just because someone is using tables instead of CSS doesn't make them a bad person or someone with little artistic flair. But as coders, they are not doing it right and are making more work for themselves, and the web in general. Everything in html/(x)html has its place, elements are created for reasons, and I know that there is no real semantic way to markup forms without using p, dl or ul. That is its shortcoming. But its more semantic then using a table for marking up a layout. Especially when we can position elements so easily now with absolute and relative positioning. I've just looked up trolling, and I'm not doing that. I think this is always going to be a topical subject and its healthy to talk about semantics in a web designer forum. Just as easily as it is to talk about web marketing and the like. Also Accessibility and tables is not an issue. You can have a website created in tables and it be accessible. Its just not efficient. Whether a site has a million hits or 10, the principles should be applied the same.

What are you talking about? I think its an important issue? and trolling? if I knew what it was I could answer. My point there was that nobody cares about web design except those who appreciate the art and the science of it. Clients don't, those who are exploiting the web and pretending to be somebody they are not don't. I suppose though companies that matter such as ESPN, BBC, big clients. They care, they understand that to make a site as efficient as possible it has to be done right. Using tables is not the right way to go. Do you not agree? Or perhaps you should just not bother replying?

Agree. But then we have people who just replace table cells with divs. Were getting there, also need to watch the use of id's and classes. I'm always seeing things like. <ul class="mainNav">...</ul> If its the main navigation bar then surely it won't be repeated, thus it should be an id and not a class?

That's the thing Gibson, it isn't simple to do. You have to figure out the width of the table, the height of the cells. Whack in the spacer gif to stretch out the tables. Its alot of work and loads of messing around. Plus its not very portable. Andy Clarke demonstrates in his book that you can use the same markup but with different styles (not talking colours, talking about positioning and layout). I started in tables as most did. I hated it, moved to Flash, where I discovered CSS. I then moved back to html because css made me see that its easier to do.

Well if you went to several agencies, I bet not many would know who Eric Meyer is. Actually I spoke to an agency the other week, and started talking about Leopard, now they didn't know what I was talking about. And they used Apple Mac's too. What can you do? People are only interested in the grinding of the industry and not so much the art of it.

Is that right? People don't want to know that an electrician has put in the right wires that are built for the job? Or do they? Just shows the ignorance attributed to web design.

Eric Meyer has already done so I believe.

Well the internet is full of documentation to make the coders do things the right way, there is no excuse. But you got it right there, "so called designers".

Ok, so we all know tables were an easy way to develop websites, back in the day apps like Dreamweaver promoted it, developer books released as recently as 2 years ago still use tables to illustrate their methods. It allows smug developers to regain us with the incredibly annoying and ironic KISS acronym. Well ok, I can expect it from developers because they are all about functionality and quite often don't care less about semantics, maintenance and efficiency. Many do, and I personally know many that do. However... Design studios have absolutely no excuse to use tables as there basis of layout. To me it just says we are not up to speed with CSS, even though there are glimpses of CSS3 available in some browsers. You see css is there to make everyone's life so much easier. It is more efficient, the code is dramatically reduced and it is incredibly more simple to maintain. Imagine going through nest after nest of tables to try and find a problem. Then there is the infamous spacer gif. Well regardless of whether or not you find it easy to use tables for layout or if your too damn lazy to change to the correct way of doing things. Yes correct, tables were developed for one sole reason and that is to produce tabular data, by using tables to lay out a site, you are hacking, cheating, bending the pipes to fit it all in. I learnt about CSS in college in 1998. That's nearly 10 years ago, yet I am still finding sites that have been created in the past 6 months, still using tables to layout. I understand that I am preaching to the converted in the main, but there must be some people who are still doing it because I am always seeing it. I'm also often going up against these people for contracts. My last agency I worked for used tables to layout there site. My boss at the time who was on 40k, over twice my wage at the time, created the site in tables. I created things using css, the right way. He did it the lazy way and earned twice my wage. He eventually got the bullet because he was eventually exposed. But is it fair? Is it fair that I try and make myself a better coder, a better designer, evolving, staying on the bleeding edge? Or should I just wing it, and blag my way through like some people do. Expecting a backlash here from the table lovers, well let me just say I love tables too, but for tabular data only, because that is what it is for.

Official school beer? something wrong with that.

Lime sir?

I stand corrected. It is on the cakePHP framework. http://simplebits.com/

Well when I last read it, it was basically the same tutorials that appeared in .net. Same parent group, and a little lazy really.

Well know Cork'd was developed with Dan Benjamin from Hivelogic and was done in Rails. So I am presuming that this may well be the same. But I do know that it piggybacks the Twitter web service.

http://foamee.com/ I have to say Dan C always comes up with nice designs. Ok, this site may not mean much in terms of productivity, but neither did www.corkd.com but in terms of design, interface, execution, palette - its pretty much spot on. I also love the beer icons here, especially when you rollover the logo.

I used to buy it then I realised it was too expensive for what it was and I could learn more by reading from the Internet. It promotes people like Andy Clarke and Andy Budd as contributors, but I know both of them don't contribute as much as the magazine says. Maybe they do now. Andy C is a friend of mine and I know he is a well sought after speaker so having his name attributed to a magazine would certainly increase its profile. Also what annoyed me is the constant bias towards flash sites in the Gallery section. I know hundreds of sites that are not flash but look better than most flash sites. I'd rather read online publications like ALA or Vitamin.

Well its more geared towards web designers, or those who don't want to be sucked into the time wasting world that is Facebook. Some say that global warming will bring an end to this world. Sorry it has to be Facebook, bringing the workforce to a halt.

If you own a Mac there is a cool little app from Icon Factory. Its fairly seamless and fades into the background. Handy if you need help, or even if you want to say random rubbish. Interesting because I follow Veerle Pieters. Its almost like stalking, but without the court injunctions.

Anyone here twitter?

Ok, I need to clarify one more time. I am not having a go at the forum. I only came on here recently because I was looking for freelance contracts, same as going to sitepoint and others. I then said I don't come here often anymore because I felt the jobs were too cheap to take on. I couldn't careless about what I don't care about. My goal is always to make money, to put food on the table, roof on my head, clothes on my back and to pay taxes. Then if there is anything left over maybe something nice. I'm not going to learn much here that I don't already know. Once again, I am not attacking this site. I am attacking the situation that develops out of freelance job postings. Of course there are cowboys in other industries, which brings me to my other point about regulating the industry so that everyone can get a fair deal. We get good contracts, the vendors get a good deal, and those who are not capable don't mess up the web some more.

Hey guys, who here knows PR? I need a PR or an account handler to keep me in these diamond shoes. Here's a suggestion, why don't you create a section that caters for low budget projects, aimed for students or those just starting out. And leave the Looking to Hire for the more senior professional members. Obviously anyone can pitch for the work, but we can keep the low budget projects in the same place.

Yeah, in general was what I was aiming at. But highlighting the fact that I steered away from this site because I was seeing that sort of thing happening.

Well you have hit the nail on the head. The cowboys are those who are doing professional jobs for $100, they are also using tables for layout, they are copying templates and passing them off as their own. Young professionals just getting started are not cowboys, so don't think I am referring to you.

Well at 16 would you say you were a professional? What training have you had? What is your level of experience? What is your portfolio like? If your just starting out then $100 is fine. Most of my early work was for free. My point is though when people want a professional job for $100, a site that is more than likely going to generate them more business for their organisation. If what I do raises that person's profile and they earn $20,000 for the year on the back of that design/product - then is $100 a fair price? No it isn't. Do you know what your optimum rate is?