positioning of controls

[marjoh]

Hi,

I would like to know what "best practise" is when positioning controls within a website. Is the absolute positioning considered to be "out of date", and is constructing websites with tables, to organize controls, also considered outdated?

How do you generally position your controls when the contents of a page is static (not using datagrids and other expandable items)?

thanks

[eclipsed4utoo]

I used tables and CSS to position content when I do webpages.

[Alsvha]

Now - I'm not a web-designer myself, but the way it seems to be done these days (from what I've picked up from our own designers) is using div/span and similar to position elements and less so using tables, unless when presenting a table of data of course.

Some focus a lot on so-called semantic HTML as well - meaning making sure lists are in a list-tag, headlines being headlines and what not. Mostly that seems to be just "buzzword" still, but the longer term perspectives in it might warrant a closer look. (Until it conflicts with coding )

It is also common in these days of varrying screen size to make sure your design looks the same if using a larger screen, meaning the content is positioned in the center of the screen.

[marjoh]

Thanks for the replies. I've also seen, when browsing the web on this issue, that div/span seems to be the way to go these days. Unfortunately that approach seems to cause a lot more work than using tables.

Well, I've better get started then!

But one more thing before I go...

Do you position the divs and spans using css and relative positioning? <div style="position:relative..."> or do you use padding?

[Alsvha]

div/spans is more work - at first.
But makes it easier to reuse the same layout for multiple pages and to change the style sheet then having to rework tables.

For example, you can have a list/gallery type function where the only thing that changes between the two listing methods is another stylesheet applied to the html/code.