Make the news page several tables

phonymike

New member
I don't know about other people, but I have cable, and the main page just sits there on pause waiting for all the news to load. I usually don't even bother letting it load, so I jump to these forums. My guess is it takes at least 10 seconds to appear on a good day. I've heard IE doesn't show a table until the whole thing is loaded, so you gotta download the whole fricken page before even one headline is displayed.

Please, no ignorant responses like "get a real browser like firefox." Chopping the main page into several tables doesn't hurt anyone, yet has so much to gain. If a design could be implemented, that'd be cool.

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We've been waiting on a redesign since January of last year.

If you know a web designer that will work on trade, send them my way.

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> what kind of trade?

Publicity.

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> Publicity.

sounds good to me

what do you need? if you handle the php and server side stuff, i can work exclusively on layout. i see places where we can cut bandwidth, yet provide easier navigation.

i'm seriously looking to nab a client to bolster my web portfolio, and this would be a fun way to do it. i'm in if you want me. if not, that's cool, too. i'd really like to bounce ideas off each other, see which direction you want to go. ZD has some tough problems to solve, but i'm confident this can be done, and done well.

you know my IM, so give me a buzz and tell me what you think

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Didn't I offer to work on a redesign when I was staff for that month? I remember converting some of the Emu pages over to one of those templates.

I still wonder what happened to that whole "new ZD" layout.

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> Please, no ignorant responses like "get a real browser like
> firefox." Chopping the main page into several tables doesn't
> hurt anyone, yet has so much to gain. If a design could be
> implemented, that'd be cool.

Nonono for the love of God don't use tables. Well, okay, use tables if you want to yell in a very loud voice: "I'm a retard who can't lay content out with some level of intelligence." That's the interpretation for modern web design anyhow... the ZD layout was originally created when tables were still a "good idea", so don't consider that as an insult.

The current ZD layout is perfect for a simple main-body/float design, like my page is. I use two floats, which ups the complexity somewhat. Furthermore, it wouldn't need much of a change to do that. I could recode (a version of) that stuff in an afternoon as a stop-gap measure for the new layout, if any of you would appreciate that.

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</a>Now with comments!</center></P><P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by Canar on 06/27/04 02:46 PM.</FONT></P>
 
What the hell are you talking about tables are the very basis of standard html almost every site uses them they just happen to have the borders turned off. Hell ZD even uses tables in it's coding already... I don't even know how you design a website without tables, unless you used flash.

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> What the hell are you talking about tables are the very
> basis of standard html almost every site uses them they just
> happen to have the borders turned off. Hell ZD even uses
> tables in it's coding already... I don't even know how you
> design a website without tables, unless you used flash.

First of all, let me thank you. I laughed harder at your post than I've laughed at anything for several weeks, if not longer. It's clear that you don't know anything about HTML, so I'm not going to flame you, but I will offer a bit of an explanation.

First of all, Canar was right. Any experienced web designer would vomit at the prospect of using tables to control the layout of a page. This was fine 5 years ago when there were few options, but today we have CSS. With CSS, it's quite easy to position data on the page in whatever form you want. It's far more flexible *and* efficient, not to mention proper, to use CSS for positioning data than to rely on tables. You'll find that any decent site that isn't using a design that is over 5 years old (such as is the case here) does not use tables for their layout.

The only drawback is that older browsers can't render CSS properly, but there's no excuse for using a browser that old. I've ran IE6 on a 120Mhz Pentium with only 32MB of RAM and it worked perfectly fine. If someone's computer isn't powerful enough to run a modern browser, they can easily upgrade to one that will for around $50.

Tables were never meant to be used for layout, they were used to define specific bits of information. It goes against the HTML specifications to lay out a page using tables. Of course, HTML has been deprecated and is no longer being updated, but that's a whole different issue.

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> What the hell are you talking about tables are the very
> basis of standard html almost every site uses them they just
> happen to have the borders turned off. Hell ZD even uses
> tables in it's coding already... I don't even know how you
> design a website without tables, unless you used flash.

No flash. CSS. Proper web design. Where content and layout are different elements. Using tables is idiocy that two kinds of web-designers use when designing modern webpages:

1. websites that are designed to be backwards compatible with NN4.x and IE3.x
2. amateurs

http://www.csszengarden.comCSS Zen Garden</a> <-- check that out. If you think you can't design websites without tables... wow. The only excuse I can think of is that your webdesign experience comes from the '90s. The W3 specs have been out for proper table-free design since the days of the 4.x browsers. Hell, the spec became a recommendation December 17, 1996.

I'm not knocking old designs. Old designs use tables. That's okay. Modern designs do not and should not, with the one exception I've listed.

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Funny that but every site I've ever seen uses table code some where in that page if it isn't flat page/controled by frames or flash. Nintendo's Website uses them, ZD Uses them, Rpgamer uses them, F&C's page uses them, Mink's page uses them, Peach Princess uses them, Deep Discount DVD uses them even Google uses one. Hell ever message board is loaded with table html code. Show me a page that has no < table > code anywhere on the page that isn't code in flash, none HTML that isn't simple and flat.

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Nice

So make a design.

Everyone always talks smack...and NO ONE does anything. I don't believe a word anyone says anymore....everyone is a liar and talking shit until I SEE something. Until I *SEE* a new design, everyone is full of shit. I've been hearing "ooh this is how you do it" and "ooh I have an idea" since 1998.

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Pff! I hate style sheets, they force you program in a langage above standard HTML by creating complete new set of identiffers and buches of extra style sheet pages and I maintain the fact that you can't program in standard HTML without tables. CSS is just an excuse to use a table with font control from a style sheet rather than a the single html page. They do the exact same thing they control a box, while it does add the other style sheet crap, it more of a pain to code and only give you the advantage of reloading it anytime, but only if your ever going to use that style sheet again.

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> Show me a page that has no < table > code
> anywhere on the page that isn't code in flash, none HTML
> that isn't simple and flat.

http://www.romhacking.comRomhacking.com</a> has a design that ZD's content could easily be ported into without having to change the look of the page at all, yet it uses 0 tables and renders much faster.

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Re: Nice

You've got apoint, I'm not coding a thing, but I don't maintain I could fix it. However people who do never try.
But considering the load time would a style sheet really fix the problem since outside data is taking so long to load in the first place, I'd imgine the same problem would occur. But then I don't know java or css that's being imployed on the page, though I'd take a guess and say it was the cause of the slowness.

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And here are some better examples...

http://www.voxmachina.comVox Machina</a> not only has no tables what-so-ever, it even has four completely different skins to choose from.

And the http://www.w3.orgWorld Wide Web Consortium</a>, the group who sets the standards for HTML, and is in fact headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who CREATED HTML and the WWW, uses no tables on it's main page either. Why? Because as the people who create the standards for writing good HTML, they're obligated to adhere to those standards.

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Re: Nice

What about the time that InVerse redesigned the site and Zophar and everyone else on the staff approved of it but you, who weren't even running the site at the time but were an admin for the host, threatened to shut down the site if it were implemented because you didn't like the color scheme?

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Re: And here are some better examples...

Funny Java script and Style Sheets.. try again with out using java, or loading data from a style sheet.

Try finding a page that uses self contained data without java, while load data from another page is a neat trick. Div which just load the style sheet data is being used the same a table, since CSS is giving for page box control, which is assentualy a table.

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Re: And here are some better examples...

> Try finding a page that uses self contained data without
> java, while load data from another page is a neat trick. Div
> which just load the style sheet data is being used the same
> a table, since CSS is giving for page box control, which is
> assentualy a table.
>

uh, the fact that it is controlled by an outside CSS file is the freakin' point.

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Re: Nice

> But considering the load time would a style sheet really fix
> the problem since outside data is taking so long to load in
> the first place, I'd imgine the same problem would occur.

You, sir, are a tard.

Slow page load comes from excess table/tr/td code bloating the html.
Using a stylesheet allows you to free up a lot of that bloat, what with the code being stored one time in the css file.

As usual, Arson is right on the money here.
 
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