standard html obsolete?

message from micgrafx on 16 Jul 2004

I just read, at http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/good_oil/5_questions/

"Traditional web development approaches, such as the use of tables for layout,
are very "one shot", producing sites which can be "very easy to assemble, but
hard to take apart". It is often less expensive to simply discard a site and
begin again, essentially discarding the initial investment. Modern development
techniques and technologies, again such as the use of CSS and XHTML, guarantee
much more useable, maintainable, upgradable code."

Now I know that this site is using this tactic to scare customers into using
their services, but how truthful is it? Will html sites that I create in
Dreamweaver be rendered obsolete in a couple of years?

Les Matthews replied to micgrafx on 16 Jul 2004

Of course it depends upon your definition of "obsolete", but from my
experience pretty much all programming code becomes obsolete every couple of
years.

P@tty Ayers replied to micgrafx on 16 Jul 2004

That depends upon what you do with Dreamweaver. You can write good code or
bad code with it. I don't agree with that writer that just using a few
tables means that your code isn't forward-compatible. But he's absolutely
right that using standard code, and CSS for presentation, is the way to go
whenever possible, so that pages will work well into the future.

My 2 euros worth. :-)

cmbergin replied to micgrafx on 16 Jul 2004

That doesn't mean that your page will be obsolete. It will still be viewable
just as it is now. What that means is that the technique is obsolete. That
is, if you come back in two years to make a major revision of your site, you
will probably find it more difficult to re-engineer your site if you used the
old methods versus new methods.

People like me hate using obsolete techniques, but that's a personality issue.
;)
You can continue using tables for layout all you want. You can also continue
to program in assembly language or strictly procedural programming languages if
you want. In the end, it's whatever works.

mzanime.com replied to cmbergin on 16 Jul 2004

In so many words, you can code however you want. But if you had used XHTML & CSS in the first place it might save you a lot of work in the future.

Michael Fesser replied to cmbergin on 17 Jul 2004

.oO(cmbergin)

Even today Assembler is still necessary now and then.

Micha

Murray *TMM* replied to micgrafx on 16 Jul 2004

It's only truthful if you hold one eye closed and if you are not able to
code HTML well.

A page built using solid HTML tables and good table technique can be very
easy to maintain.

A page built using their recommendations with poor technique can be a
nightmare to maintain.

Only if the user is capable of using the methods properly.

Categorically no.

Peter Connolly replied to micgrafx on 17 Jul 2004

couple of years?

If the site still fulfils the requirements of the client, no; it will be
just as relevent in the future as it is now.

I've never created a site using tables for layout (I've worked on them,
though) - but that's just because I came into web development at a time when
CSS was just breaking through in a usable state. I would never criticize
another site just because it used tables for layout, because I will not know
the brief that the client gave the designer. Tables versus Layers can turn
into quite a religious argument (and my Amiga is better than your Atari
anyway! :-p )

Regards,

Pete.

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