I have been looking at a lot of sites lately. I am happy to say that no one is building in tables anymore… or so I thought until a few minutes ago.
I will back up here a moment and admit that a significant portion of the sites in our portfolio are in tables, including a few of our busiest. WhyEVER would we do that? I have an easy answer:
They are not new — 2007 or older. Still functional, still serving the client, but older.
Outside of newsletters, which can be a different beast, we employ a table so rarely it’s hard to even come up with an occasion. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across the site for a new film: The Pursuit of Loneliness. I was stunned at so many things about it: all the text is graphical, the title tags are “menu1024″ and such, and it’s all in tables.
I pulled myself back from the edge of passing judgment, though. Why would they do this? I genuinely wondered. There must be a reason. The design is not bad. It’s minimalist, and it matches the feel of the movie.
I guess that it’s in tables for a few reasons: 1) low budget, 2) quick turnaround, and 3) it’s not going to change. There is no reason to build in CSS if there is not compelling reason to need that flexibility. No changing content… ever.
There are drawbacks, of course. There is no SEO, and it’s in tables. But sometimes the budget and future use simply does not call for elegant code. Sometimes it is valid to just get ‘er up.
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I visited your portfolio, very nicely done and are they according to the author’s preferences? I mean, how do they give the details of how it’s going to look? I am planning a site for a pet shop in Tweed
Heads South.
Yes, of course the designs are according to the author’s preferences. Good luck with your pet shop project!