在HTML中,表格不应该用于布局,这似乎是普遍的观点。

Why?

我从来没有(老实说,很少)看到过支持这一点的有力论据。通常的答案是:

It's good to separate content from layoutBut this is a fallacious argument; Cliche Thinking. I guess it's true that using the table element for layout has little to do with tabular data. So what? Does my boss care? Do my users care?Perhaps me or my fellow developers who have to maintain a web page care... Is a table less maintainable? I think using a table is easier than using divs and CSS.By the way... why is using a div or a span good separation of content from layout and a table not? Getting a good layout with only divs often requires a lot of nested divs. Readability of the codeI think it's the other way around. Most people understand HTML, few understand CSS. It's better for SEO not to use tablesWhy? Can anybody show some evidence that it is? Or a statement from Google that tables are discouraged from an SEO perspective? Tables are slower.An extra tbody element has to be inserted. This is peanuts for modern web browsers. Show me some benchmarks where the use of a table significantly slows down a page. A layout overhaul is easier without tables, see css Zen Garden.Most web sites that need an upgrade need new content (HTML) as well. Scenarios where a new version of a web site only needs a new CSS file are not very likely. Zen Garden is a nice web site, but a bit theoretical. Not to mention its misuse of CSS.

我对使用divs + CSS而不是表的良好参数非常感兴趣。


当前回答

In the past, screen readers and other accessibility software had a difficult time handling tables in an efficient fashion. To some extent, this became handled in screen readers by the reader switching between a "table" mode and a "layout" mode based on what it saw inside the table. This was often wrong, and so the users had to manually switch the mode when navigating through tables. In any case, the large, often highly nested tables were, and to a large extent, are still very difficult to navigate through using a screen reader.

The same is true when divs or other block-level elements are used to recreate tables and are highly nested. The purpose of divs is to be used as a fomating and layout element, and as such, are intended used to hold similar information, and lay it out on the screen for visual users. When a screen reader encounters a page, it often ignores any layout information, both CSS based, as well as html attribute based(This isn't true for all screen readers, but for the most popular ones, like JAWS, Windows Eyes, and Orca for Linux it is).

为此,表格式数据,也就是逻辑上有意义的在二维或多维维度中排序的数据,具有某种标题,最好放在表中,并使用div来管理页面上内容的布局。(另一种思考“表格数据”的方式是尝试以图表形式绘制它……如果你不能,它可能不是最好的表示在一个表中)

Finally, with a table-based layout, in order to achieve a fine-grained control of the position of elements on the page, highly nested tables are often used. This has two effects: 1.) Increased code size for each page - Since navigation and common structure is often done with the tables, the same code is sent over the network for each request, whereas a div/css based layout pulls the css file over once, and then uses less wordy divs. 2.) Highly nested tables take much longer for the client's browser to render, leading to slightly slower load times.

在这两种情况下,“最后一英里”带宽的增加,以及更快的个人电脑缓解了这些因素,但它们仍然是许多网站存在的问题。

With all of this in mind, as others have said, tables are easier, because they are more grid-oriented, allowing for less thought. If the site in question is not expected to be around long, or will not be maintained, it might make sense to do what is easiest, because it might be the most cost effective. However, if the anticipated userbase might include a substantial portion of handicapped individuals, or if the site will be maintained by others for a long time, spending the time up front to do things in a concise, accessible way may payoff more in the end.

其他回答

CSS布局通常在可访问性方面要好得多,前提是内容以自然的顺序出现,并且没有样式表也有意义。不仅仅是屏幕阅读器难以适应基于表格的布局:它们也使移动浏览器更难正确呈现页面。

此外,使用基于div的布局,你可以很容易地用打印样式表做一些很酷的事情,比如从打印页面中排除页眉、页脚和导航——我认为这是不可能的,或者至少很难用基于表格的布局做到这一点。

If you're doubting that separation of content from layout is easier with divs than with tables, take a look at the div-based HTML at CSS Zen Garden, see how changing the stylesheets can drastically change the layout, and think about whether you could achieve the same variety of layouts if the HTML was table based... If you're doing a table-based layout, you're unlikely to be using CSS to control all the spacing and padding in the cells (if you were, you'd almost certainly find it easier to use floating divs etc. in the first place). Without using CSS to control all that, and because of the fact that tables specify the left-to-right and top-to bottom order of things in the HTML, tables tend to mean that your layout becomes very much fixed in the HTML.

实际上,我认为完全改变一个基于div和css的设计而不改变div是非常困难的。然而,使用基于div和css的布局,就更容易调整不同块之间的间距以及它们的相对大小。

下面是来自最近项目的一段html:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <title>{DYNAMIC(TITLE)}</title>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./styles/base.css" />
</head>
<body>
    <div id="header">
        <h1><!-- Page title --></h1>
        <ol id="navigation">
            <!-- Navigation items -->
        </ol>
        <div class="clearfix"></div>
    </div>
    <div id="sidebar">
        <!-- Sidebar content -->
    </div>
    <!-- Page content -->
    <p id="footer"><!-- Footer content --></p>
</body>
</html>

这是与基于表格的布局相同的代码。

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <title>{DYNAMIC(TITLE)}</title>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./styles/base.css" />
</head>
<body>
    <table cellspacing="0">
        <tr>
            <td><!-- Page Title --></td>
            <td>
                <table>
                    <tr>
                        <td>Navitem</td>
                        <td>Navitem</td>
                    </tr>
                </table>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>

    <table>
        <tr>
            <td><!-- Page content --></td>
            <td><!-- Sidebar content --></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="2">Footer</td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</body>
</html>

我在基于表格的布局中看到的唯一干净的地方是我对缩进的过度热情。我确信内容部分将有另外两个嵌入式表。

另一件需要考虑的事情是:文件大小。我发现基于表格的布局通常是CSS布局的两倍大。在我们的高速宽带上,这不是一个大问题,但在那些拨号调制解调器上。

I have found that even with the best planning divs come up short in several respects. For instance. there is no way with divs to have a bottom bar that always sits at the bottom of the browser, even when the rest of the content does not go to the bottom of the browser. Also, you cannot elegantly do anything better than three columns, and you cannot have columns that grow and shrink according the the width of their content. In the end, we try to use divs first. However, we will not limit our html designs based on some religious content vs layout ideal.

我想使用表格元素进行布局确实与表格数据没有什么关系。那又怎样?我的老板在乎吗?我的用户关心吗?

谷歌和其他自动化系统确实关心这些问题,而且它们在许多情况下同样重要。语义代码对于非智能系统来说更容易解析和处理。

为了回应“表格更慢”的论点——你考虑的是渲染时间,这是一个错误的度量。通常情况下,开发人员会编写一个巨大的表格来完成页面的整个布局——这大大增加了要下载的页面的大小。不管你喜不喜欢,仍然有大量的拨号用户。

参见:过度使用ViewState