04/19/2013
I’m going to tell you a story, its about love, death and re-birth… Or something
In the beginning there was a young html element called . He had one purpose in life, to display data and life was good. But before long though he had been corrupted, his masters used him to define layout and structure. Things he was not originally designed to do, and so began the dark ages of web design. Then one day, there came a young knight called CSS, and with him he brought light to designers everywhere. He was so beloved, the designers made him their King. Under his rule (selectors… sorry bad joke) the web flourished, sites became less structured, better looking and more responsive.
He was so well loved, people tried to make everything in his image. They found that they could display data in grid shaped patterns using lists and the all-powerful code that CSS had bestowed up on them.
But all was not well in the Kingdom of Web, the poor forgotten element table looked on. Increasingly spurned, he grew jealous. He knew that with his one purpose in life, he could display data better than any other magical element. But how could he regain his once strong foothold in the land of websites?
He, being a simple yet good element, prayed to the Gods of Standards and they heard him. They rebuilt and tweaked him, they made him streamlined and functional. Once they were done, they set him out into the world with a renewed purpose. Capable of showing data better than ever before, he approached the King, who now having moved on in years and being more mature recognized the tables usefulness and decided to re-instate the lowly table back in to his rightful place.
And the moral of the story is… use tables to show tabular data… don’t try and invent the wheel!
---- By Jonathan Schnittger