Is html a dead language?
October 18, 2007 by smack
Back in the day, when I had a job… ok way way back in the day, when I first got my job, I learned html while working. I hadn’t gone to school and learned any programming language (ok nerds, don’t jump on me for saying that), so I felt really accomplished. It turned into a French thing for me though — I can read it better than I can write it. I haven’t had to use it much since then, except with a few WYSIWYG editors at work, and actually I used html THEN because it made the editors do what I wanted. Wiki syntax tried to be something, but when you have a rich text editor and a busy schedule, I think the layman is going to forgoe the something new and use that.
So now we’re at WordPress, where the templates are css, and I definitely want to learn that so I can be all arty farty and wow you all with my skillz… BUT, what happened to html? Is it a dead language? Is the fear of nested tables so great that html is turning into the dead sea scrolls? I ask because right now, as we speak - as you read and I type - I am gripped in the fear grasp of nested tables. See… I’m working on my googlepages site (as I said before) and, while you can change the layout of columns and some really boring designs (it’s true, they’re lame) and enhance with gadgets (which I haven’t done yet), BUT I REALLY REALLY think this moment I’m paused in calls for…
a table!
Yes, I can edit the html, but I am so afraid to add a table! Why? Because.. I dont’ know… maybe a future employer is going to come to the site and be like “uh… whoduhfuck does nested tables anymore? dismissed!”.
so tell me people… what do you think — tables? Not a million, just one…good, bad, ugly? A spittering here is fine? And is html dead?
I really can’t stand those new fandangled software programs that “write code” for you. Sure, it’s easy, but if something gets all screwed up, how would you fix it? Plus, you don’t want to be the idiot that has to go through everyone elses’ machine-generated code and clean it up because it doesn’t look right on other operating systems or languages. Not that I wasted THAT MUCH of my life doing that, I’m just saying what if, is all.
AAANYHOO…there are people who complain that only idiots use tables and that you should really use CSS and divs to do tables correctly, but honestly, if I wanted to waste half of my life figuring out how to get my CSS perfectly into a table that I could have just thrown together in 2 minutes, why would I? Especially if i’m not about to go changing my stylesheets as often as I change my underwears.
EXACTLY! I was just chatting with jbax about it and I was all… this is how i want to organize ONE LINE of content that could be easily solved with a table. I don’t have time right now to make sweet sweet love to divs. Ya heard!
well if it’s not tabular data, it doesn’t belong in a table. just my pedantic 2 cents.
As a web designer and most recently a web usability consultant, we need to have websites formatted to web 2.0 standards so the sites can be viewed on mobile devices and by JAWS for the blind. Also if you do any government work of work viewed by the disabled, it is the law or soon becoming it.
Target got sued when blind people couldn’t shop online at their site.
Government standards include compliance with the disability act.
i’m an up and coming web designer, i’ve been laying out pages since 4th grade, last year i used a table on a website and my friend in my programming class was like “hey man, why are you using a table? they’re old school, here use this, it’s better than a table” and i was like sure okay. then this year i have been working with php and mysql databases and tables are one of my favorite things to use with it. its uick, easy, and efficient. i see nothing wrong with using tables yet so many people look down on them like their expiration date has gone by or something. to sum it up, i think that tables are still a good tool and html is not quite as popular now but you can still make a decent webpage using html. long live the table!
as for your css dreams, it is very easy to learn and the code is very simple. its not as compact in the file when you edit it and if you write it with the new dreamweaver, it lists almost all of the code options like borders, margins, and fonts so all u have to do is scroll through the dropdown menu and then once u select one of those it give you another dropdown for values. really easy to learn. theres also plenty of help sites out there that hold your hand and walk you through it so that shouldnt be any problem. i picked it up in a week.
take care, and if you need any css help let me know and i’ll try my best to help.
-Denny Junkins
its.da.den.dog@gmail.com
If Sanskrit did not die and Letin did not die , how can HTML die as a language so early.
It seems that reports of the death of HTML and the Table have been greatly exaggerated. I can still get more cross-browser compatibility placing things with tables than I can with layers.