edev: CSS tables (idea)

Tables!

1. I want tables
2. Many other people want tables
3. Many other people don't know html well enough to prevent totaly mangling the tables and thus destroying the layout of a page.

#3 is a problem, and remains the main sticking point for not implemeting table tags. This is likely a good thing until someone figures out how to verify the integrety of a table.

Enter CSS

With CSS, it is possible to make what appears to be a table, but is not actually an html table. Consider the follwoing styleseet segment:

e2table {display: table}
e2row   {display: table-row}
e2item  {display: table-cell;
         border: thin solid;
         padding: 0.5em}

So, you say "whoop de do" or "big whoop" or "whoop" or whatever whoop you do. There is a point here. If you mangle the CSS style E2table by forgeting to close a tag, you do not damage the table that encloses it. This is indeed a "big whoop".

To verify this, copy the following code to a web page near you, and play with it.

<style>
e2table {display: table}
e2row   {display: table-row}
e2item  {display: table-cell;
         border: thin solid;
         padding: 0.5em}
</style>

<table border="1">
<tr><td>table text 1</td></tr>
<tr><td>
  <e2table>
  <e2row>
  <e2item>Test text</e2item>
  <e2item>More text</e2item>
  </e2row>
  </e2table>
</td></tr>
<tr><td>table text 2</td></tr>
</table>

Things to try:

• Delete a </e2item> tag.
• Delete a </e2row> tag.
• Delete the </e2table> tag.
• Add an extra e2item/row/table tag.
• Add an extra close e2item/row/table tag.

What you will (should) see:

• While the E2 table may be mangled, at no time will the cells containing "table text" be mangled by bad e2table tags.

This means - we can give tables to users and still prevent them from breaking the table layout.

So, you want to know more than is good for you about this? http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/tables.html - 17.2.1