CS5 Cell background image

[Creative_Kitten1]

Unless, I'm missing something obvious, I cannot find a way (design view) on table properties panel to insert a cell bg image? Same issue with table bg fill? Doesn't DW CS5 support these features in design view anymore?

[Randy Edmunds]

Unless, I'm missing something obvious, I cannot find a way (design view) on table properties panel to insert a cell bg image? Same issue with table bg fill? Doesn't DW CS5 support these features in design view anymore?

The buttons you're looking for in the PI generated deprected code, so they were removed. Instead, apply background images using CSS.

HTH,

Randy

[Florian Manuel]

Hi, I'm new to the forum and just bought Design Premium CS5.5. I used Dreamweaver CS3 before and always did  and do my pages with tables, not css. In how far did the field "bg image" produce wrong code? I never had problems with it. I create my pages with photoshop, slice them and then put them into Dreamweaver. For the purpose of not having mouse-over effects for the pictures, I always put them into the background. Also it's not that easy to download those pictures. I now inserted the "background=..." tag manually. Is this an inproper way? I'm not so into css - will I have to start getting into it? How do you center a page, not using a table?

[osgood_]

Florian Manuel wrote:

Hi, I'm new to the forum and just bought Design Premium CS5.5. I used Dreamweaver CS3 before and always did  and do my pages with tables, not css. In how far did the field "bg image" produce wrong code?

It's not wrong code it's just deprecated in favour of more advanced techniques. All browers both new and old will still honour the old code.

Also it's not that easy to download those pictures.

Very easy.

I'm not so into css - will I have to start getting into it?

You don't have to but its been around for a few years now. If you do a lot of web development then it will make your life easier once you have learnt it of course. It produces much leaner and cleaner code so maintenance becomes a breeze.

How do you center a page, not using a table?

css is NOT a replacement for tables. You can use css in combination with tables.

Instead of using the old align="center" tag on a table you would give your table an 'id'

<table id="myTable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">

<tr>

<td>Some content</td>

</tr>

</table>

Then use some css to center it:

#myTable {

margin: 0 auto; /* centers the table horizontally */

width: 800px;

}

Of course the best way is to try and avoid tables and use then sparingly perhaps for data. I know people who still use tables to design web pages and it's ok.

[MurraySummers]

Of course the best way is to try and avoid tables and use then sparingly perhaps for data. I know people who still use tables to design web pages and it's ok.

Tables are ideal for displaying tabular data.  Tables are not ideal for page layout.  I think it's absolutely fair to characterize it that way.  Some people ignore the downsides to using tables for building pages because a) they don't care about those downsides, or b) they don't want to take the time to learn alternative ways, but that doesn't mean that there aren't real downsides to doing it.  Decide for yourself:

1.  When you use tables for page layout, your pages will have quite a bit of 'boilerplate' code in them, i.e., code that is just describing the size and shape of the tables.  When you build your pages with CSS, you may also find that you need quite a bit (perhaps even about the same amount) of code to define the size and shape of the page elements.  The advantage of the latter method, though, is that you can REMOVE that code from the page, and place it into an external file which is fetched once for the entire site, and then cached locally.  You cannot do that with table code.  Thus, there is potentially a real benefit here in that your pages will usually contain less code, and therefore be faster loading.

2.  When you use tables for page layout, it's often the case that content which has semantic meaning only when adjacent to other content, is NOT adjacent to that content in the code, even when it appears so on the page.  This is further complicated by your page's layout complexity and whether you have elected to use cell splits and merges to achieve that complexity.  Considering that a table's contents are read by a screen reader for left to right, top to bottom, this can result in garbled 'presentation' of content by screen assistive devices.  Because of the potential for this, table layouts are considered not to be so accessible.

You decide which is right for you and your target demographic.

[osgood_]

Murray *ACP* wrote:

Of course the best way is to try and avoid tables and use then sparingly perhaps for data. I know people who still use tables to design web pages and it's ok.

Tables are ideal for displaying tabular data.  Tables are not ideal for page layout.  I think it's absolutely fair to characterize it that way.  Some people ignore the downsides to using tables for building pages because a) they don't care about those downsides, or b) they don't want to take the time to learn alternative ways, but that doesn't mean that there aren't real downsides to doing it.  Decide for yourself:

You decide which is right for you and your target demographic.

I agree with you. Personally I would never go back to using tables as the main structure of a website because of the reasons you cited.

However, you also stated that some developers do for 'personal' reasons, be it not wanting to learn a better solution or just laziness. It would be a PITA if for whatever reason they could not look after the site and someone else had to. I don't know many developers that would be happy to take onboard a table based site produced by someone else that they then had to maintain.

I spoke to someone the other day who informed me I had not set up one of my pages correctly for SEO and that maybe he could help me out (a pure oversight on my behalf) . Later I took a look at the current website code he was working on.........yikes...... all tables and using <h1> & nbsp;</h1> as spacers last time I looked. His own website fractured in Firefox because of the row spans.......however he has just landed a nice job because I couldn't handle the ecommerce side of things. I feel the client (not mine) has already been sold a pup before the site is even born.

[MurraySummers]

It would be a PITA if for whatever reason they could not look after the site and someone else had to. I don't know many developers that would be happy to take onboard a table based site produced by someone else that they then had to maintain.

I have, and continue to do so.  But maintaining a table-based site is a longer and more tedious job (hence a more expensive one) than a CSS-based site.

[osgood_]

Murray *ACP* wrote:

It would be a PITA if for whatever reason they could not look after the site and someone else had to. I don't know many developers that would be happy to take onboard a table based site produced by someone else that they then had to maintain.

I have, and continue to do so.  But maintaining a table-based site is a longer and more tedious job (hence a more expensive one) than a CSS-based site.

We'll its certainly a robust challenge and you could say it's a dying skill so maybe not such a bad idea to corner the niche market. Let me knock up an emailer and send it out