Since I joined the web design realm just three years ago, I have had it pounded into my head that “tables are for tabular data”.  Divs were just taking over, and I was lucky enough to happen upon mentors who stuck with the best web practices.  Until only a couple of months ago, I had only had a very limited experience with tables because the sites I was working with did not have any tabular data involved.

Then I started working with ISE.  A small but growing software consulting company based in Carmel, IN, I work with 40+ guys (currently four other women) who for the most part are strictly programmers.  There is only one other person in the entire company whom I can turn to for any sort of graphical opinion, and he happens to work in the Cincinnati office.  One of the guys I have been working with closely on the Eli Lilly projects is definitely old school.  He still insists on using tables because that is what he is used to and he therefore finds it to be quicker and easier.  I have of course been politely correcting his erroneous track of thought.

Since it has been so long since I’ve done any in-depth CSS work, I of course struggled to remember some of the methods I had developed throughout the past few years.  Since I’ve been surrounded by people who turn to tables to solve all their problems, I could automatically envision how easy it would be with a table.  However, as stubborn as I am especially when it comes to best web practices, I refused to give up.  In the process, though, I had forgotten the solid, tangible reasons I was taught to use divs instead of tables in the first place, other than my former supervisor’s famous “tables are for tabular data” quote.  I of course turned to the web just to get a quick refresher so that I could properly defend my opinion if I were to be confronted about it.

I Googled “divs css vs tables”, and the first few responses which actually compared the two ALL said something to the effect of “there isn’t really any benefit of using divs over tables”.  I was and still am completely shocked and rather repulsed.  The one single reason that I have developed my own opinion about divs being the best practice is because of the long-term benefit.  To change the entire theme AND layout of your site, you could very easily edit one single style sheet in less than an 8-hour time frame.  Has everyone else forgotten about this?  Or am I the only person left in this world looking out for my company’s long-term best interest?

To say that my one and only solid argument is dismissable because it requires so much more time initially to develop than a table-based layout is absurd.  Its just down-right horse shit, especially since there are so many other reasons that I haven’t yet happened upon because I was so incredibly disgusted by the discovery that the first few results in a Google search were wrong.

I’m off to soak my mind in multiple A List Apart articles and Zen Garden themes.