What are good reasons for nesting table and

#native_company# #native_desc#

#native_cta#

This site is best viewed in a modern browser with JavaScript enabled.

What are good reasons for nesting table and

tekboy

What are good reasons for nesting table and what are some concerns when nesting talbes

Robert_Wellock

The good reasons for nesting TABLE elements are ZERO! - Unless you mean Laziness.

The bad reasons for doing so are very common there are a variety of concerns it slows the browser; it detrimentally affects layout, causes bloat, is less powerful than CSS, etc…

Charles

From the HTML 4.01 Specification:

Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control layout rather than tables.

Stephen_Philbin

Well to be honest, I can't think of any reasons to nest tables. A concern of doing so would be that your documents wouldn't make any sense.

ray326

As you all know, I really hate to be a contrarian here but one real reason for nesting tables would be to mark up some hierarchical data structure like a list of purchase orders, each with their list of line items.

MstrBob

ray326 wrote:
As you all know, I really hate to be a contrarian here but one real reason for nesting tables would be to mark up some hierarchical data structure like a list of purchase orders, each with their list of line items.

I don't know. A table in a table? I've never seen anything like that in print. It's just too jumbled. Maybe a list of tables, but never a table of tables.

acorbelli

ray hit the point I was going to make. There is legitimate table data which can be very beneficial to use nested tables.

If you are using them to provide layout structure to your site, bad idea. If you have information which is best conveyed in a multiple-table format then do so.

acorbelli

MstrBob wrote:
I don't know. A table in a table? I've never seen anything like that in print. It's just too jumbled. Maybe a list of tables, but never a table of tables.

Item                  Item Price
 -Item Upgrade     -Upgrade price
 -Item Upgrade     -Upgrade price

Where you have a table surrounding tables of data. This is a basic nesting situation (this one would be better suited to using lists as well, I believe), but there are deeper levels of heirarchy where the nesting comes in handy.

MstrBob

acorbelli wrote:
Item                  Item Price
 -Item Upgrade     -Upgrade price
 -Item Upgrade     -Upgrade price 
Where you have a table surrounding tables of data. This is a basic nesting situation (this one would be better suited to using lists as well, I believe), but there are deeper levels of heirarchy where the nesting comes in handy.

Well, of course your demonstration was just that of a basic, non-nested table, so I'm a little confused. I'm not trying to be stubborn here, but I really can't think of a situation where having nested data tables would be beneficially or neccessary. (Because as we all know here, our tables should only be data tables).

acorbelli

MstrBob wrote:
Well, of course your demonstration was just that of a basic, non-nested table, so I'm a little confused. I'm not trying to be stubborn here, but I really can't think of a situation where having nested data tables would be beneficially or neccessary. (Because as we all know here, our tables should only be data tables).

Okay, sorry, I wasn't quite clear enough.

Item                                  Item Price
---------------------------------------
'61 Chevy                          |$400
 [U]-A/C                            |$45[/U]
 [U]-Power Locks                |$20[/U]
---------------------------------------
'76 Ford                            |$10
---------------------------------------
'99 Dodge                          |$450
 [U]Passenger SRS              |$0.00[/U]
---------------------------------------

Does that sort of make more sense? Where you have a table (cars, prices) with other tables inside (upgrades and their prices and information).

Sorry, it makes a lot of sense to me having done complicated invoices in this method before (where nested information just looks better this way).

MstrBob

Ahh, I see. But given that example, why not just use multiple <tbody> ?

Charles

See http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html . HTML tables have all kinds of ways of organizing data multi-dimensionally.

acorbelli

MstrBob wrote:
Ahh, I see. But given that example, why not just use multiple <tbody> ?

Multiple reasons, the best one I can think of is that still doesn't quite get the strict arrangement necessary for someone who might want to deliberately delineate sets of data with borders and padding in ways that the tbody thead tfoot tags won't allow you to do.

I've never personally used a tbody, but from the looks of it I can imagine that if I were to be writing an invoice for download (in HTML format? I don't know why) the tbody would not work for me.

Charles

acorbelli wrote:
I've never personally used a tbody...

If you've ever used a TABLE in HTML 4.01 then you've used a TBODY. It's there with or without the tags.

acorbelli

Charles wrote:
If you've ever used a TABLE in HTML 4.01 then you've used a TBODY. It's there with or without the tags.

Okay then, to clarify, I've never specified tbody tags in any of my tables...