How to achieve table layout without using tables?

Question

In the name of progress (and learning) how can I rid tables from my code and achieve the same layout?

For example, here is my table:

<table cellspacing="0px">
    <tr>
        <td>
            <img src="http://www.poltairhomes.com/images/footerlogo.png" />
        </td>
        <td id="footertext">
            <p>Poltair Homes Plc<br />Registered Office: The Old Chapel, Greenbottom, Truro, Cornwall, TR4 8QP.<br />Registered in England & Wales: 3955425<br />www.poltairhomes.com<br />[email protected]</p>
        </td>
        <td id="footertext">
            <p>Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Sitemap</p>
        </td>
        <td id="footertext">
            <p>SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER:</p>
            <img src="http://www.poltairhomes.com/images/signup(temp).png" />
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>

And the relevant CSS:

.footertext {
    margin: 0;
    padding:0 5px 0 5px;
    color: #AAA;
    font-size: 10px;
    font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    text-align:center;
    border-left: 1px solid #CCC;
}

http://jsfiddle.net/userdude/tYjKw/

Bevatron

Do not reuse id tags like you are. Those should be class="footertext". – Carrycarryall

With the class="footertext": jsfiddle.net/userdude/tYjKw/1 – Carrycarryall

Sorry yes that is how it is on the site actually (hence the CSS being ".footertext" and not "#footertext"... my bad when typing it on here... thanks! – Bevatron

Answer 1

Create a style as:

.footerItem { float: left; }

<div class="footerItem">
        <img src="http://www.poltairhomes.com/images/footerlogo.png" />
    </div>
    <div class="footerItem">
        <p>Poltair Homes Plc<br />Registered Office: The Old Chapel, Greenbottom, Truro, Cornwall, TR4 8QP.<br />Registered in England & Wales: 3955425<br />www.poltairhomes.com<br />[email protected]</p>
    </div>
    <div class="footerItem">
        <p>Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Sitemap</p>
    </div>   
    <div class="footerItem">
        <p>SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER:</p><img src="http://www.poltairhomes.com/images/signup(temp).png" />
    </div>

and then create your body using DIVs to separate the blocks and apply the class to each one:

Jada

Thank you - one of two great examples! :) – Bevatron

This is the answer that I went for - but there are others here that are really helpful too... thanks all! Great work :) – Bevatron

Answer 2

CSS:

.table {
  display: table;
}
.table-row {
  display: table-row;
}
.table-cell {
  display: table-cell;
}

HTML:

<div class="table">
  <div class="table-row">
    <div class="table-cell">Table cell 1</div>
    <div class="table-cell">Table cell 2</div>
  </div>
</div>

Dorser

Regarding the question to get a table without using a <table>-tag, this would be the best and a modern solution. And you could also use "vertical-align:middle" which is not so easy to approach just with a grid, but it is shown in the fiddle link. Note here, that this doesn't work on IE7 and below. – Imelda

Answer 3

<div class="table">
    <div class="row">
       <div class="cell twocol">
           <span>Content1</span>
       </div>
       <div class="cell twocol">
           <span>Content2</span>
       </div>
    </div>
    <div class="row">
       <div class="cell onecol">
           <span>Content3</span>
       </div>
    </div>
</div>

And the CSS

.table {width: 100%; height: 100%;}
.row {width: 100%; min-height: 1px; height: auto; margin: 0;}
.cell {float: left; margin: 0; padding: 0;}
.onecol {width: 100%;}
.twocol {width: 50%;}

I suggest you look into some gridsystems, like 960grid (http://960.gs/) or 1140grid (http://cssgrid.net/), will help you a lot.

Stubbs

Checked out 960grid slides - looks very interesting... will certainly explore further. Thanks! – Bevatron

Personally, I use 1140px, for wider screens, and so far it hasn't failed me yet, it's flexible, and using @media-queries you can adapt it simply. Personal advice: get. rid. of. the. tables. and. the. .<br>. :D – Stubbs

Cool I'll have a look - tables are history for me now thanks to some of the answers to this question! Take a look at my source for the footer on poltairhomes.com (excuse the mess created by wordpress! client's orders!) - how would I get rid of the <br>'s ? – Bevatron

<br>'s are created by Wordpress? Btw, I suggest adding .textwidget > .footerItem:last-child {padding: 0;}, as your footer is kinda breaking up. – Stubbs

No <br>'s were me trying to get the layout right! I was referring to the html tags being overcomplicated - wordpress builds the html from CSS and PHP - but no, the <br>'s were my fault! What do you mean by "breaking up"? Looks okay to me? – Bevatron

In both Chrome and FF, the last footer item goes to the bottom, as the footer has not enough space. – Stubbs

Oooh... I didn't have that issue - I put the padding in because using "float: left" meant there was a gap to the RHS of the footer. I've changed it now so instead of "float: left" I've used "display:inline-block" meaning I could add a container and use "min-width" so the footer doesn't have a gap - meant I could take out some padding... does it look okay for you now? – Bevatron

Nope. Your items still have too much width for your container. You can check out a preview of how's on my browsers here (awesomescreenshot.com/0cf84egf5). Both Chrome (v19) and FF (latest stable). – Stubbs

Odd! I'm using latest Safari and Chrome on OSX Lion and all good?! – Bevatron