tables

[Thomas Dowling]

> When we first set up our pages in a table format we had a layout
(borrowed
> from another page) that was readable by a number of browsers including
Lynx. 
> At some point we switched to what appears to be "Netscape standard" which
is
> popping up all over. 
> We need to go back to a "universal table" but have lost the info (the
> original source is now using "Netscape standard" too).
> Anyone seen such a table recently?

The term "Netscape standard" is almost too delicious to resist.  Almost. 
:-)

I've seen a lot of hints for this in the
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html newsgroup (though not in its FAQ as far
as I can tell); mostly they suggest things like:

    <P><tr><td>Cell 1</td> <td>Cell 2</td></tr></P>

OR  <tr><td><P>Cell 1</td> <td>Cell 2</P></td></tr>

OR  <tr><td>Cell 1</td> <td>Cell 2</td></tr><BR>

OR  <tr><td>Cell 1</td> <td>Cell 2<br></td></tr>

Etc.  To my knowledge, there's no canonical way to write tables that
display well for all non-table browsers, and no way at all to do so that
won't make at least minor display changes in Netscape et al.  Also,
Netscape "standards" notwithstanding, some of these suggestions are
slightly broken HTML.

I have two suggestions beyond markup hints.  First: only use tables for
tabular data.  That's a quick way to minimize the amount of data that might
be a problem.  Our site violates this suggestion in a couple of places,
because...

Second: insist that your campus run the current version of Lynx.  We don't
stick Netscape 1.0 in front of users at library workstations, do we?  (*Do*
we?)  I tell our member institutions that I'll do my best to support the
<5% of users we have running Lynx, as long as it's a relatively current
version.  Versions 2.4.2 and below are not current, and more to the point
they do not support tables as well as versions 2.4FM and above.  The
current official version of Lynx, released on September 2 with much less
fanfare and name-calling than some other recent browser launches, is 2.6. 
Take a look at http://www.nyu.edu/pages/wsn/subir/lynx.html and ask your
sysadmin to do the same.

Thomas Dowling                    \ tdowling at ohiolink.edu
Asst. Director, Client/Server Apps.\    614/728-3600 x326
OhioLINK                            \    FAX 614/728-3610