More Table Tips

Back in the 90s and into the 2000s, rendering inconsistencies between 0:00 browsers meant that tables were a good option for web page layout. 0:05 People would create a table, and then would create cells 0:10 to place all of their text and images on the page. 0:14 This worked pretty well at the time because, CSS was still maturing 0:17 and there weren't too many other great ways to get an exact look. 0:22 However, browsers have improved a lot and those days are long behind us. 0:27 So, you should never use tables for layout in a web browser. 0:32 In other words, tables should only be used for displaying tabular data. 0:36 And not for positioning images and text, because that can now be done with CSS. 0:42 There is one major exception to this. 0:49 In HTML emails, tables are still used for layout. 0:51 Because rendering and consistencies, still persists. 0:56 The table that we made is not very interactive, 1:00 so here are two challenges for you to consider. 1:03 If you continue to learn about front end 1:07 development, try adding some jQuery to your table. 1:09 With the right plug-in, you can add features 1:14 like sorting and filtering to an otherwise static table. 1:16 If you learn about back end languages, like Ruby, PHP, or 1:21 Python, try to see if you can populate a table dynamically. 1:25 By using data from a database. 1:30 Databases store information in a table structure. 1:32 So it's very normal to see data from a 1:36 database, rendered in the form of an HTML table. 1:39 This is common in website administration interfaces, 1:44 where you need to manage all of 1:48 your data without writing database queries every time you want to make a change. 1:49 That about wraps things up for HTML tables. 1:55 If there's one thing that you take away from 1:58 this, remember that tables are used for tabular data. 2:00