Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates, Fourth Edition

chapter 15
Case Study:
Low-Content
XHTML Template
Although Web sites are no longer being built using nested XHTML tables, there
are still uses for this design technique. Sometimes the user will need to position
elements in a design that CSS will simply not accomplish because of its inconsistent
support among the major browsers. The most common reason for still
using this layout method is for creating email templates. CSS is supported only
sporadically and definitely not consistently among the various email programs
and versions that continue to exist. Tables, however, are supported quite
consistently, which is why this chapter is still included in this updated edition.
Originally included to explain how to create a table-driven Web design, this
chapter is now included to explain how to create XHTML table-driven emails.
The fact of the matter is that many email templates are nothing more than lesscomplicated
versions of Web design layouts, so the crossover works quite well.
Just for reference, the design explained in this chapter is the very first design in
the first edition of the book—design 1.
Note
It is important that all hyperlinks and image source paths are assigned absolute paths. For
example, instead of src=" images/spacer.gif", the designer should write the code as
src="http://www.a5design.com/images/spacer.gif." This is also true for hyperlinks because
without an absolute path, the hyperlink will look for the file on the user's computer, where it won't
exist.
Game Developing GWX
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