alt Hacker NewsTables aren’t dead, they never were… when displaying tabular data. When it comes to layout I think you might be wearing rose tinted glasses. Remember having to put a 1px image in a table cell to avoid it disappearing? Remember “best viewed at 800x600”? I’m personally not nostalgic for either.
Replies
erfgh • last Thursday at 8:23 AM
There were better solutions to those problems than the CSS debacle.
eviks • last Thursday at 9:04 AM
> Remember having to put a 1px image in a table cell to avoid it disappearing
Isn't this a trivial problem to solve that doesn't require introducing any new layout mechanisms?
dahcryn • last Thursday at 9:31 AM
at least they were specific
Today it's usually implicitly designed for iphone, designed for 1080p, or ipad, and you have to guess, strong correlation with whatever device the designer uses in his personal life.
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For what it’s worth, the very page we’re on here still uses tables and spacer gifs, in 2025. (EDIT: I don’t mean to imply that this is good, just an inescapable observation in this context)