Floating, Clearing, Navigating...Tabling?

Well here's a few things I just recently got into using, and one I think I've only used on about three occasions. Floats and clears are new territory for me with this class and my internship, and tables are something I honestly never had a reason to use except for maybe two small projects I had worked on.

Float and clear are honestly two of the most important style aspects that I learned when I began investigating liquid layouts. They are so helpful in maintaining a general look or feel to the page even as you expand or contract without having to set something's pixel location in stone. If it weren't for learning about float and clear, my first webpages logo and navigation bar probably would have looked disastrous. I still have a lot to learn about these two elements, and the book has some great information on it that I will definitely be consulting while I continue to try my hand at it.

Tables are something I'm well familiar with how to make, but have had very few reasons to actually make one. It's rare for me to have some sort of raw data or calendar of events that can't be better represented with divs and id tags. That isn't to say I don't see the merit in tables, just that with what I've worked with there's never been a lot of use for them. It was great to review the tables section in the book as it's definitely been a while since I even really thought about them. I'm also hoping for some reasons in the future to utilize a table (not just for play but actually on a page I'm developing!) and really hone that area of html further.

The navigation and advanced page layout information was definitely something I'm thankful for the book covering, and just super important in my opinion. We went over it before with site architecture: you need that strong navigation to build a good web design, and the book helps solidify that. On the note of page layouts I was very glad that the tables section discussed how tables should be for tabular data, not placing content on a web page. I never realized how tempting that is to some, but I think it was a great clarification for the book to make. While they can serve similar purposes, layouts and tables are separate things entirely and making that distinction can help you build stronger framework to paint your design on.

I'm excited about getting more into new and barely-used concepts for myself, and I can't wait to see what more we have in store!

"Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking." -Chris Pullman