anyone got a tableless discussion forum template?

curtschultz If you end up doing this, would you mind releasing it? I’m sure anything close to a standards-compliant forum template would be a very valuable asset to the community.

I’m writing a forum module within CodeIgniter right now that is quite similar in appearance and functionality to the EE Forum Module. I’ve opted to use tables for much of the display, since it is primarily tabular data. Just out of curiosity, why the push for a tableless design?

Brad Street Are forum discussions really tabular data? I’m not sure I understand how they can be defined as such.

For me, I just want a forum template that is semantic, standards-compliant and validates with the W3C. The “why” is for accessibility and SEO among other things.

After further consideration, I’m going to concede that a tableless layout is the way to go, and am going to rewrite my own forum system as such.

I believe, however, that a good argument could be made for either case. From a programmatic standpoint, each post is a record as you would see in a table. This is the approach I took to it, and so while the rest of my pages are styled with W3C best practices in mind, the posts and threads were within tables. However, from a design standpoint, each post is content. As such, it should not be within tables, but instead be contained in the proper elements.

Thanks for clearing that up, David - you’re 100% correct.

For sake of time, I decided to keep the tables in and strip out a lot of the extra stuff. I’d be interested in having a look at your templates if you guys get them done.

Brad Cool! I’m glad to hear your new perspective. Keep me posted on your progress. At some point, I’ll have to cross this bridge in EE. But the CI forum module sounds like an absolutely exceptional idea!

Brad Cool! I’m glad to hear your new perspective. Keep me posted on your progress. At some point, I’ll have to cross this bridge in EE. But the CI forum module sounds like an absolutely exceptional idea!

Well, sounds like he built it in CodeIgniter. It’s not anymore a direct crossover than any other existing forum software would be.

Really, forums are not that complex. A forum is essentially a weblog with comments. But in this case the weblog is typically open to regular members on the site.

What makes them look complex is the option stuffings that typically come with them. There is so much data with most forums that a table is almost required to include everything.

With ExpressionEngine, I think the most painful part of the forums is skinning. I bet you could do it though. I think it would be interesting to see someone come up with a tableless layout. I don’t think you would need to build a different forum module though.

Well, sounds like he built it in CodeIgniter. It’s not anymore a direct crossover than any other existing forum software would be.

John Fuller Exactly. We are talking about two things here. A CI forum module and a forum template for EE. It will be nice to have a CI-ready forum module. I could use something like that on a few CI projects now. But I develop mostly in EE, so I’ll have to cross this bridge in EE soon and skin a forum template with standards-compliant and semantic markup, if someone does not beat me to the punch–which would be fine by me. 😊

There is so much data with most forums that a table is almost required to include everything.

In my opinion, a table-based layout is never required. It’s just unfortunate that many developers resort to tables because of a lack of sufficient knowledge of CSS to achieve the presentation in a more semantic way. Tables are intended for tabular data. If you have a table of data, use tables. That’s semantic. If the content cannot be described as such, do not use tables. Essentially, that’s our discussion.

Ah, got ya. Don’t mind me. I was just sticking my nose in other peoples conversations while waiting for a call.

Do you know of any good examples of a forum built with no tables? I’m not sure I have seen one lately.

No worries, John. Glad you chimed in.

Vanilla is a good example of a forum with well-structured and meaningful markup.

http://lussumo.com/community/

I’ve rewritten all the forum-templates without any tables and only with divs and semantic code almost a year ago … have a look at http://www.macprime.ch/forum

Stefan, that rocks! Would you be willing to release this as an ExpressionEngine forum theme?

Very nice work, Stefan.

Stefan, how difficult was that? I’ve looked at it and the forum template engine is quite confusing with absolutely no documentation…

I noticed that one part of your forum is in tables though. Didn’t look around too much, just 3-4 pages and this is one of them.