Discussion: Easy tricks to remove many tables from the standard output of Joomla!

torkil · **Posted:** Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:31 pm

Here is a link to a8e Joomla on the forge:
http://forge.joomla.org/sf/projects/accessible_joomla

lw-d · **Posted:** Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:33 pm

Thought this forum was closed, I just posted a related post in General because I thought this was closed, here it is:

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,46531.0.html

steinefrenz · **Joined:** Thu Mar 09, 2006 10:23 am **Posts:** 31

scatcat wrote:

desenso wrote:

Vavroom:

Thanks for your post. I was toiling with how to make the menus lists and was about to start sniffing around the core when I found your thread. It saved me a lot of time, so thanks!

As for this whole topic: as far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest drawback to Joomla right now. That's really a pity, because this is an amazing system. I've spent about 100-200 hours developing a site for a client on a range of CMS' (at my own expense, of course, I'll only charge for my work on the final product) and I think I'm set with Joomla. The only disappointing thing for me was the amount of tables. Nevertheless, it was pretty easy to convert my tableless CSS to a new template in Joomla... I'm just still a bit annoyed with the tables for the main content.

I suppose I can get over it for the time being. I do hope that they modify the core so that things that don't require tables aren't built with tables.

Amen to that.

This is, for me, without any real competition, THE drawback of J!
I don't know about elsewhere, but here in Sweden AFAICT ppl have taken the tableless design to heart - my customers ask for it at least.
It has come to the point where I have to talk around it when suggesting the system - promising it will happen "soon".

For me this has priority over AJAX, OO design, and most other issues discussed in the roadmap and on the boards.
I want clean and semantic (X)HTML. Before that is a fact, the rest is just gadgets.

Just my 5¢

I totally agree. In the meantime we suggest Typo3 or Plone to those customers who want or have to have to comply with 508 or similar standards (BITV in Germany).We always did the vast majority of our projects in Typo3 with Mambo/Joomla in 2nd place. But currently due to the high demand of tableless/liquid layouts the total amount of of Mambo/Joomla projects dropped to under 10%.

Michael
http://www.24ix.de

comduit · **Joined:** Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:52 am **Posts:** 47

Hi, I appreciate these techniques and already use them.

I do not have a problem with tables per se but do have a problem with the proliferation of tables where the HTML is or

. Everytime I upgrade I go in and change as many as I can to

- this way I have maximum control using CSS and don't waste hours trying to humour graphic designers.

And there's also the issue of some image tags hard coded with hspace="6"!

Surely this can be done by the core team without major impact (except where it exposes deficiencies in the CSS)?

I know, I know... I should have requested this way back when I began using the Mambo and Joomla first emerged...

I am aware there has been a lot of effort put in to clean up the coding (hopefully all
Am I wrong or is this a valid concern?

steinefrenz · **Joined:** Thu Mar 09, 2006 10:23 am **Posts:** 31

You are absolutely right. However the usage of tables for menus is not the only concern. A standard Mambo/Joomla site with a standard template (such templates that uses table for layout purposes) is not accessible at all. I am sure in a few years all websites (not only goverment bodies) have to be accessible.
Currently we have to find ways to make a Mambo/Joomla site more accessible. We have done that at http://www.mambo-now.de but I would not recommend it as our site is not easy maintenable. Unfortunally the site is in German. However have a look at the HTML source.

Michael
http://www.24ix.de

scatcat · **Posted:** Sun Apr 23, 2006 5:21 pm

I went ahead and downloaded J8E Joomla!

It was a real revelation, this is how J! should be !!!
Just about nothing that is not strictly neccessary, tables for tabular data, CSS for layout - I'm a happy camper!

Now I just have to teach myself to work with CVS, I have not had the time to sit down and get into it - then I can partake in making it even better, rather than keep my own hacks to myself...

Marcus

ganar · **Joined:** Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:19 pm **Posts:** 98

scatcat wrote:

compass wrote:

Thought I would include my 6 part series (and growing) tutorial on Valid W3C joomla sites.

A six part tutorial series about creating a valid joomla template, starts with:
Tutorial 1: Creating a W3C valid Joomla template for your Joomla website
http://www.compassdesigns.net/articles/livesitedesign/

I would offer another couple of additions to the discussion too.

1. Valid is not the same as tableless. You can have valid semantic layout and still have a table or too. [...]

True.

But Joomla can be frustrating when you try to produce a valid site that should be accessible from a variety of platforms.
Tables are not exactly optimal when designing for a phone, a pda, or other small screen situations.
With the @media and tableless design you can have your cake and eat it too.

On the absolute top of my wishlist of the last 3 or 4 years have been a tableless Mambo/Joomla.

Second on the list, for the last year or so, I wish for trackback, pingback and contextual comment handling integrated and optional. This to make it possible to move seamlessly between classic CMS-type content and blog-type content without installing parallell systems. And yes I know that some ppl doesn't like pb/tb, but it would be a good option to have.

Give me those and all will be well in the world (apart from wars, stress, empty bank-account and lego in my bed)

Anything I can do to smooth the way?

I agree with scatcat about this, I'm currently holding out from transferring two big sites to joomla because we built them using tableless versions of Mambo and the amount of work done in order to modify the core and the components and modules in order to get validation was too much for something that a client won't be able to see...

Recently I've build a new section in one of the sites Hyundai football and the new template validates but now I have to rewrite the core of one of the versions of AkkoComment because it does not validate in XHTML transitional... if this comment feature is added to the core everything would be much simpler. Blogs are a new way to distribute content, It's defined by "the economist" as "participatory media" in their article Among the audience as something as important as mass media. I think it is time to support

On Friday night I installed the last J1.5 alpha on our development server and was appalled to see that it still uses tables to handle the structure of a lot of the elements

ganar · **Joined:** Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:19 pm **Posts:** 98

scatcat wrote:

I went ahead and downloaded J8E Joomla!

It was a real revelation, this is how J! should be !!!
Just about nothing that is not strictly neccessary, tables for tabular data, CSS for layout - I'm a happy camper!

Now I just have to teach myself to work with CVS, I have not had the time to sit down and get into it - then I can partake in making it even better, rather than keep my own hacks to myself...

J8E was the version of Mambo( when it was mambo based) that we used for for hyundai: it is a great fork that should be brought into the core...

tassoman · **Joined:** Fri Sep 30, 2005 10:47 pm **Posts:** 6

svn checkout --username nobody http://scm.joomla.org/svn/repos/accessiblejoomla

reynierpm · **Joined:** Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:49 pm **Posts:** 60

Hi to every:
I'm very newbie with Joomla. I'm looking since a few days how to get a entire site with CSS but I can't make. Why? Simply because mosMainBody() always show table. I take a look to the file content.html.php but I can't see crearly how play with those functions. Any help?

Regards,

scatcat · **Posted:** Thu Jun 15, 2006 8:11 am

reynierpm wrote:

Hi to every:
I'm very newbie with Joomla. I'm looking since a few days how to get a entire site with CSS but I can't make. Why? Simply because mosMainBody() always show table. I take a look to the file content.html.php but I can't see crearly how play with those functions. Any help?

Regards,

Go to the repository and download A8e Joomla! (Accessible Joomla!), and you'll lose those tables too.

reynierpm · **Joined:** Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:49 pm **Posts:** 60

Before all thanks a lot, this is very helpfull for me but this is for Joomla 1.0.8, any for 1.0.9?

Regards,

scatcat · **Posted:** Fri Jun 16, 2006 1:20 am

reynierpm wrote:

Before all thanks a lot, this is very helpfull for me but this is for Joomla 1.0.8, any for 1.0.9?

Regards,

Nope, it is usually one version behind.
Natural since it isn't until a new version is released that work on A8e for that version can take off.

duvien · **Posted:** Fri Jun 16, 2006 9:19 am

reynierpm wrote:

Before all thanks a lot, this is very helpfull for me but this is for Joomla 1.0.8, any for 1.0.9?

Regards,

I've just release a patch a few days ago that i compared and merged a8eJoomla 1.0.8-03 with Joomla 1.0.9, you can get it here: http://forge.joomla.org/sf/discussion/d ... t.topc3390

I've tested it and is running it on my personal site and so far seems to work fine, though i would still say 'use at your own risk' as it has not yet been checked over by the project admin of a8eJoomla.

Install the official Joomla 1.0.9 and then patch it (ie, just overwrite the files) with the version of a8eJoomla (found from the link above).

There are some new CSS added to a8eJoomla, you can find a list of them here: http://forge.joomla.org/sf/wiki/do/view ... Stylesheet

thanks,

sunburst

reynierpm · **Joined:** Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:49 pm **Posts:** 60

Thanks, I have a8e Joomla 1.0.8. It's possible update from this version or I need install 1.0.9 and then upgrade with a8e Joomla 1.0.9 Beta?

Regards,

duvien · **Posted:** Fri Jun 16, 2006 1:42 pm

reynierpm wrote:

Thanks, I have a8e Joomla 1.0.8. It's possible update from this version or I need install 1.0.9 and then upgrade with a8e Joomla 1.0.9 Beta?

Regards,

You need to install J1.0.9 and then patch it (ie, upgrade).

thanks,

aernative · **Joined:** Mon Jun 19, 2006 8:37 am **Posts:** 4

OK - I'm new to joomla, however I am not new to PHP, CSS, etc...

We are considering using Joomla as the key technology for powering our sites however I would like to get the DIV thing sorted for SEO/Accessability reasons...

The following was observed using 1.0.9 Joomla and the "joomla-1.0.9_to_a8ejoomla-1.0.9_patch.zip" with the additional "index.zip" posted on sourceforge.

I have followed the suggestions above - and things were almost perfect, however - I did have a number of warnings - looking further into this the issue seems to stem from the changes to "includes/joomola.php". Errors were relating to undefined constant "_URL_SCHEMES"
I am currently looking at the dif of the current version and the a8e version to see why this has crept in - will post my findings soon, or if anyone else has a suggestion please post... other than this there one other area i would like to tweak -

Why does Joomla use the full URL all the time? is there a way to force the use of compact relative links? (They both look tidier and take less code to deliver the same conetent)

I just found the post here -

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,67081.0.html
which mentions other ways to modify the templates - looking at this now - drat, appears to be a 1.5 feature...

there is also pages mentioning -
http://www.run-digital.com/download/hacks.html

But as the site is in german i'm not sure of what i am reading there...

Thanks in advance

duvien · **Posted:** Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:37 am

Hi aernative,

Welcome to the forum. The patch was released by me as i really couldn't wait for the project admin to release it so it is unofficial a8eJoomla version. I used the mergetool to merge and compare the files. I haven't check it over in details as it seems to be running fine on my site. So here is the patch (see attachment). This one combines all the several ones that i have released over the week. It also includes the fix for the 'cancel email form' which did not close. However, a bug still remains and that is you cannot disable it in the admin backend.

Please do check it over if you have time, it might not be merged properly. I have been told there were some parts that needed to be done manually but because after i patched it and had no problems with it, i never really check thru it in details as others have had success in patching too. I'm jusst waiting for a8eJoomla project admin to check it.

As for the error, you are getting, i'm really not sure what it could be and how it can be fixed as i have not encountered it myself. I am aware of the other hacks but have not used them as they seem outdated now and development looks like it has ceased.

a8eJoomla isn't perfect yet as there are still tables in certain core components. But it is an improvement so far.

Quick note on patching:

- Must have Joomla 1.0.9 installed.
- Unzip the files and just overwrite your Joomla 1.0.9 installation.

that's all and i hope you'll get it working this time round.

thanks,

reynierpm · **Joined:** Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:49 pm **Posts:** 60

Hi to every:
Well I test the a8eJoomla for 1.0.8 version and it's amazing I reduce my site to only one XHTML error. Also I notice some errors mistakes:
When I click in News->Category News and then access to a news category, all the news who belong to this category are show but in a table

How I fix this?
Regards

duvien · **Posted:** Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:13 pm

reynierpm wrote:

Hi to every:
Well I test the a8eJoomla for 1.0.8 version and it's amazing I reduce my site to only one XHTML error. Also I notice some errors mistakes:
When I click in News->Category News and then access to a news category, all the news who belong to this category are show but in a table

How I fix this?
Regards

A site running the Official Joomla validates 100%, you don't require a8eJoomla for this even though it is as well. Category Table News display is not an error, tables just haven't been removed as it fits it purpose being tubluar data anyway.

Also, a new patch ae8joomla 1.0.10-0.3 has been release thanks to Matthijs. You can get it here: http://forge.joomla.org/sf/frs/do/listR ... omla 

thanks,

reynierpm · **Joined:** Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:49 pm **Posts:** 60

Well I download the latest ae8Joomla but it contains table too. Anyway trhanks I try to remove all tables and then I send the release to the a8eJoomla authors.
Regards,

duvien · **Posted:** Thu Jun 29, 2006 9:05 am

reynierpm wrote:

Well I download the latest ae8Joomla but it contains table too. Anyway trhanks I try to remove all tables and then I send the release to the a8eJoomla authors.
Regards,

If you really want to remove all the tables completely, look into /components/com_content folder.

Good luck,

pezholio · **Joined:** Thu Aug 10, 2006 2:41 pm **Posts:** 7

Great tips, thanks for that, I've now got Joomla outputting one 1 column and 1 row table! One question though, is there any way of changing the

to a

?

Cheers

xKillswitchx · **Joined:** Sun Mar 26, 2006 7:55 pm **Posts:** 208

I've actually gotten my Joomla site completely table-less, even validates XHTML Strict. I posted a thread to share the hack with others, incase someone finds it absolutely neccessary to have a table-less site.

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,181102.0.html

There were quite a few modifications, but everything is completly table-less and valid. Can also slightly control the frontpage author names, etc look much better now as well.

Joomla! Discussion Forums