Joomla! Discussion Forums

I know this has been griped about a lot, but c'mon!

Joomla is one of the better CMS systems out there, and definately the best open source CMS. It has a lot of great features and an attractive  (almost) easy to use interface.

This is why it's so frusterating that I have to wait until late 2006/ early 2007 for the "accessible" version to come out. (It's proposed in the roadmap as such, I can only hope they mean a shift from tables to XHTML/CSS)

I've read though previous posts and heard the cries of like-minded folks. I've also heard nay-sayers come back with reasons why tables are cool and how they have a purpose. I think these arguments are inspired by laziness and ignorance.

"Tables work, why change them now?", "I have high-speed internet, so I don't care how long it takes for other people to download my bloated tables", "I'm not blind, so I don't have to struggle with a reader telling me each time I hit a new table row and column"

It's not like it takes "mad pr0gr4mm1ng sk1llz" to take out tables and use the propper tags for the outputted HTML. I'm not an uber-god programmer, and I'm able to do it quite effectively. But it the type of excersize in futility that makes you want to scream; especially when the changes you make last no longer than a month if you want to update and add the security/stablility fixes.

Why can't someone on "the team" take a couple days to do a little surgery on Joomla and remove this cancer?

Because it's not as simple as that.

Yes, you can go and excise the tables, and get everything tableless.  Many have done it.  I've done it recently as we're working towards an "accessibility package" for 1.1.

The problem is, removing tables and making those changes will break backward compatibility.  Compatibility is something that Joomla users are intent on getting. 

FWIW, http://becanz.net Do note that it is a work in progress, and what you see now may change significantly when it makes it to 1.1

If it is something that would break backward-compatibility, then shouldn't it have been done back when Joomla 1.0 was created? And how is it not going to break backward-compatibility when the WCAG version does come out in a year?

The only reason I ask is that I really don't want to go back through and remove the tables everytime I upgrade. I also don't want to wait for the WCAG release. I don't want to go with a WCAG compliant code-split either. I don't want to spend the time creating a template for the table'd version only to have to re-create it with CSS later. Whats a geek to do?

At *some* point backward compatibility will be broken.  The core devs have opted to do one release that will break a lot of stuff, rather than several releases that break a bit of stuff.

If you don't want to hack the code to remove tables, and you don't want to wait for the WCAG release, then, I suggest you find another CMS.  I don't say that in jest.  You're not leaving us much choice here. 

I assume you've seen this: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,24921.0.html

You can still create your own tableless template, and once the accessible package comes out with 1.1, you'll be much closer to your goal.

I know that tables can be paired down to an extent, and it looks like thats what I'll have to do. Joomla is still one of the best os CMS on the web and I would lose too many features that I like if I were to go to a different system. I just have a personal commitment to accessibility and I get a little erked when such a big entity barrels along without regard to the people who are, in some way, disabled.

I know this is not the case with Joomla, since you obviously have some intention of fixing it in the future, but it's still frusterating.

Thanks, Vavroom

Frustrating?  LOL...  I've been using Joomla/Mambo sinve version 4.5 1.0.3, over two years ago, and I've been kicking and screaming to see this happen ever since!  Oh, aye, I know the frustration all right.