Lex - I'm not convinced that we're going to see a completely tableless version of DNN for some time.

This blog might be of interest for you to read.

I am in two minds about completely tableless skinning and DNN, but having said that - we have a specific tableless skinning forum being setup on a new subscriber site that covers in depth the process, the management and the compromise that occurs when people use tableless skins.

If you want to use pure CSS driven solutions, then look at some of the Mambo, PHPNuke options, perhaps WordPress.  I've looked at these briefly only, so might be wrong in my assumption on them being completely tableless.

My reason for being in two minds about this is because people are moving from these sort of applications to DNN because they want what DNN offers, which in an open source environment is rich in developing structure, open source (BSD Licensing) flexibility of design and a truly modular framework, which isn't offered to the same extent as other apps.

I feel there is compromise all the way in whatever we do using software. Yes you can use these other CMS products but they tend to all look the same.. I mean I like wordpress, but wow, don't they all pretty much look the same, and Mambo sites - some look fantastic, but they all resemble a slightly similar structure.  And much of that is the restrictions that are placed upon the design, due to the lack of tables to hold the site together to do just that little bit more.  I am not for one minute saying you can't work wonders with CSS, because you can.. but it has it's own set of issues and it's own limitations, by nature of what it is.  I've just converted a tableless static site to DNN for a government project in New South Wales Australia, and to be honest, it looked horrible in Mozilla and IE7, which surprised me, but in DNN, I managed, with the help of tables, and containers to replicate as per client request, as close as possible, and it looks great, well they think it does, so that's all that is important.

There are a couple of sites around that allow for completely CSS driven sites, but it requires changes to the core code, the limitation of module use, and in fact at times I am concerned that the price of doing the tableless designs will restrict the fuctionality options for the site adminstrator. They could be turned into glorified HTML module sites.. and to me that's defeating the purpose of using DNN.

And in spite of many people who are insisting on having CSS driven sites, their need for site management and flexible growth must also be considered, and for me, working on more high end and demanding projects, try my best to deliver what the client wants and as close as possible, look at conforming to standards.  But accessibility and compatiblity are two separate things as well, which many people get confused with.

I hope this gives you an insight on this very topical area.  At this stage, I do mainly corporate, intranet, ecommerce and site replication, the needs for those clients is somewhat different to each other, but often require tables to manage them, but we do work on minimising their use, and other forms of optimisation to ensure their site performs well.

Just my thoughts on this matter.

Nina Meiers