Why a table?

Tables are deprecated in XHTML and are not very good for layout purposes. However, if you're determined on using them, I would imagine that you could modify the _formatting.php file to allow the <table><tr><td> tags/subtags and their various attributes.

Personally, I'd go more for the <div class="pic"><img ...></div> <div class="text"> text</div> thing, and style them in the CSS file to get what I wanted. (Hint ... float both left, with fixed height/width, and they should "stack" as you want). You could margin them and have them stand off from the edge and themselves, very easily.

Hope this helps.

So when were tables deprecated? They're there in the [url=http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/]working draft for XHTML 2.0 [/url] dated 27 May 2005. According to the spec

The Tables Module provides elements for marking up tabular information in a document.

XHTML 1.0 [u]has[/u] deprecated the name attribute of the a, applet, form, frame, iframe, img, and map elements, and it will be removed from XHTML in subsequent versions. Also, the isindex element (in document head) is deprecated in favor of the input element.
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Richard

Sorry, my mistake. "Deprecated" isn't correct and I apologize if my incorrect usage of the word confused anyone.

I was thinking of tables for controlling page layout (as the question was utilizeing tables to control the layout of an image and accompanying text). They're not a good tool for page layout and in that sense, they're no longer recommended for that function.

Yes, you're correct, they're in the specification, b/c they're designed and should be used for displaying tabular data.

OK. I appreciate the difference between style and substance.

I'm busy trying out various blogging apps and I was having a lot of trouble inserting a table in a post with b2evolution. I wanted to include a table of data in an unordered list - you cannot with b2evo, so I just had to end the </ul> before each <table> and start a new one after each </table>. Any text that I wanted to display under the table without a bullet point is just indented using <blockquote> at the moment, although I guess that I could define a separate class in my CSS.
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Richard

Richard,

There is a thing in b2evolution called an HTML-checker (the file that does the work is /conf/_formatting.php). It basically checks the post you're making, for allowed tags, subtags, attributes and URL's (it's also used for comments).

I don't use tables much, but you might want to have a look at that file, as some of the tables tags might not (by default) be allowed inside a <ul> tag.

You have two choices.

1) You can turn the html-checker OFF (there's a switch "use_html_checker" - think thats the VAR name - inside the _formating.php file. Just turn it from a 1 to a 0). Make your post, then turn it back on again. (Dont' forget to turn it back on AFTER you make your post, to keep nasty stuff and bad formatting out of your comments).

2) Edit the formatting.php file to allow the particular configuration of tags | subtags | attributes ... so that your "_formatting" file knows that these are OKAY.

Hope this helps.

-stk