Theoretical question: Images -- tables vs div tags?

[mlezak]

Hello all --

Here's something to ponder with your morning coffee

I'm sucking a whole bunch of manuals from Word into Flare. Within each chapter/topic there are a number of tables that have text on the left, an image on the right.

At the moment, the documents will be output as PDFs, but we will be moving to web and mobile help. For most of the web/mobile help, I will be treating the images differently (in a manner TBD -- could be thhumbnails, could disappear entirely...).

My question -- Does it make the most sense for me to keep the text/image columns in tables or should I use div tags to float the text and images left and right? I've figured out how to make the div tags work -- I'm just wondering whether it's a waste of my time.

Thanks!

Miriam

[RamonS]

The only advantage to divs is that they get rendered by browsers once the div loaded as opposed to a table that gets rendered when the entire table loaded. You will see an improvement in user experience if the text / image lists are very very long. If it is worth the effort, only you can tell. The final look is about the same.
I would duly note this and move on to other, more pressing work. If you have a pocket of time you can go back to this and change the tables over bit by bit. Also, as long as nobody complains about this leave it as is.

[mlezak]

Thanks Ramon! I appreciate the thoughtful answer. I guess I'll leave them be unless there's a good reason for me to change 'em.

[LTinker68]

One other thing to note is that some outputs don't play well with DIVs. Word, in particular, but PDF, too, although that depends on what you're trying to do with the DIV. Tables, however, work consistently across all outputs, so even though it's an "old" method, CSS-wise, it's also the most dependable.