There isn't anything a table can do that you can't do with CSS and DIV's. In fact DIV's are much easier to manage and weigh less on the download.

However, I haven't had much luck getting the c5 editor(tinyMCE) to read my CSS files while I am editing so using DIV's can become confusing for the End user if they are not aware of the underlying HTML structure.

That's true, but in this case I think it's simpler from the user's point of view to be able to simply add a table row and fill it in. Especially in light of the problem you mentioned with styling the input view in TinyMCE.

Any other ideas? I might take a crack at this next week, but I think it'll be a hefty task, learning the code as I go along.

Thanks for your input.

I've been playing around with the idea of creating a grid system tool for doing just this, but I haven't really added to it in the last few weeks. You can check it out here:
http://c5sandbox.inneroptics.net/grid_prototype_v2/...

To see how you can modify the table, login with u: sandbox p: sandbox and put that page in edit mode.

As I mentioned above, the goal of this is to eventually be able to create more complex layouts like:
http://mayans.particlebook.com/page_id/97/Uxmal/?noTB=1...

...which would require it to combine different tables together (right now you can just have one at a time). I'm still brainstorming on this concept, but if there's a need for it I'll continue with it's development. Let me know if you have any ideas or recommendations.

Wow, that's really nice, Tony! Something like that might suit my purposes, with some css to make the rows have equal height in case of content mismatches.

How is it on ie6? (The result, not the editing, of course.)

I checked out your photography site too. Beautiful stuff.

yeah, the view mode works fine on ie6, edit mode works fine in IE7+ (thx for the props on the photos btw)

Any chance you'll be releasing the grid system block any time soon?
Thanks

we're thinking of ways to incorporate it into the page types and themes without changing the underlying architecture.

the view is that the underlying architecture is right, very flexible and powerful - but the learning curve is tough. We want it to be a bit easier to take a photoshop template and turn it into a concrete5 site, and I think Tony's tool is part of that.

Why take a template derived from PS when it then becomes graphic intensive. That is the problem I have run into a lot from people that insist on using a Graphics program to make their template/site.

I like the way the template system is currently. Very few graphics and most elements defined in the css files. You don't have to worry so much with ensuring that all these small graphics are in place.

hopefully we could set this up so it would allow both a way to create template, and also on a page by page basis, so if you want to split a layout up for a single page you can do so. otherwise there's the potential for there to be way too many templates if people are doing custom templates for each page/story/spread.

That is really amazing Tony!

You've pretty much made my brain lock-up.
I'm having trouble even thinking how to implement this into my page type designs.

But wow, it would make it so simple for the user (editor) of the page to adjust layout!

Keep prototyping! Love what I see so far.

Yes, Tony that's just great stuff with the prototype of the grid layout system. I also like what I'm reading from Franz about incorporating it into page types & themes. Lot's of good stuff on the way I see.

Thanks again,
CJ.