How did I ever live without github?

So for a while now I have been using Github.com for side website building projects. Just about the most useful tool out there for today's web designer and developer. The way I use github as a staging site for client approvals of design or content. I use the free service but may, down the road, end up paying for an enterprise account. The difference between the two is the free account only lets you have public repositories and the paid account you can have private ones.

You can also use Github.com as a free place to put your personal website or a micro site as they allow you to customize your domain to utilize there web hosting. I pay just for my domain and that is it these days. No need to pay for expensive hosting for small sites anymore.

I am not sure in the past how I lived without version control. It is so useful to have the ability to revert back to another older version at the touch of a button. The Github for windows tool is has a really easy GUI interface for those of us who like visuals to interact with and you can also use your favorite command line as well if you are interested.

Check it out for your next project and start following some people as well for great ideas and interaction within the design/dev community.

What are your thoughts about version control? Have you used Github for something unique? If so tell me about it.

Table uses in Modern Web Design

You hear all the time from web designers and developers that tables are finally dead and should not be used anymore. I honestly beg to differ on this view. I have a few great uses still for these relics of long past website designs. Here are a couple:

• Displaying a menu for a restaurant/bar/wine bar website. Tables are great for this as they easily let you setup lists that are side by side so you can have prices next to your menu. Sure you could also do an un-ordered list but I find that all browsers treat tables almost exactly alike since they are so old.
• Anytime you have to display some type of data that is in a spreadsheet or matrix. Tables let you move data that may be given in an spreadsheet format and display it easily on the web. You can easily color or highlight rows to make viewing easier for this massive amount of data and it is easily formatted. Again all browsers will display this almost similarly across each browser type. 
• Long unruly lists also can be helped by putting the data in a table. It is easy to use a table to help format a long list that is getting out of hand.

The short of it is don't build the whole site in a table like it is the 1990's again but do still use them where they help you the best, managing large amounts of data that has to be displayed on the web. They may be old but they are not totally without there uses.