Like others have pointed out, fixing display bugs related to just about any css based layout often takes entire release cycles, just to get ruined even more by some other dopy designer. This would be more about inline css or using html attributes like the font tag vs a separate stylesheet. Anyway, the real reason I wanted to comment here is because I think it is hilarious that Ive been reading people bashing table layouts and saying they cant stand any website that uses tables, then I view the source code and they are commenting on a page that uses tables! The issue though was how I was using css and not css itself. Its a great way to learn. Theres no need for a Tables should only be used to display tabular data but what is tabular data is debatable. It could be because of my familiarity with css, but I dont think the last method is hard to understand. Youll compare each of the arguments against another based on relevant data. Feel free to contact me if you want me to develop the home page without tables. Let me apologize in advance because what Im about to say may come across as harsh. Youre welcome to use them to layout sites if you want. The whole semantics argument is nonsense. Spanish is a beautiful language that many people use to communicate quickly and effectively each and every day. Q&A for work. Again though you may notice in the post I dont use seo as a reason to use css. I agree with what you are saying, however I think with the advancement of HTML 5, tables will start to disappear. But using tables and styling them completely with CSS is just as effective as CSS alone. Both were done with tables. Different levels of CSS i.e. Laying out a site with divs has a learning curve. Learning CSS/div coding seems a daunting task because they dont really know the code in the first place. Odds are pretty good that none of the people who wrote these posts are or were on the development teams that wrote the browser code. plays an important role, by using CSS you simply got to specify a repeated style for element once & use it I had not heard about this controversy, being a WYSIWYG kind of guy. Why You Should Avoid Tables for Web Page Layouts CSS is the best way to build web page designs Share Flipboard Email Table of Contents Tables Are Not Id rather use the more forward thinking approach, but again to each their own. Any styles defined in the internal and external style sheets are overridden by inline styles. Believe me, the clean code you talk about it gone. Im thinking something in the way the code was set up is preventing that from happening. The advantages with using divs are essentially counter to the problems with tables described above. By the way sorry the code in your comment didnt display. I think, though I havent used them in years, that tables are far superior for site maintenance in that you do not have to adjust sizes, just add or take away a table cell. WebAdvantages of CSS3 CSS3 provides a consistent and precise positioning of navigable elements. This site is simple and fantastic, thanks for making it easy to read your content. By a few I mean less than 5. CSS, CSS 1 up to CSS3, result in creating of confusion among web browsers. Your comment suggests your commenting on the title of this post and not the content of the post. The reason people are still defending table based layouts is because tables are the correct SHAPE for most client specifications, not independent blocks floated to the left, or independent blocks with absolute positioning or independent blocks using any other trick to make them seem like they cooperate. It amazes me that some folks still use tables for layout in this day and age. In fact your reply only makes it clear you dont know to build sites using divs and css. Now lets get to some of the myths on both sides that keep this debate going. If youre asking about the latter thats a good question. Ive offered tutorials on the basic layout and Ive offered tutorials on things that can go inside that layout, but never all the code for an entire site. The fact that different browsers and different versions of browsers look at these and other variables differently is a really pain. rightBarExploreMoreList!=""&&($(".right-bar-explore-more").css("visibility","visible"),$(".right-bar-explore-more .rightbar-sticky-ul").html(rightBarExploreMoreList)), Difference between CSS Grid and CSS Flexbox. Create a CSS Fireflies background using HTML/CSS, CSS pseudo elements every CSS developer should know. Lets see if we can dispel a few myths from each side. I am about to take on a new website project, first one in 8 years. Using display: table-cell would work fine now that everyone uses IE8 or over, but the floating div folks insist on emulating a grid with floating blocks anyway. Second best would be to have a KNOWN set of definitions for how a browser brand will render a certain statement, then we can generate the css file according to what browser, but thats a work around. Long Run Maintenance 5. w3c standards are useless 6. structure and content css vs tables round II. I think anyone that codes by hand knows that CSS/div is easier to work with in that way. This is the same when using divs. How to Turn a Design Image Into a Working Web Page: Part 1, How to Turn a Design Image Into a Working Web Page: Part 2. The problems I run into are on updates: adding a few lines here, and changing the text there. The greater flexibility you can create with your structure and the maintenance advantages are the more important reasons. Creativity User preferences Multiple variants Personalized user experience Artificial intelligence design disadvantages Understand nuances Create original content Filter biases 3 best artificial intelligence design software UIzard LetsEnhance Fronty Conclusion I dont care what anybody says. Of course see load times above which now seem to be one signal Google looks at. The places where this occurs has problems with that flow. Im going to remain open minded and give CSS a chance! Newspapers have figured out this ideal layout a long time ago, and have thus named their writers columnists. I totally thought this debate was long dead, but hid a road block and was procrastinating so I thought I would google random stuff and found this. he argument is made by people comparing learning something new to learning something they already know well.. Take the time to learn how to use it. Assuming no major errors I think the search spiders will get through your code fine whether its css or tables. Its huge. Consistency. I code both a little differently now, but the posts might still help. In order for a browser to render a page built with tables it needs to read the code on the page twice. CSS has the impressive benefit of being consistent. If youre having to spend the vast majority of your time finding workarounds for IE then youve probably been doing something wrong. To remove double borders, take a look at the example below. Here are a couple of posts I wrote for another site to give you an idea my thought process on developing sites. There are SOME layouts that to use entirely CSS requires an inordinate amount of extremely messy code to represent. Thats actually where the hype is. I really like using CSS for formatting text, lists, positioning, etc. Tables/grids (the shape) are the holy grail of layouts. I dont think using css for a layout means the page automatically ranks better. Were not quite there yet with what wed like to do where design is concerned. How to create X and Y axis flip animation using HTML and CSS ? The best practices standard for doing web design is to use DIVs for page structure and tables for tabular data only. Calm down. CSS is better in both theory and practice. Im still a little inexperienced to style the whole design in CSS, though. The main goal (as a method sheet language) was to separate document content from document presentation, which incorporates style elements, like color, layout, and fonts. They use less code. With the 4 methods if its important to a site to support older versions of IE then sure dont choose the method which might not work with those versions. The phone number and search can either be wrapped together in another div thats floated to the right or they could each be floated to the right independently. Having developed and worked on sites both ways Im 100% certain structuring your layout with tables is not the way to go. So what difference does it make? Odds are youre finding css hard, because youre trying to make it behave as tables do. Perhaps its a matter of experience, but if you know what youre doing you never need to use any kind of hack. It could mean one less page they get to crawl on your site. I dont agree with their reasoning, but it is there. The language allows web developers to regulate various style elements and functionalities, like layout, color, fonts, and therefore the formatting and display of HTML documents. Most of the time though, that relationship wont be 1:1. Kind of ironic. I also dont have an issue if you want to use them to display a list of links in a menu. Tables are like having the blocks bolted together and needing all blocks to be bolted before the structure itself holds together. But clearly there are many people who support using tables. Learning how to use Dreamweaver is not the same as learning to write the code. I find it hard to believe that anyone who honestly knows how to develop a site well with both tables and divs would ever choose to use tables. The secret is you have to use < and > for the angle brackets or it gets interpreted as actual code. 4. Believe me, Im not making the argument for convoluted nested tables with colspan settings, etc, nor am I arguing against semantically correct documents. 4. This site uses css and works in IE for example as do many, many others. The load time though, is now reason enough to recommend css over tables for seo. . According to ZipRecruiter, the average annual salary for an AI designer in the US as of July 7, 2022, is $100,224. There are many more people who dont have those problems. Early on you had to use tables to layout a site well. The limiting factors isnt the language, its my ability to use the language. I learned by reading the book Eric Meyer on CSS. With Googles latest algorithm update (Caffeine) emphasising page load times as a SE ranking factor it is now more important than ever from an SEO stand point to reduce the amount of code on a webpage. I agree to an extent but I have here 2 very good reasons why tables are definately worse for SEO: 1. Much of using css for layout is realizing that you dont need to do as much as you think. There are many things you can say I do, but hype isnt one of them. I find that if I have to spend more than a 5 hours trying to figure out the combination of CSS statements to achieve the result I want on just one page, and I can do it in a table (a VERY SIMPLE table), in less than 15 minutes, then the dream of CSS has not been achieved yet. CSS is a standard across the board. Sorry I didnt reply sooner John. Thats not the case. So if you feel strong emotions regarding CSS layout, dont respond. It makes updating global and quicker. Do a search for css vs tables or similar and you can find a lot out there. If your visitors are using IE you need to support IE and whether its the code or the browser that gets things wrong is irrelevant. And server space/bandwidth doesnt seem to be an issue anymore either. I just said they were faster, which you proved. Any one which have basic knowledge of programming can easily lean JavaScript. Taylor Graphics, LLC May be my knowledge, however tables work great! Laying information out this way is simply more intuitive than floating divs, not from a web standards perspective, but from a kid puts shapes in the holes perspective. Disadvantages of CSS. The algorithms used for ranking most often are content and inbound links. Ive read the debates. When you say things like hand coding is a pain it suggests you havent taken the time to learn css well. Is it possible that there are errors in my tutorials? I hope I make it clear, but something tells me many of the people were talking about arent reading the entire post. I think theres more potential for errors with tables, but I know there are people who can code a search friendly site thats still table-driven. The one that continues using tables is because it does not dominate or does not know CSS. By the way I forgot to mention it when I commented on your post, but I did enjoy reading it. Cascading sheet not only simplifies website development, but also simplifies the maintenance as a change of one line of code affects the whole web site and maintenance time. CSS changes are device friendly. @Dave I think were getting squished with the replies to each other so Im starting a new comment. This is the same as $1,927 each week or $8,352 every month. If you send me a link Ill be happy to take a look. Then I format the text in CSS adding padding and margins where needed. Covering popular subjects like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Java, and many, many more. Advantages of Inline CSS: Inline takes precedence over all other styles. CSS based design is unquestionably superior to table layout, but due to sheer laziness the practice of table design has held on. Why css layout over table layout? Im still using the spacer.gif to tweak spacing. For instance, if you want colmns with different colour backgrounds to be the same length, use a simple table and style it with css. With the 4 methods youve got the only that really comes close is the last & it requires more code. There is no drag and drop anymore. Tuples support multi typed-values, indexes, optimized for lookup, but a lack of schema flexibility. I guess Ive never been convinced of the seo benefits. In my opinion, combining table layout with CSS works great. of CSS vs tables when it is clear that one can can use CSS techniques with respect to tables as well as divs? To me, framing the debate this way is yet another attempt to make a distinction CSS plays an important role, by using CSS you simply got to specify a repeated style for element once & use it multiple times as because CSS will automatically apply the required styles. The performance claims Ive read about here and elsewhere on the web for divs over tables are over-hyped I found only a 10 ms advantage for the div technique over the table technique. I hope this will show some good ways to the others. However my make them spend more time parsing if you dont have. Great debate. By understanding what each layout method is designed for you'll be in a good position to understand which method is I agree that CSS is much better in theory, but as long as people use IE and Microsoft refuses to be standards compliant, I dont think CSS for structure is the greatest idea. Its now moving on from the CSS methods that replaced tables and using CSS thats being written specifically to lay out sites. Personally I think until we get to the point where we can load a page before someone finishes clicking the link to that page theres room to improve. Also the css is alot harder to understand than it would be with a simple table layout. However. There are a few downsides while using CSS. IE is a lot more standards compliant than youre giving it credit for. To each their own in regards to tables. Youll have more control over how your page displays with divs that can aid in how a screenreader sees your content, but again you can create equally accessible pages using either approach. 3)Stop using Dreamweaver to code websites for Gods sake.Give .NET websites (Aspx) a try,you will be amazed.And,for what you want to be shown in all,you just do a master page.Plus,divs are NOT cross-resolution.You have to add fixed dimensions everywhere,and positions screw up in mobile resolutions. I coded up 3 different versions of the same page (divs, tables, tables with table-layout:fixed), and then ran some benchmarks on performance and file sizes. By Return on Investment 4. Read the post to find out why. There are also dozens of other methods I didnt mention. A list? In modern times, people usually wait for just a couple of seconds for a website to load. Funny. I do think css is the better option, but feel free to develop sites any way you want. I will use them to learn more about CSS. I dont think the choice is about shape though. The flexibility is in your html structure. I agree that once you master css you can be very powerful with it. I agree that there will always be some people that cling on to tables, but I dont think we will have to suffer too much for much longer. If you click through on some of the links in the post or just do a search for css vs tables youll come across a lot of the reasoning why some prefer tables. Where did I say you shouldnt try to make tables with divs? With many sites (big, e commerce sites for example) having many different sections of text and images and other media throughout a page the code just grows and grows, taking browsers longer to load page content. I dont want to use tables but Im finding it harder and harder to justify not using them. Theyre interested in your content. Its more in how you code it where I dont think html tables are the right approach. I never said I prefur tables. The problem most people have when learning to use divs is trying to force them to act like tables instead of allowing them to be what they are. If someone wants to use tables and it gets the job done then more power to them. 2. should be collapsed into a single border: If you only want a border around the table, only specify the border property for If you want to report an error, or if you want to make a suggestion, do not hesitate to send us an e-mail: W3Schools is optimized for learning and training. This post isnt a tutorial so I would need to know which one or ones youre referring to as well. The argument is about how to structure a web page. I certainly havent seen anything to support the validity of these remarks. A div-based layout is: easier to maintain less code and less This is no small drawback!! WebYou can have as many rows as you like in a table; just make sure that the number of cells are the same in each row. Thats always going to be better done using css. This debate has been going on for years. Youre mainly proving my point that those who argue in favor of tables usually havent spent the time to learn to use block level elements like divs and css well. Learning at write CSS layouts can be tricky, especially if you become familiar with usage tables, but here's why CSS is your best programming bet. It was easy to do, and it looks great in Opera, Firefox, and Chrome, but guess what?! Sure you can say they just need to learn more, but sorry, they didnt. As far as the speed issues, Google didnt really talk about load times affecting ranking until after I wrote this post. Theyre much easier to use now. If youre asking about the former then Id say go ahead and use a table when youre presenting data in columns and rows. You can use css with a table-based layout. Table cells are dependent on the table, and the rows and other cells in the table. John Taylor Tables to me make for a more complicated structure that often create even more problems. I agree with you about css3-grids. I show this above in the post. I just think css is a better way now for the reasons mentioned in the post. Thanks Rami and interesting analogy. more flexible since one div is not dependent on the other divs on the page it allows for more freedom in your design, quicker to load blocks of code can be presented right away instead of the browser requiring an extra pass. With divs its just guessing, maybe this will work. Using css to layout a site is the most difficult part, but it does come together with a little practice. There is nothing wrong using CSS and Tables. and on. 5. It separates style from content (editable/un-editable). How does it suggest we should use tables? An example of this lie is what proponents of divs like to show off by only having a few divs compared to a table structure, but in order to get even close to having the same properties as table we have to use something like the last example in http://www.vanseodesign.com/css/equal-height-columns/ as the others are just faking the appearance with a background image. I also believe the opposite, theres no point using table rendering if you DO want them to be independent. In theory, CSS is the answer, the problem is that the way browsers deal with SOME of it is not only not standardized, but can actually have the exact opposite result for example position: absolute can cause a column to move to the left in one browser and cause it to move down in another, and cause it to move up in yet another. Not all browsers (especially older versions) render tables the same. Then there is hours of adjust here, adjust there, view, adjust . 1. I hear you Bill. At first its confusing since its such a different approach, but once you make it through the learning curve its obvious that the div/css combination is a much better and more flexible approach to building sites. Thats it. Ive been a designer for over 20 years and been using tables for layout for 13 years. I also kept all my university textbooks just in case I would need them guess what? As for formatting and style, you should use a clear and descriptive title that reflects the main topic and keywords of your paper. Im amazed that in 2013 people are still defending table-based layouts, but whatever. Neither is true. Same thing with the issue youre having with css. In fact I use them all the time when I want to present data. It was difficult (and very confusing) at the start, but Im now completely clear on why its a better approach. The resulting code runs issue free cross browser. (Remember, I DO use CSS for formatting.) If I had stopped my study on the first day the table would have won by an equally small margin. I dont offer any advantage per se, on tables over divs. The only time I ever use tables anymore is to quickly horizontally and -vertically- oppose an image or something else on a temporary coming soon type page. Ill reserve judgment on maintenance but I have a hunch Ill be able to go in and make the same changes equally as quickly whether I start with the div or table test pages. Its true that less code means less potential for show stopping errors, but those show stoppers can exist regardless of your sites structure. I think it makes them easier to move them around on a single page. Why does anyone really care how something is put together? Nah, i disagree.. if im the only one whos going to work with the site, i go for tables, its 1000x faster and easier to get a decent layout. I speak English fluently. How to override the CSS properties of a class using another CSS class ? 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By the way I forgot to mention it when I commented on your..