Tables V CSS

Hi,

Im just about to undertake a new project and wondered if I should use tables for my layout or go completely table free using CSS?

Whats everyones opinions on this?

You mean xhtml? Is it possible to avoid tables with css and how can you do that?

Yeah, apparantly - although I have never done it before - you can create your site completely table free using CSS to position all your content and navigation.

Yeah it can be done - although im no expert in CSS and struggle to get everything spot on using just CSS. However i have seen some great examples of table-less designs over at www.oswd.org . Its an open source template site and has loads of nice decent templates that are completely table free, ok they are not spectacular looking but you can get an idea of what you can do :)

there some pretty nice designs there when you think that they are all done with CSS! I would really like to go this route - however I have heard rumours that it doesnt make for a SEO friendly site. Has anyone got any knowldege on this?

No. CSS is ok with search engines. And actually a lot of people using css to optimize their sites.

For example you can use the h1 tag (which is very common used for SEO) and optimize it to be smaller than it usual is :

I'm working a site for my self that has no tables and uses CSS. You may want to look at it:
http://www.perosnal.saskwebs.com

Its all positioned.

You would use something like this:

<style type="text/css">

#div1
{
position:absolute;
left: 30px;
top: 20px;
}
</style>


Then in the html/xhtml you would put:
<div id="div1">
This div is postioned 20 pixels from the top of the page and 30 pixels from the right.
</div>

I do table-less XHTML/CSS coding for clients, so yes it is possible! :D

The important thing when coding table-less layouts though, is making sure your layout is cross-browser/platform compaitible. That's the difficulty in CSS, not just coding it table-less, because of rendering differences in browsers. There are still a large number of internet users using IE5.5, and a page that looks good on IE6 may not look so hot in 5.5.

I'd still say go for CSS over tables - loads faster and its great for SEO.

Can I  just ask - what would be the benefit of making it smaller? Are you talking about just an asthetics view or something else?

I was talking about asthetic

XHTML is okay, I prefer tables.

Go for tabless css/xhtml. It avoids most of the IE bugs, and it's much more search engine friendly. Not to mention the page loads quciker and it's easier to edit.

CSS is much better. In the future I don't think anyone will use tables for layout anymore. Check out this website for more information on CSS design and start learning!
http://www.csszengarden.com

It is amazing what you can do with css. All of the designs on this page use the same xhtml code, the only thing that is changed is the CSS and the images.

That's a very nice resource Adrevel.

Thanks for sharing :)

I'm afraid I'm still guilty of keeping sites with tables - it's an old habit that I couldn't get rid of until now!  This means that I now have to go back and redesign my old sites using CSS.  I know it's going to be a lot of work, but I like doing it :)  I'm actually excited :)

And you will be more excited when you see your sites loading faster :)

I'm still trying to convert into a CSS coder :( I'm finding it difficult to learn, I don't know why. It is just so much different than coding with tables.

You
You just need some experience with CSS. Think how difficult it was to code with tables when you was at the beginning

:)

This CSS stuff looks interesting, maybe I should start coding with it.

I say use css all the way! I use it instead of tables these days cause it is better for control of the site and SE friendly! The last site I did was all css and it got PR6 with google in 6 weeks! If you are interested - www.liezelscause.com

Well pagerank has nothing to do with coding, but only links. Your site propably got links from other high PR sites, that's why you got pr 6.

The biggest advantage of css is that the page loads must faster than a regular page.

Search engines give better attention to css sites, but it isn't so significant.

CSS - Search engine friendly, page loads nice and smooth

Definitly CSS. CSS can handle just about anything, and is way more organized as far as code goes (I just recommend that you make a stylesheet page.)

There's a big CSS hype going on at the moment. A lot of people will tell you it is bad to use tables and they should be avoided at all times. Those people are only following the hype and are mostly 14 year olds thinking they are webdesign masters. There's nothing wrong with tables, it's better to have a good design with tables than a bad CSS based page. I've seen a lot of big websites lately which have some layout problems since they switched to CSS. If you want to go that way you better know what you're doing or just stick to tables. Search-engines don't care if you use tables or CSS. Check out some major websites (ie. Microsoft, IBM, Google, etc.) They all use tables, if tables work for them they will be just fine for my websites!

(there's only ONE thing that should be avoided at all times in any programming language: GOTO)

Tables were meant for presenting data in well... tables. I am sure that they are not meant for laying out and building your whole site with tables. I just say that CSS is more versatile and that they are easier to manipulate than tables.

A balanced combination of both should be fine.

Tables should only be used for tabular data.

For everything else, there's mastercard, i mean CSS.   ;D

Tables are primarily designed to be used to display tabular data... in the webs infancy most new media designers or web designers came from the print media, the easiest way for them to design was to make an image and cut it off in table cuts or in parts and the table was exploited from its original purpose. The early designers found a way to do designs easily and repeatable... Thats why then CSS was concieved, it was designed primarily for design, to format how a page will look... If you are comfortable with tables then by all means use it, but if your a beginner and want to start making pages, then learn CSS, I know how to use both, use the appropriate tool for the job...