Why I don't use CSS for layout

[templateteacher]

I use CSS for design for the simple reason that browsers wait to return all data from a table before they display it. If you have dynamic content, visitors to your site might be stuck looking at a white page before anything renders on screen. Of course, you could always through more hardware (i.e. memory and CPU) to improve your performance, but using CSS really speeds up my sites.

This topic comes up a lot. I am trying to think of a benchmarking test that could be run. You proably couldn't do it online because of network latencey issues, but on a local machine you could probably see some difference in the two approcahes.

[LazyJim]

Are you seriously telling me accissble to every one is your main selling point yet you use tables for layouts?

You were making me laugh untill that point.

There's a lot of help out there (and around here) for the CSS n00b I suggest you don't give up.

I will provide links and lessons as soon as I can find the time.

Do not let microsoft run your life any more than you have to.
Remember they were planning to add a 'smart-tag' system into IE that makes words in your web page turn into links that link to the sites owned by people who pay micrsoft for that purpose. This is what they were working on instead of bringing their browser engine up-to-date.

[LazyJim]

Do you even use CSS for fonts?

The most important reason for a developer to use CSS is the separation of style from content.
With a fully CSS layout and formatting you will benefit from:
- centralised file(s) controlling site-wide layout and formatting.
- less code needed for most jobs.
- makes it possible to have validating web sites.
- Content is easier to work with and update.
- Can specify different CSS files for different use (screen, printer, webTV, PDA, projector, speech synthesisers...) and no need to re-do the whole site including content.
- Google can access your site easier, plus a greater proportion of your files will be relevent content instead of bloat.

The users benefit from good use of CSS:
- content is shown much faster than a <table> based site.
- CSS files are cached by the browser so the layout and formatting is only downloaded ONCE per visit and will be re-used while the browse your site instead of having to download all the formatting and <table> markup in each page.
- The site is more accessible and makes more sense when the visual elements are compromised, (for example on a text-browser or for a blind person).

Well that's a good start with a list of reasons to use CSS.
Which are a lot better than saying you shouldn't use it because Google's cache makes sites look ungly. (FYI google's cache is primarily to record the content of the site, and using CSS makes this much easier!)

[bytech]

Oh, I use CSS for fonts, just nothing to do with layout. Presentation, yes. Layout, no. As the title of the original post goes, I was refering to CSS for layout.

Most of our pages have one table, unless we need to work around glitches in IE, like IE not honouring the height attribute. 90%+ of our designs have the home page display on one screen, no scrolling, so load time has never been an issue (again, our pages tend to be less than 50K+ CSS which is tiny and downloads only once.

I've never had anyone complain about our load times either. Seriously. And I deal with people that have some oooold computers (heck, my laptop is a 233mhs, and loads the tabled pages like a snap).

Google has no trouble indexing our sites, and I suspect tables are easier (our pages load the full content in text browsers... Google sees the web very much like a text web browser does). Dunno how a text browser would see and use CSS absolute positioning... Should find a page that uses CSS and start up my lynx but I suspect it will be more of a mess than a table site?

[edbarton]

All my sites are fully css based, except the layout. I'd rather not use absolute and for many of my sites it seems that is the only way to go.

[greg]

lol, your sites are fully css except the layout? that basically means you do not use full css.

The font and link css is great and all, but it is hard to say that since you use the font and link attributes that it is a fully css site. The power comes in being able to establish the layout through css. if you are not doing layouts then it is hard to say that you are doing css

[edbarton]

I didn't say it was fully css, I said I use CSS for everything except positioning things on the page.

[LazyJim]

OK cool so your a few rungs up the CSS ladder

As for how tables look in text-only browsers, it will be linierised, but the meaning of it is wrong.. <table> means tabulated data, what you say you can 'see' in a text browser is just text, but the software will have registered the fact that the content is tabulated data.

The best you could do with tables is to at least add the other tags to help the meaning work well, but then you'de have trouble validating because not many tags are actually alowed in table cells!

[PhilC]

I have decided to fully migrate to CSS than use tables ... but boy, the headaches I am having with it. I am still sticking with it though.
I beleive that CSS sites are more search engine friendly and also wireless device friendly.

And they are REAL powerful.
Just go to http://www.csszengarden.com/ to see what I mean ...

Plus, the whole web is migrating towards it ... Yeah, I mean W3C ....

[LazyJim]

slowly but surely

[Fusion]

Well HTML sucks, but all this seperating content from layout is a good idea, but over-hyped don't you think? Apart from updating and the kerfuffle with the W3C etc, has it really changed anything?

[Distorted]

Well HTML sucks, but all this seperating content from layout is a good idea, but over-hyped don't you think? Apart from updating and the kerfuffle with the W3C etc, has it really changed anything?

Lol. umm...Yes!?

Read the homepage here and then look at some of the things that are done on the site:

http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/

or

http://www.zengarden.com

Without CSS, you would have to write out Everything with stupid html font tags, center tags, etc, etc...

The Horror!

[Fusion]

Sorry Im not being specific Im talking about UI, and the evolution. CSS is great I love it- but how has it improved the UI? Nice sites btw.

[LazyJim]

CSS improves the behind-the-scenes work and code and allows the seperation of presentation and content to happen.

How has CSS improved the User Interface?
Don't be stupid! CSS is a tool for styling the interface from components that were already there, even HTML can only use common interface componants found in the operating systems and browsers of the computers used to access a page.
CSS doesn't add anything too the interface that wasn't already available, it provides a more powerful, efficient, effective and non-distructive way to mark it up.

[Fusion]

Well, IMO it's nothing great; useful, but nothing great