I make a change to the template file and boom, it changes on all pages. However if you dont need this right away I am planning a post on setting up a 2 column layout with css in the next couple of weeks. There is no format to follow for teaching the aesthetics of style most people, though, can- recognise something that follows a classical design. However my make them spend more time parsing if you dont have. It still ends up being less code than you would use for a similar table based design. 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. Were not quite there yet with what wed like to do where design is concerned. It doesnt once you know the one or two places where there could be an issue. Let me start by letting you know I fall on the css side of things. Ive been doing web design since the beginning of the internet as a hobby and now professionally and I like a combination of both worlds. I agree to an extent but I have here 2 very good reasons why tables are definately worse for SEO: 1. My div test page was only 2285 bytes smaller then my table page which would save me 1.74 MB/month of data transfer. A div is a more generic container that doesnt impose any structure on the content within. 2. So, its important to ensure faster speed. 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. That flow is what needs to be eliminated! Lets see if we can dispel a few myths from each side. With CSS, what works with one browser might not always work with another. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): CSS is defined as a method sheet language that provides web designers control over how an internet site communicates with web browsers including the formatting and display of their HTML documents. Ive never read about this debate until now, however in the back of my mind I always knew someone(s) was debating it. Where did I say you shouldnt try to make tables with divs? No one is saying that a div can do more than a table. Specifically, it would take more than one div to create a row cell structure so when you need to display data in that structure its actually exactly the same amount of html whether you use a table or nested divs. I dont offer any advantage per se, on tables over divs. CSS, CSS 2, CSS 3 are often quite confusing. The tool emits old school attribute heavy html tables but I wrote a little javascript parser that seperates things out into clean html and css. But now not only is the solution more convoluted with containers i.e the complexity in code grows proportionally with the amount of columns compared to a simple table but we still dont really have equal length columns as its only the containers that are equal length and not the content/sidebar divs themselves. 1) Inconsistent Browser Support Different browsers will render CSS layout differently as a result of browser bugs or lack of support for various CSS features. Again I do agree that grid shape is a good one. Sure you can move stuff around easier with divs just in case you need to in the future, but nobody ever does. I really like using CSS for formatting text, lists, positioning, etc. Its easier because youre more familiar with using tables. (i know theres gotta be one but thats almost another argument for CSS over tables multiple ways you can go about it even). If youre so convinced tables are better than css then go ahead and use tables. I do think there is an advantage for div based techniques for high traffic sites and I will continue to expand my knowledge of div based layouts for this reason. Id rather use the more forward thinking approach, but again to each their own. Again though you may notice in the post I dont use seo as a reason to use css. Very amusing. This is what Dreamweaver template files do. CSS is not hard to learn.The argument is made by people comparing learning something new to learning something they already know well. For me this debate is less css vs tables as it is divs vs tables. Tables are simply not faster to create. the ability to do this is what switched me from using the table-based layouts I was first taught. To do this, add the following CSS to your style.css file: A table-layout value of fixed is generally a good idea to set on your table, as it makes the table behave a bit more predictably by default. Well, today a few colleagues of mine got freaked out when they saw me using a table to display data. I dont care what anybody says. I have tried to learn css with online tutoring (lynda.com, http://www.w3schools.com/w3c/w3c_css.asp, etc.) Go to Table Properties > Row > Enter a value in the Specify height box. You dont need 3 columns in your header. Maybe Ill have to write a post on styling tables. I come from a developer background and am now working as an SEO consultant (I know, Boooo and all that) so I am definately an advocate of divs and I have to disagree with: Search engines dont care one bit if the code behind your page uses tables or divs. Even that doesnt work when they are not all exactly the same font size with no flow. Im still a little inexperienced to style the whole design in CSS, though. I thought my question BTW why css layout over table layout' was clear from the context but apparently not. 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. search engines are more friendly. Feel free to email me if you want. Really? Im not sure who angered you so much, but please dont take it out on me. 1) Easier Site-Wide Changes CSS proponents claim site-wide changes are easier with CSS because you change one file and boom, it changes on all pages. And yes it is true that you dont much need extra code to get things to work for IE. Learning how to use Dreamweaver is not the same as learning to write the code. 4) Separation of Style and Content I guess this one is related #1, ease of updating? Tables have proven themselves and Im going old school. It wasnt my intention. How to check which tab is active using Material UI ? 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. With equal column heights, yes its easier to create them with tables than with divs alone, though if you look at the last of the 4 methods I described youll see its not hard to create them with divs and css and it still uses less code than using tables. I think it makes them easier to move them around on a single page. Tables are not effective by themselves anymore I agree, it takes a lot of time updating thing manually, so CSS is a BIG help. Let me also add Im talking about using tables and nested tables for the entire layout of a site. Advantages and Disadvantages Determining which extent type to use, depends business requirements and perspective. Right now its easier for you to code certain layouts with tables. These must all be on the same horizontal line to work, and if one has a word or two text change, only that column will flow properly, and I have to do lots of editing of the other columns. Instead you chose to insult me and the tutorials here. Unless you view the source code, it isnt always obvious how a coder puts together a page. If you read the post youll see I never once said you couldnt use tables. Let us have a glance on the benefits and drawbacks of CSS. Style adjustment is more convenient. It helps us to determine the changes within the position of web elements who are there on the page. When people are having trouble getting a css layout to look the same across browsers its usually more to do with the skills of the designer than with css itself. If your dealing with a site that was built with tables then youre probably going to continue using tables on that site. No technique is designed to be used in isolation. Thanks! You have to look at the bigger picture instead of focusing in on one aspect of that picture. It was difficult (and very confusing) at the start, but Im now completely clear on why its a better approach. Great debate. 2. : Get certifiedby completinga course today! 3. Im still using the spacer.gif to tweak spacing. When I do use tables for layout, its often a 1 row table with 2 columns, and its because there were no semantically correct tags that use the correct rendering that would work for IE6. I dont use DreamWeaver and you dont need to add fixed dimensions everywhere to make divs work. How to create X and Y axis flip animation using HTML and CSS ? You say that people apparently think tables are easier than css because they already know tables, but I think youre wrong there. Another example of hype at its finest. I cant and wont tell you that you have to abandon tables. You cant break out of the rigid grid easily. That would be a debate between using css or html attributes for presentation. If you get where Im coming from, please help me understand using logic. Developers need to realize that its okay to use tables when you have to display data and you need to use divs when you have to create layouts. Advantages of tables (3) Raw data, any type of data. When using CSS for layout, browsers can cache Maybe its not feasible in your case, but it might be worth looking into. Divs are more flexible. 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. At most the html would require a single class or id extra. I just wrote this post a couple months before Matt Cutts mentioned how some at Google were pushing for that to be a factor. Im lucky if I can still remember 50 words in Spanish. I dont want to use tables but Im finding it harder and harder to justify not using them. E.g. This debate has been going on for years. My biggest concern is if I can design the following website designs in CSS. You make good points. Its a great way to learn. Everything else is really irrelevant. I think it gets an unfair rap sometimes. And server space/bandwidth doesnt seem to be an issue anymore either. I agree with what you are saying, however I think with the advancement of HTML 5, tables will start to disappear. 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. It could be because of my familiarity with css, but I dont think the last method is hard to understand. 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