d-programming-language.org template

[Brian Hay]

On 18/05/2006 3:25 PM, Dave wrote:
> Tiberiu Gal wrote:
>> just css? why? what's wrong with tables?
> 
> 
> Great question (what's wrong with tables?) - served me well over many 
> years and many web pages.

Tables are for tabular data, not layouts.

Tables aren't good for accessibility (screen readers for the blind etc) 
or searchability.

Most search engines weight page relevance not only on the content and 
tag "importance" (e.g. P, H1, H2, H3 etc) but also on the content's 
order within the HTML page. So a H1 at the top of a page followed by a 
well-written explanatory paragraph increases relevance reletive to pages 
with similar content poorly structured. Placing content within table 
cells, surrounded by empty cells (or with spacer or GUI images), can 
work to decrease search engine relevance.

Using tables mixes content and layout, whereas intelligent use of XHTML 
+ CSS can almost completely separate content and layout, making future 
maintenance and desgn makeovers MUCH easier - simply replace the stylesheet.

There are many reasons not to use tables, but these are the 3 most 
important IMHO.

And anyway, good XHTML structure plus CSS can realize all layouts 
formerly done with tables, even with inadequate CSS support in MSIE 5/6.


Brian.