CSS vs. Tables

[Diana Myers Hyatt]

While no one would argue the benefits you mention of CSS, a "hybrid" layout that uses CSS as well as tables for layout is still a good option and allows for backwards compatibility (as well as fewer headaches for the designer). I recommend Jeffrey Zeldman's book, Designing for Web Standards, or his website alistapart.com interested in the benefits of CSS.
 
BTW, another big benefit of CSS is accessibility, not just for the visually impaired, but also access for cellphones, PDAs and other devices (maybe future iPods?).
 
Diana Hyatt
Library Associate
Riverside Public Library
 
 
 
Brandon Dennis <bdennis at shreve-lib.org> wrote:
Sarah -

There are two primary benefits (plenty of minor ones too :) to switching
to a CSS design as opposed to a table design:
1. For consistency and ease of coordinating design, CSS separates
content from presentation. So if your patrons (or boss) don't like the
font, you can change it across the board with one or two lines (as
opposed to going through every file). As well as most other
presentation decisions.
2. Using Style Sheets (and separating presentation from content) means
that the browser only has to load the .css file that those pages use
once. It *will* just use the same presentation once it's loaded. So if
you are interested for a honest comparison, you would need to strip all
the HTML files on your site and then compare the total size. Usually,
even if a visitor only goes to a couple of pages, it makes up for the
difference. And if it doesn't, for a variety of other reasons, it's
worth the difference to have converted your site to CSS.

Best of luck! (I'm getting ready to do the same thing)
Brandon


-----Original Message----- 
From: Smith, Sarah [mailto:sarah.smith at fresnolibrary.org] 
Sent: Fri 3/4/2005 5:00 PM 
To: Multiple recipients of list 
Cc: 
Subject: [WEB4LIB] 



I'm tinkering around with converting a website from a table
layout to a
div layout, and I've managed to get identical appearance. The
div and
table based html files are identical in line length, and the CSS
file
for the div based layout is longer than the CSS file for table
based
layout. I only noticed because I ran a "Speed Report" from the
Firefox
Web Developer's toolbar and it said my CSS file was twice the
recommended size.
My question is: does/should separating content from layout
reduce the
number of lines of coding needed? Size of files? Etc...
TIA,
Sarah A Smith





		
---------------------------------
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! 
 Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web 


*********************************************************************
Due to deletion of content types excluded from this list by policy,
this multipart message was reduced to a single part, and from there
to a plain text message.
*********************************************************************