Comments on: 13 Reasons Why CSS Is Superior to Tables in Website Design

By: Adobe Tutorial and Sharing | 13 Reasons Why CSS Is Superior to Tables in Website Design

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[...] to display data. With a bit of skill you can recreate the same thing in CSS. A great article gives 13 reasons why CSS is better than table the number 1 being faster load [...]

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auto insurance quotes — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:57:05 +0000

I prefer the use of CSS, but I do not like how purist people can be on the subject. But as far as many of your reasons explained here, I don’t see an advantage with many of them.

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Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:01:54 +0000

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By: Steve Syfuhs

Steve Syfuhs — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:15:52 +0000

While these are definitely good reasons to use CSS, I have only one issue with the list. The first arguement is a comparison in html markup. The angle bracket tax of sorts. Unfortunately, you aren’t comparing apples to apples. Sitepoint’s CSS vs Table pages look completely different. While that in-and-of-itself is a compelling argument, it’s still a faulty comparison. Compare the tag/attribute tax when they look exactly the same, and then you have an accurate comparison. Otherwise the rest of the list is pretty reasonable. (so says the non-designer anyway)

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Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:35:42 +0000

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By: aankun

aankun — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:19:43 +0000

i glad you post this, because explaining this thing to another people will takes a very long time. I’ve been using CSS from a very beginning i designing websites. And a lot of people keep asking me this question.

Now all i have to do is just send the link to this page.

By: Burgers

Burgers — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:49:19 +0000

I counted 7 nested DIV tags to open your BODY. I’m just saying.

I think the reasons listed here are generally exaggurated. As others have stated the issue at hand is NOT pure tables and hardcoded properties vs DIVs and external CSS. Having to edit every page when you make a change is an issue in any layout and that is solved by using server-side includes as a common code basis, not by the kind of tags you use.

No tables is the optimal. But this is an internet where a LARGE portion of one’s audience is using an old browser that does NOT support many CSS standards. It’s rotten, but what do we do? Is it more important to provide that audience with compatibility (and even a decent looking layout) or forgoe them because they are (perhaps not by their choice) using a crap browser? And in this case, yes, hacks are available, but to what extent? Is it *better* to include tons of additional code just in case an old browser is used, vs cases where you could use a table and it would display consistently in basically ALL browsers?

Things like SEO and ‘companies will admire your work more if you don’t use tables’ go against the majority of ‘popular’ websites that use tables, load fast, etc. Not to say many of them could not use a nice revamping, but I think the SEO argument is not based on actual concrete evidence. Of course one should learn the latest standards and use them wherever possible — but it needs to be in moderation nevertheless. I use IE6 at work (not by choice) and it’s frustrating when I get to sites that are visually extremely broken. Some of them are unreadable.

That said, I am still in the process of converting my personal website to use all CSS/DIVs etc and no more TABLEs for layout. But it’s not as easy as it should be and I have even had to make some design scaleback choices to satisfy CSS limitations/compatibility, something that just should not happen.

By: John

John — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:39:02 +0000

Many thanks for this – I think I will now have yet another go at changing from tables to CSS, more for loading time than anything else. Also, I’d now like to tackle layers now as I’ve seen some pretty nice looking sites out there that obviously do this. Hope my next forray into the table-replacement world is more successful than the last – last time I tried to replace a table I spent hours and then gave up as the CSS just wouldn’t format properly in every browser!

By: Real Group

Real Group — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:23:13 +0000

Very nice,
This article converts the mind of designer to leave tables. Div & CSS are the best. The most important thing is that, it’s Good for SEO.
Enjoy…
Real Designers: 10 Years’ Experienced Website designer in India

By: Daljit

Daljit — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:05:20 +0000

Congratulations Matt on writing such a wonderful article. For a long time I wanted to convert my website to CSS based layout. This article has further motivated to do it fast. Comments and your answers make it a mini encyclopedia on advantages of CSS.

By: Martin Leblanc

Martin Leblanc — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:35:16 +0000

What on earth does spacer gifs have to do with table-based design? You can make perfectly good looking html and css using tables without spacer gifs. Aren’t you confusing “table-based” design with “formatting with html” in that example?

I my self always use tables to control the overall layout – simply because it’s much faster than making the divs float the way I want. As a freelancer I can earn more money if I use tables for the overall structure: main area, righ coloumn etc.

By: WeaponsTheyFear

WeaponsTheyFear — Sun, 17 May 2009 04:29:08 +0000

I prefer the use of CSS, but I do not like how purist people can be on the subject. But as far as many of your reasons explained here, I don’t see an advantage with many of them.

Useability for example. I could use CSS with tables and still allow for printable view documents. Tables are not getting in the way there. Accessiblity as well, no difference.

I’ve also found it’s easier for a team to manage the presentation of a simple table over that which requires more complex CSS for proper alignment. It’s easier to read what a table is doing rather than going through many different properties of the css, some of which may be effected by parent element styles, etc.

And as for spacer gifs, I’ve never once needed them. Again, tables + css works just as well in about every sense that non-tables + css does ( maybe not in regards to layout complexity, but I’m sure that can be defeated as well with very little table code ).

And not to mention…
“…table-based layouts are ancient history and XHTML combined with CSS is the only real solution to coding a web site’s visual layout.”

Tables are completely valid XHTML, so that means now we can agree that it too falls in with being a real solution to coding a web sites visual layout?

I think the argument should be more towards why people choose tables for their presentation structure rather than relying completely on CSS to define it. I don’t see anything wrong with people still using tables, although with the technology we have now, it shouldn’t be as mainstream as it once was. That’s not to say those who use tables are wrong in anyway or another. I still see no need for people to act arrogantly towards those who use tables.

If it wasn’t meant to be, then what is the purpose of a table anyways? Afterall, CSS has the ability and properties to define table structures. To me, this is just a problem with XHTML/HTML in itself.

By: Xats

Xats — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:54:31 +0000

Great blog post, thanks for sharing and all the comments–as a newish web developer I have actually learned quite a lot.

Even though CSS can seem daunting at first, I am really glad that I have decided to take on the challenge of learning it, rather then get stuck in a rut with commercial WYSIWYG editors and table only designs. Always hated the look and feel of tables–made me feel boxed in.

I leave you with this:
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” John F. Kennedy