CSS or Cascading Style Sheets has opened up tremendous
possibilities for improving web site designs, web page layouts
and adding new features. The HTML code can be made shorter,
cleaner and simpler by CSS resulting in faster loading of web
pages, and making them more accessible to search engines. Here I
am narrating my experience with only one part of CSS - using it
to eliminate tables.
If you look at a traditionally designed web page, you are likely
to find number of tables in the layout. Tables were earlier used
only for displaying information in a tabular form. But web site
designers soon started using tables for other applications such
as showing images, graphics and other decorations.
My own web pages were earlier checkerboards of tables. Each web
page was almost fully covered with tables and many tables were
nested inside other tables. As I tried to add more features the
design became more and more complicated resulting in longer
loading times. It also took lot of time to "adjust" the tables
on the page to make it acceptable.
It was not an easy task to redesign all the pages using CSS. But
once I started, the improvements were more than I had bargained
for. The design became simpler, the appearance improved and
loading time came down considerably. The code looked real clean.
Most of "td" and "tr" tags were gone.
My purpose of this exercise was not really to change the
appearance but to make the design simpler. Now the tables which
were earlier used only for design purpose have been eliminated.
For eliminating tables first step is to decide which tables or
more specifically which cells have to be removed. For applying
CSS each cell of a table can be considered as a "box". These
boxes are given separate identities and description of each
"box" goes into CSS code. The "boxes" can be given names such as
box1, box2 etc. The description of the "box" can include size,
its location on web page, background color and image if any,
font details, padding, border details etc. The location of the
"box" can be made "fixed" on the web page, or it can be floating
in which case location can be defined with respect to another
"box".
If the location and dimensions of the boxes are properly worked
out, they neatly fit into the web page giving it a clean look.
Since the code associated with table designs are done away with,
the content of the page attains more prominence in the code.
This makes it easier for search engine spiders to locate the
actual content of the page.
If you have several web pages with similar design, the CSS code
with these and other details can be put in an external file.
This will further shorten the code for each page. With CSS lot
many improvements can be done in web page design and layout. CSS
can also be used for search engine optimization of the page.
My experience with CSS has been great and I wonder why it is not
used more often. My advice - convert to CSS based design.
About the author:
Sanjay Johari contributes articles regularly to various ezines.
His website contains information, articles, resources,
opportunities and more for small business owners and home based
business owners. http://www.sanjay-j.com
Join the longest running internet business opportunity - because
it works! http://www.sanjay-j.com/empowerism.html
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