Tables and image buttons Versus Layers, CSS links and correctly coding pages to suit all browsers Well here we go again

How many of you out there use tables to layout your web site's?

I used to do it and i now think that the table based layout is an waist of time, using CSS and layers is by far a cleaner and more search engine friendly approach to any web site. Why I hear you say, why is it barry ?

Well look at the table based layout, the code involved to layout your pages is cluttered by extra code, the text contained in the page is mostly pushed further down to compensate for the extra tables coding, although it appears to be close to the top of the page in the browser.

Table based layout is not as as cross browser compatible as you may have been led to believe. How many browsers are there these days that actually conform to all the layout rules. Well mostly all of them except Internet Explorer. There are other browsers out there that stick exactly to how the code should actually be presented on screen, looking at internet explorer and coding to suit it using tables will land you in hot water if you come to look at your web site in lets say a FireFox browser.

I have been viewing a couple of sites this week that look totally messed up in the Firefox browser simply because of incorrect usage of tables and not conforming to how tables are properly structured. Tables inside tables inside tables.

The Layers and the CSS? who cares about them?

Future developments on how the internet and its myriad of pages will be presented points towards using Layers and Cascading Style Sheets as a standard to lay out web pages. Being fully cross browser compatible, accessible by every person with a PC, Mobile Phone, PDA or hand held PC is an aspect that your average web designer may not tell you about. The modern design laws tell us we must cater for all aspects of the community and allow every one to access every part of every page.

Using layers to layout a web site makes this task far more simple than using Tables simply because the CSS will allow you to structure your web site in such a manner that from top to bottom the pages and the code will flow. You do not have to use images placed inside little tables to represent flat image based buttons because you can use CSS to make buttons that load faster and present them selves better than an image button. you can also add better descriptive text as links instead which is better for search engine rankings as the search engine can read the link and direct its spiders to the next page, already knowing what the content of the page should be simply because you have told it via your link. Image buttons cant do this.

SO to sum up

use CSS and layers to layout all your fork and your web site will be presented better on screen on every browser. If you use the correct layout procedure you can put your text as close as 1 lines after the tag.

This is impossible with tables as you need to construct your table from the offing

simple effective advice