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