| Once upon a time, 'Gopher' ruled web development | | | | content, using keywords in your header tags, and |
| and 'Archie' was the mother of all search engines. | | | | replacing header GIFs with actual text will all help your |
| Since then, there has been incredible advancement in | | | | sites get better search engine results". |
| technology and web development has been | | | | Forgetting semantics, web standards layout still has |
| completely revolutionized. | | | | the massive benefit of separating content and |
| Today, with web standards being changed every | | | | presentation. Tables will lock you into a design. If you |
| alternate day, Cascading Style Sheets or CSS | | | | need to change it, you need to go into a page and |
| combines the best of HTML, XHTML and Java into | | | | fiddle with the table structure and you can forget |
| one full package. CSS is one interface through which | | | | about device independence. And forget about those |
| you can make your web page attractive. Now, geek | | | | who choose to use their own style sheets. |
| internet is no longer only for the geeks. We all like | | | | Tables have few benefits such as laying out forms. |
| pizzas and deserts being served with the main | | | | But then forms can be seen as tabular anyway, so |
| course. You find more tags in codes than anything | | | | it's sound. Tables is only good for old browsers but |
| else with a punch of GIF images and background | | | | one doesn't have any reason to support such a |
| colour. This is where CSS gains over all. | | | | cause The benefits to the vast majority who have |
| CSS also increases your search engine ratings but the | | | | more capable browsers will far outweigh the |
| question is, when CSS becomes a standard | | | | disadvantages to the tiny minority who will see |
| everywhere how does ranking make a difference? | | | | un-styled yet fully functional content. If you want to |
| One can never really say whether replacing images | | | | stay with the comfort of an inefficient hack |
| with text makes any difference to a search engine | | | | methodology, that's up to you. But if you want to |
| ranking. To quote from a book, "Speaking of | | | | push things to their limits and make the most |
| accessibility, minimizing your mark-up and using header | | | | versatile, accessible, lightweight pages possible, make |
| tags properly will also help improve your search | | | | the effort to switch. |
| engine ranking. Reducing the ratio of code to | | | | |