| These concerns in combination with the rise of mobile | | | | tableless web environment include: |
| web devices have caused many designers to look | | | | 1. Greater flexibility and control over page design - |
| elsewhere for web design enabling technology. The | | | | content and presentation aspects of pages can be |
| recent emergence of "tableless" cascading style | | | | managed individually and centrally for changes across |
| sheets (CSS) markup language is one answer that | | | | entire websites. An example would be in the a sites |
| promises much greater flexibility and control, smaller | | | | CSS Menu navigation system where by changing the |
| bandwidth requirements and better overall | | | | style sheet the entire site navigation can be updated |
| performance. | | | | instantly. |
| The linear "table" approach to web development | | | | 2. Browser interoperability - different browsers can all |
| caused HTML pages to require complex formatting | | | | present HTML pages the way they were meant to |
| and substantial bandwidth. Before a browser could | | | | be displayed, using CSS markup espeically in CSS |
| load a page, it would have to download all | | | | Menu can often resolve these issues. |
| components completely before displaying anything on | | | | 3. Less bandwidth usage - with the separation of |
| the screen. This slowed the load-time process and | | | | content and style, pages are smaller and require less |
| sometimes caused jumbled content on the screen. | | | | bandwidth. |
| The main reason for this is that the use of tables in | | | | 4. Support for mobile devices - Laptops, PDAs, cell |
| programming integrates the "content" and the | | | | phones, etc. have a much easier time properly |
| "presentation" components of web pages resulting in | | | | accessing and displaying web pages |
| far less flexibility and heavier content. | | | | When designing HTML documents, and espeically CSS |
| Furthermore, the table approach does not support | | | | Menu navigation it is important to follow proper CSS |
| mobile devices such as telephones and PDAs which | | | | markup standards to make future changes easier and |
| are certainly becoming a large player in the Internet | | | | to enable other developers in the organization (that |
| landscape. Tableless CSS markup is becoming quite | | | | have been given access) to modify both content and |
| ubiquitous around the world for its ability to separate | | | | presentation without problems. |
| the "content" from the "presentation" on web pages | | | | The use of CSS style sheets in developing and |
| and create a more semantic - rather than linear - | | | | maintaining CSS menus within web pages is also |
| organization of content on web pages. | | | | growing in popularity. Today CSS menus are used |
| With the absence of tables, pages are able to load | | | | pervasively across the Web and the ability to easily |
| sequentially rather than all at once, which speeds up | | | | create and modify them is important to designers. |
| download times for users. Other key benefits of a | | | | |