Tables used to be the “in” thing when it came to designing web sites. As with many other things though, new techniques and methods standards are bound to emerge with time. When once tables were seen in most web pages, some experts now suggest that tables should be thrown out of the window.

In simple words, tableless web design is basically a method whereby page layout control is achieved without the use of HTML tables. Instead, text and other elements on a page are arranged using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This language is the brainchild of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). It was designed in such a way as to improve web accessibility as well as to make use of HTML for semantic purposes rather than presentational purposes.

One thing that has been making the headlines in the past year or so is the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. With search engines such as Google and Yahoo making big waves in the information sector, web designers are scrambling to get on their good side. The one main goal of a web designer is to get his site on the top pages for search results. How is this achieved? By making one’s site search engine friendly.

Search engines make use of various techniques to index all existing web sites. Based on these various techniques, they assign a page rank to the web site. The higher the page rank, the more chances it will be high up in the search engine results. The higher up the site is in ranking, the more chances that people will visit the site. That means good news for the web site. That is where semantics and HTML come in.

An important aspect of website design is to reduce web page load time to the lowest possible. A slim trim website design is in some ways like an attractive athletic woman, so let us call this article “A website weight loss programme” that will help you make your web pages load much faster.

Why is it so important to reduce website load time?

A website has global reach but Internet connection speeds in various countries are not the same. A lot of dial-ups and slow broadband connections still exist. Recently published research has revealed that unless massive amounts are spent on improving Internet infrastructure, the average global connection speed may show a dip by 2010. Even for those who do have high-speed connections, the total number of relevant websites on the Internet is growing fast. This directly translates into less time spent by the viewer per web page. Generally speaking, patience is a rare commodity in today’s world of reducing resource-to-consumption ratios. Do you want to neglect a large proportion of potential worldwide customers just because your web page load time is slow? If not, then follow the steps below to reduce website load time.

Women usually work on trimming the hips, shaping legs and removing cellulites in various places. Similarly, I have classified below “website weight loss programme” into three ‘broad’ categories: Graphics, Code and Other Factors. Please note that you should meticulously follow as many steps as you can to take the redundant fat out of your website design and reduce “website loading time” to a bare minimum.

Let’s begin with the benefits of a tableless layout. These are only in the order that I feel they should go in, some things are more important to other people, so rank them as you will.

Forces You To Write Well-Formed Code

You cannot have a properly made tableless layout, and use improper and non-standard code. Well, let me correct that – you can (technically you can do it) but it defeats the whole purpose. When you are creating a tableless design, you should be using standards compliant code. I think that anything that makes you get into the habit of always writing clean code is a good thing.

Faster Loading Time

The term web design simply refers to fine art of designing websites that are available on the World Wide Web and are used consistently by individuals. Web designing is a very significant part of developing a website as they are responsible for providing color to the external appearance of the website and therefore are vital in providing a lasting impression upon the user thus enhancing the popularity of the site. There are various factors and methods that need to be borne in mind when it comes to designing a website. Websites are filled with written content as well as images and they need to conform to certain forms like JPEG, PNG, GIF and HTML, XHTML etc for written content. One of the methods of website designing is known as tableless web design.

Tableless web design refers to the way in which a web page is conceived without the usage of HTML tables in order to regulate page layout controls. While it is true that the usage of HTML tables are abandoned in such cases, it has been replaced by the usage of other style sheet languages like for example, CSS or Cascading Style Sheets which are instrumental in aiding the composition of a web page. The CSS was a significant innovation which was introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3C in order to make the HTML codes semantic and at the same time to improve the quality of web accessibility.

The usage if the tableless web design has various advantageous features. In case of efficient implementation of tableless web designs, it has been noticed that HTML tags can be reduced and this in its turn can also aid in lowering the page download times. It is interesting to note that in case of the use of HTML formats, it is quite difficult to alter the table and page layout. Unlike so in case of the usage of CSS, all the necessary information is compiled together in a centralized manner and as a result any kind of change can be initiated without any difficulty on a global range. Moreover, since in such cases all the data are saved external to the HTML, it is easier to add further tableless design forms without much difficulty. The most important function of tableless web designs is the fact that it greatly facilitates the improvement of web accessibility. However they face a bit of difficulty as browser support is minimal.

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To start, let’s take a look at what CSS is and why it’s so important to modern web design. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and was introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium in late 1996 with the aim to separate web page content (written copy, images, multimedia, etc.) from presentation (fonts, colors, layout, page structure, etc.). Another chief goal of CSS is to improve and enhance web accessibility. Previous to the introduction of CSS, a web page’s HTML markup defined both content and presentation.

Tables used to be the “in” thing when it came to designing web sites. As with many other things though, new techniques and methods standards are bound to emerge with time. When once tables were seen in most web pages, some experts now suggest that tables should be thrown out of the window.

In simple words, tableless web design is basically a method whereby page layout control is achieved without the use of HTML tables. Instead, text and other elements on a page are arranged using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This language is the brainchild of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). It was designed in such a way as to improve web accessibility as well as to make use of HTML for semantic purposes rather than presentational purposes.

One thing that has been making the headlines in the past year or so is the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. With search engines such as Google and Yahoo making big waves in the information sector, web designers are scrambling to get on their good side. The one main goal of a web designer is to get his site on the top pages for search results. How is this achieved? By making one’s site search engine friendly.

Search engines make use of various techniques to index all existing web sites. Based on these various techniques, they assign a page rank to the web site. The higher the page rank, the more chances it will be high up in the search engine results. The higher up the site is in ranking, the more chances that people will visit the site. That means good news for the web site. That is where semantics and HTML come in.

HTML was originally designed as a semantic markup language intended for sharing scientific documents and research papers online. However, as the Internet expanded from the academic and research world into the mainstream in the mid 1990s, and became more media oriented, graphic designers sought ways to control the visual appearance of the Web pages presented to end users. To this end, tables and spacers have been used to create and maintain page layout.

Problems then started to arise from the use of these techniques. As many webpages are build with tables nested within tables, this resulted in large HTML documents which use more bandwidth than documents with simpler formatting. With slower performance, the internet slowly begun to decline and the Web development industry shrank. Because of this, several UI development was carried out by coders with greater knowledge of good coding practice. It was around this time that many became critical of messy coding practices and the idea of tableless design began to grow.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were developed to improve the separation between design and content, and move back towards a semantic organization of content on the Web. According to popular Web design outsourcing Philippiness companies, the term “tableless design” implies the use of CSS to position HTML elements on the page but it should be noted that tables and CSS are not mutually exclusive. Many experienced HTML coders use CSS to manipulate tables frequently.

Advantages
There are several advantages through the use of tableless websites, these includes:

Let’s begin with the benefits of a tableless layout. These are only in the order that I feel they should go in, some things are more important to other people, so rank them as you will.

Forces You To Write Well-Formed Code

You cannot have a properly made tableless layout, and use improper and non-standard code. Well, let me correct that – you can (technically you can do it) but it defeats the whole purpose. When you are creating a tableless design, you should be using standards compliant code. I think that anything that makes you get into the habit of always writing clean code is a good thing.

Faster Loading Time

Since I made the switch 6 months ago to a tableless design on my main site, I’ve noticed some interesting things:

* My search engine rankings have dramatically improved

* My bandwidth usage has dropped about 50-75%

* I can now make changes to the look and feel of my site easily by just changing the one file, the style sheet.