CSS based FTW

That’s right, cascading style sheets based sites for the win! A few months ago we here at Solid Cactus cooked up the following list of why CSS based sites are awesome.

1. The use of CSS has been preferred by many developers who follow the W3 standards. HTML should be for content ONLY, styling should be controlled by CSS.

2. CSS allows the programming to be semantically meaningful. This makes development easier and lends to added functionality in products such as Screen Readers.

3. It also reduces the chance of error in programming because the old method of Table based programming would introduce nested Tables that were easily mismatched.

4. CSS is better than Tables as some browsers will not render all of the Table content until everything loads. CSS allows for incremental loading which offers viewers content immediately.

5. By using CSS layout SEO keyword rich content can appear before the code for the left nav, instead of after.

6. Having all of the “structure” of a website (via CSS) in one document means that less code is rendered each time a new page loads. Table layouts embed the structure code on each page every time. CSS just loads the code once and “caches” it (assuming the file is external) for use on any other page that needs it.

7. CSS improves rapid cosmetic site updates since the content and styling/structure are separate.

8. Industry leading books on website optimization continually focus on CSS, while Table based “optimizations” are virtually nonexistent.

9. CSS layouts leave the code (both RTML and HTML) easier to read and also debug.

10. Yahoo! as well as Yahoo Store uses CSS based layouts as their default structure language.

That’s not to mean that table based sites are absolutely terrible or (if you will indulge me in some internet-vernacular-parlance) “are teh suck”. Your site, if table based, has not burst into flames (…yet), and people don’t necessarily flee from it in droves after the first glance. In fact, sometimes it is impossible to tell the difference without looking at the code. So why all the hype?
Let’s go into a little more detail about number 7 above. The advantage of tables back in the day was that they were strong, it was hard to break your site if it was table based. Granted, things could look a little (very) boxy, but they more or less stayed in a straight line. Using Divs, on the other hand, allows for a lot more flexibility, although there is a small trade-off in terms of how difficult it is to break the layout. (Technically, it “bends” more than breaks.) The way I think about it is this: imagine that a table based site is like wearing a suite of armor, whereas a css-based site is like wearing a wetsuit.
Now if you were to tell me that tomorrow morning I was going to be pelted with rocks, I’d be all about the suit of armor over the wetsuit. But, if you were to tell me that I was only going to have only one change of clothes for the next 2 years, all of a sudden the wetsuit seems much more appealing. The fact that it is flexible is appealing; it allows for movement and grace. The same is true for your site. Your site is not likely going to be subjected to content that will threaten to break it, and if you try to put some in that does, you can always just remove it! But the look and feel, and general flow of your site? That is something you have to live with for awhile, so why not make it as flexible as possible? So, if your armor is showing a little rust, give us a call. We can definitely fit you with something a little more comfortable.