I tend to use Divs more now as you can style them nicely using css. But does it make a difference SEO wise? whether you use tables or div? aren't tables meant to be pretty bad for SEO?
tables themselves are not bad for SEO. File size is a factor, so by using tables which require more markup, you will ultimately have a large file size. Google doesn't penalize anymore simply for using tables. I still find uses for them, but I do try to use divs where possible.
We've already had a lengthy discussion on this matter. You can read it here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=391129
i think you can show tabular data with css and div tags ! without table ! you can create a page with excel style sheet with css . but you need more coding and more time
yes, you can. And its extremely bad practice. Tables are designed to show tablular data. they define the relationships between columns, headers and footers. That is their purpose. Using CSS to emulate this is a complete waste of time, and as bad a practice as using multiple nested tables to control layout. Its about choosing the right tool for the job.
Absolutally - people are now using Divs in exactly the same bad ways as tables used to be. We had a great demo of a piece of software used by partially sighted people to let you see/ hear how they receive your website and most websites checked were basically unusable because of either being nested tables or masses of divs which the reader cannot tell which order they are supposed to be read in.
Tableless designs are always best... One time when you should use tables is on a forum design for example.. you wouldnt place all the site in divs, and you would probably have bad output trying to put all the tables into divs. Sam
"Tag Soup" - people who used to put a table around everything put unneccessary and unneeded DIV's and classes around everything. It's no improvement at all. I saw a site recently that had, I kid you not: <div id="leftcolumncontainer"> <div id="leftcolumnborder"> <div id="leftcolumnwrapper"> <div id="leftcolumncontent"> <div id="leftcolumnheader"> <div class="header"><font color="red"><b>Navigation</b></font> <font color="red"><b>and</b></font> <font color="red"><b>Links</b></font> </div> <div class="paragraph"><p>Whole bunch of text here</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> For something that was being rendered as a 2px solid border, flat background color on the header with 8px padding, second flat background color on the content with 8px padding. If you don't know what's wrong with that, do the world a favor, back away from the keyboard and go take up knitting. Even putting aside the obvious telltales of a crap WYSIWYG, that's 28 or so tags for something that should only take 6. Oh, but DIV layouts are SO superior... A> they aren't in a lot of circumstances (read what I said in that thread Dan linked to) B> people who made crappy tables now just make crappy divs... bad coding is bad coding regardless of WHAT tags are being used (or abused) It's like the retards who don't get the separation of content from presentation when moving to CSS, and vomit up code like: <div class="right bold italic red n12px"> COMPLETELY missed the point.
You can, but the markup wouldn't be semantic at all. The whole point of semantic markup is to code your HTML so that it defines what the structure of the element is about. For example, if you have a list, use a list. Is that a paragraph? Mark it up as one. Is it a table? Then use a table. By using CSS and DIVs to create a presentational appearance of a table you're taking the meaning of what you are supposed to be structuring in your Web page and running it through an Enron-approved paper shredder. And look where that eventually got Enron (and Arthur Anderson Consulting, among other companies).