Table or Divs or both ?

Yugolancer, sit down, take a deep breath, re-read deathshadows posts, then re-read mine, and admit that you made an honest mistake (it's ok, we all do from time to time - it's one of the many wonderful ways that we learn). It happens. I'll admit, deathshadow can be arrogant at times. But it's usually when he's trying to help someone (some call it hubris) who's learned the wrong way of doing things. It's not their fault that they don't know better. It's also not his fault that he's very passionate about Web standards and development either (I am too, if you can't tell). We just each have our own different ways of expressing them. He's an old-school New Englander - as he says, by their very nature they're NOT a friendly people. Helpful yes, but they are a bit "rough around the edges" if you know what I mean. Me? I'm a Midwesterner. Kinda stuck up as well, especially in my speech, but I try to watch what I say when I'm in public (catch me on IM and you'll think you're talking to deathshadow - I'm NOT kidding).

As for the search engines, he said he's aware of his own standings and situations with them. I'm the one deploying the search engine. It's not a keyword based search engine like Google, but instead a full-text search engine. It's not going to be the next Google and you know what, I don't want it to be. I'm targeting a very specific niche that could really use its own search engine Web site. In fact, it's needed this for over a decade now, and the people I've asked about it said they'd LOVE to have one.

I'm not doing it for the money (WizKids, Inc. would have my head on a platter if I did), I'm doing it as a labor of love. A personal pet project if you will. I'm not writing the rules as I see them just to suit this engine (except to tell site owners to add my search engine spider's name to their robots.txt file and use it to block certain sections of their Web sites, such as their forums). Instead, I'm using accepted conventional wisdom and common sense. A lot of the good rankings will come from the proper use of semantic markup and quality unique content - something people have been saying we should do for a while now.

As I said earlier in this thread, a search engine spider will index the content inside a DIV just as well as it would a table. Using a table does not by any means prevent a spider from finding and indexing the content. If that was the case, there would be no Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, DMOZ (may the latter burn in Hell for its human editorial abuses and other such idiocy) and so on. But yet they're there, and have been for years.

Something I found out when I started my project is that tables used for layout CAN take longer to crawl through to get to the chewy goodness inside (the page content) than the use of DIVs and other semantic markup. It doesn't mean they will, as deathshadow's layout table demonstrates. The fewer lines of text (which is what HTML, CSS and JavaScript code is when you think about it) the spider has to wade through to get to the content, the faster it'll be able to gobble that content up like a pig (as in the farm animal) at a feeding trough.

However, if you use DIVs in the same way that people used to use nested layout tables with inline styling on each table, then it won't matter as the search engine spider will still have to wade through the mess to get to the content. But whatever, it's your bandwidth that's getting wasted at the end of the day. Makes no difference to me whatsoever.

 

Dan Schulz great article keep up the good work

 

It's not an article. It's a post. Huge difference.

 

I agree rep added

 

Dan when you say >> Using a table does not by any means prevent a spider from finding and indexing the content.

is this a reality toward the content and why is this happening.

it seems as though you would be a fool to use tables period" knowing that the engines don't like them" whats your theory on that aspect"

 

this could get ugly"

one everyone

one love

 

The issues with tables have more to do with browser rendering and accessibility than they do with search engines. Especially given how tables were abused for many years (and to make things worse, the same people who abused tables back then are now abusing DIVs in much the same manner today).

 

Dan Schulz you have a point I guess thats why the internet is getting more and more difficult to newbies

 

I guess it also depends on how complex your layout is.

For myself, i would go for both if required as long as it conforms to W3C recommendations.

 

What's making it more difficult is that the good information is hard to find (I intend to change all that) and the fact that a lot of crap is being force-fed down people's throats like a farmer guzzling food down a duck's gullet to make fois gois. With the only exception being that instead of eating an enlarged duck's liver you get a lot of useless knowledge that can actually set you back.

 

Dan do you think RSS & XML has anything to do with this group of crap is being force-fed down people's throats like a farmer guzzling food down a duck's gullet to make fois gois.

I mean really someone is more than responsible for these off line inclusions"
and than adding it to the internet" whats your par take?

 

What does RSS and XML have to do with this discussion about tables and DIVs?

 

everyting your topic was specific to crap is being force-fed down people's throats like a farmer guzzling food down a duck's gullet to make fois gois.

meaning that your implementing the reason everyone is hogging in on the serps" "make sense" thats all

 

no difference seo wise. but i still use both tables and divs.

 

I don't think tables have any negative affect on SEO. What tables can have a negative effect on is if they are used too liberally on large pages. They can, under certain conditions, stop the rendering of a webpage until the entire HTML part of a table has been downloaded under IE6. Don't know about IE7.

I know this drawback is not SEO related but since its unlikely that tables vs divs will effect SEO, should optimising for the user be brought into the table vs divs argument?

 

It is W3C recommendation to use DIV's and positioning for your layout instead of tables. But really, if you want to use tables, go for it. Not like your going to get a slap on the wrist or bad SE results (you will get some extremists to scoff at you and maybe even give you the third reich over it).

If your new to webdesign, and not doing this for a client site, you will probably be better using tables to start the process rather than trying to figure out the CSS nightmare (I only say this because I remember as a beginner how damn hard it was to get IE to render a site the same as Firefox, then browser X didn't look like either Firefox or IE).

Yes, it will break W3C web compliance standards, but for so many years now, using tables in your layout has been the standard for the unprofessional. Don't let this whole Div/CSS/Web 2.0 trend lately turn you to either side, do what you know how to do and take some time to learn to do both.

 

I agree with your intent, but take exception to that one part - a quick visit to the leading websites... Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, MSN, AOL

Do a view source, what do you see?

 

I'm sure the people behind those sites would like to switch, but the corporate culture at those places is probably preventing them from doing so.

Ah, such is life.

 

If you have many tables nested, it can really slow down the page loads...