What's So Cool About Tableless CSS?

it may be a bit difficult to understand it in initial stages but once you grab it its real fun; pages hacve lesser code and they load quickly

 

the biggest problem with CSS are the growing pains if you already have an existing site, but here are the advantages to CSS that I have personally found useful:

1) It loads faster. if you use a stylesheet, the stylesheet is cached, and every new page only needs to load the text rather than the layout information.

2) Easier to implement AJAX with. Yes, after recently getting to grips with AJAX i can safely say CSS is a life-saver

3) Rollovers, ability to hide/show divs (with javascript), and so many more tricks... all thanks to CSS.

4) Grid-Layouts (ie. 3x3 grids of images in a gallery)... a million times easier to do in CSS.

I would never consider going back to tables simply for the speed advantages, however the more I use it the more I wonder how much I was going wrong with tables.

tables weren't designed for nice looking websites (like somebody said), they were used by people to share information in the most basic fashion. CSS was designed for the latest generation web designers.

 

i seriously did try the CSS .. updating old layout and after all the headaches I said that I would only do so when creating a new site and have the time to bother with getting the tinkering right

so far I don't have the time so tables it shall remain

 

Takes time to learn but then you start to see how simple it is and how much less code you can use. Also makes it much easier if you decide to go for a redesign, you only have to modify or replace the style sheet.

 

Great stuff...just what I am looking for! Rep recieved.

On a side note: I am a little confused about implementing such a menu.

I am using Dreamweaver template files and probably php page extension.

I want to use a php include file to include the navigation across the website pages.

The problem with making dreamweaver rollover buttons is that somehow they are hard to use in include files, so I have to change the navigation in the .dwt template file.

If anyone can help me to implement this, I have some budget to spend (maybe $25-30).

I want to be able to present a number of color schemes to my supervisor.

Send me a PM if you are sure you can do it...otherwise I will post on RAC

 

CSS loads faster than TABLE.

 

lol. I keep hearing that argument but I am not too convinced that that is a very good reason to use CSS.

I mean, really, how long does a table take to load? If you just draw a table and add some text it is like 2kb (maybe even less)

 

If you have a big webpage, you will see the difference.

 

I like Listamatic2

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm

There's a bunch of menus to work with and tutorials

 

I used to have tables in my site and recently I hvae changed them to css. I took me some time to convert but It's much time saver afterwards specially with centralized css. now I can change the whole site look and feel in minutes

 

There are so many advantage to CSS that it's hard to know when to start.

The 2 main reasons are:

1) saves coding work and downloading time. Less code to read by users and search engine robots. Much less.

2) puts all your code in ONE file where you can make changes merely by changing a few lines or even words, and see results all across your site FAST.

One problem though:

A) it takes a few days of work to get used to CSS coding.

Hope that helps!

 

I thought the same thing a while back. Tables just seem so straight forward, and your CSS never works in all browsers...

But trust me, and the rest of us, it's well worth your time. Code is shortened extensively. I love it now, just takes some getting used to

 

always try and use tableless... otherwise you'll be stuck in the 20th century

 

Tables take longer to load and are made up of much messier code. CSS makes the coding neater, makes the layout more browser-friendly and it's so much easier all over. Seriously, I could never 'get' tables properly so I tried out tableless css layouts and man it's so much easier.

By the way, tutorialtastic.co.uk/category/2 helped me a lot, hopefully it will help someone here.

 

If your going to include it in all your pages then just put the <div> and all it's contents there. Works very well, thats how it's done on one of my sites.

If you want help, PM me and i'll see what I can do.