Deft Creative Articles

Using tables for layout in web design

November 5th, 2006

Using tables for layout. This is an old construction technique which was actually a workaround in the very early days of the Internet to create graphical layouts on websites before the technology was there to allow it. These days there are much better ways to construct websites and make them look good.

Web standards should be used instead because there are so many benefits, including:

1. The amount of code needed to build a web page is less, so the page will load quicker, and your hosting bills will be reduced
2. It makes it much easier to make updates to your website, and even a complete overhaul can be achieved in the fraction of the time.
3. Content on the page is cleaner and more organized, so will perform better in the search engines, due to the content to code ratio being much higher (something Google certainly looks at)
4. Pages will print better

Look out for future posts about good design practices like web standards, as well as many more about bad techniques.

Entry Filed under: Web Design Bad Practices