Table-based vs. CSS Standards-based Layout

This website is layed out using CSS.

If you're ever presented with the question "do you want your website laid out with tables or with CSS?" this article will show you the pros and cons of each. CSS stands for "cascading style sheet" and is a method used to separate the content of your website from the visual design of your website.

Using tables to lay out websites is a practice begun near the beginning of the web itself. And while CSS has been around for several years, it's only very recently that browser support for it has been good enough to use it exclusively over tables for layout purposes. CSS design is the wave of the future. Table-based design is the wave of the past. What's the wave of the present? Unfortunately, it's not so clear, although CSS layout is clearly gaining momentum.

Pro

Sites designed with CSS:

will look good in all modern (post 2002) and yet-to-be browsers.
can often rank better in search engines than the same site made with tables.
web pages can often load a little faster than similar table-based pages.
will often display perfectly fine in PDAs, cell phones, and screen readers for the blind without any additional development costs.
are standards-based so they are the "official" way to design web pages.

Sites designed with tables:

will look "pixel-perfect" in all present and old browsers no matter how complicated the design.

Con

Sites designed with tables:

are on their way out. Within several years, table-based designs will start to break in yet-to-be browsers.
are more expensive to maintain, especially for large sites.
are a little bit less loved by the search engines.

Sites designed with CSS:

look like plain text with old browsers (version 4 and under of Netscape and Internet Explorer). This one is usually the deal-killer for CSS.
are a little (just very little) more limited than table-based designs as far as how complicated the design can be.

Summary

CSS layout has such great benefits over table-based layout that the only reason, in my opinion, that your site should employ table-based layout is if you know that a large number of your site's audience will be using old browsers (Netscape version 4 springs to mind). And even then, you should still use CSS if only to define the fonts and backgrounds (which is something the version 4 browsers can handle). As of early 2005, less than 1% of the general web using public uses old browsers (in the US).

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