There’s an on-going battle between Web Designers about the use of Tables in web layouts. Those who Staunchly Defend the use of tables refer to browser compatibility (most noteably Non-Compliant Internet Explorer) and faster design time. Those who have NOT dug their heels in and Staunchly Defended Table-based layouts, correctly claim that using tables for layouts doesn’t adhere to Web Standards and Web Accessibility.

In order to better understand how this controversy got started, we need to look at the history of HTML and layouts.

Tables were never intended by the creators of HTML to control the visual style of a web page. They were only meant to display data with columns and rows. There wasn’t a mechanism in place to address the problem of how to create more advanced layouts, so some ingenious web designers discovered that they could use tables to implement the Table’s Rows and Cells to add Content, Graphics and other web elements.

Since that time, web designers have been regularly HACKING (misusing) the HTML language, mainly out of necessity. However, in the late 90’s, the W3C introduced Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS enabled the ability to apply styles to HTML documents. As browsers quickly started to integrate CSS support, web designers started to use it to apply simple styles to their HTML, like font type and color, and background colors and images. However, the use of CSS for layouts (in particular, columns) didn’t gain any worthwhile acceptance until much later.

There’s been a steady push forward to purify how websites are coded, in the last few years. In an effort to create Web Standards that offer a logical approach, and provide Web Accessibility for text-readers, bots, mobile devices, and printers, etc. a new standard was created. That standard revolves around the proper use of (X)HTML and CSS. (X)HTML should be coded in a way that offers a logical clean structure for content, while CSS should be used to create a unique visual layout and design, thus doing away with bloated and redundant coding.

There are Good reasons why web designers should stop using tables for layouts, and switch to using CSS for controlling (X)HTML layouts.

• It adheres to current W3C web standards
• All modern browsers support CSS for controlling layouts (although Internet Explorer sometimes requires some CSS hacks)
• If coded well, CSS makes it easy to apply global changes to the layout
• Proper implementation of content into (X)HTML documents, with the use of CSS solely for style and layout, helps create an accessible website for people with certain disabilities.
• Web pages often have less code, and are much thinner when (X)HTML and CSS are used

Those who Staunchly Defend their continued implementation of using tables today stems from bad habits, and complacency. What is often said is that using tables is easier, and that browsers don’t support CSS. It can certainly be easier in some cases, but browsers do support CSS. Internet Explorer can be frustrating to design for, because it doesn’t adhere to Web Standards very well, but there are many fixes and workarounds that will enable CSS based layouts to render correctly.

If there was ever a time to start designing table-less layouts, it’s now.

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Claire Poulton

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