Fixed layout: It has fixed width of container like 1170px (bootstrap), 960px etc. Proving that the css layout loads 10ms faster (20ms when I just ran the test on your site) doesn’t exactly endorse using tables instead? Appreciate it and I think this post being more recent is the more relevant one. These properties can be used only after position property is … Do a search for css vs tables or similar and you can find a lot out there. Each layout technique provides some pros and cons. It’s true that less code means less potential for show stopping errors, but those show stoppers can exist regardless of your site’s structure. I will need to learn more about how to use cssdiv to do a page layout. The load time though, is now reason enough to recommend css over tables for seo. I don’t understand why it would be easier to update content using CSS more so than tables. Items misaligned, trouble getting the position of floated elements, absurd hacks, you name it. The more professional sites are *usually* built using div/css scripting and now table cells as most sites require absolute positioned content which most sites are not using. 3. However, laying out an entire web page in css is what I want to learn (using divs) and I can’t seem to find an online tutorial specifically for that. We have many options to build layout and position our elements. it could also be your own code or more likely that your code and my code aren’t working well other. So I’ll be more explicit. As far as other people having the same issues with css, I do agree that happens. I’m amazed this conversation still exists yet it seems every few weeks I see another post proclaiming we should all go back to using tables for site layout. I typed along with all the code samples and it helped me a lot. Then I had to make changes to one site and thought there had to be a better way. A list? In fact your reply only makes it clear you don’t know to build sites using divs and css. The problem is people looked at divs and just mimicked what you could do with a table cell. They’re quicker to load which I mentioned above. Without a doubt, positioning, or the layout, is the hardest part of CSS. Having done programming I understand reusability of code and the ease of making changes in one place for large websites, but this is little good with small sites. Your tutorials are really only half-done and stop at the parts where css begins breaks down. The spiders are highly efficient at discerning code from content. Using floats/clears and the `position` attribute to control layout. You can position divs into nearly every situation a table can be positioned into, whereas there's a lot of positioning you can do with divs that you can't do with tables. Learning to layout an entire site with divs and css is the hardest part, but I promise it’ll be worth it. And server space/bandwidth doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore either. It’s more about making sure your code for structuring the page and your code for styling that structure aren’t woven too tightly together. I wrote a 2 part tutorial on turning design image into a css layout for another site. Items are placed inside the cells defined by the grid. It’s only when you don’t specify the value that browsers might use different defaults. It’s really about 5 -10 minutes work to set up. I’m amazed people still argue in favor of table-based layout. I don’t offer any advantage per se, on tables over divs. Search engines are interested in your content, not your code. I think grids are great, but I don’t think you should create them using html tables for the reasons I mentioned in this post. If you were to point one out to me I’d either fix it or explain why it might not be working for you and probably even help you make it work. I agree with using divs and css to display content for what I think is a pretty simple reason – if I want to change the look of my site I can write a new style sheet using the same div IDs and the site is suddenly completely different. If you want your page to behave like a table or part of it, use a table. CSS (divs) requires too many hacks to work cross browser – Entirely false. 1. Once a positioning scheme has been determined, it can be further modified by specific layout modes, such as display: table or display: inline-table. I believe many developers only read “do not use tables”, missing the later half of the sentence “for layouts”. This post is framed the way it is, because it’s a reaction to posts framing the topic as html tables are better than css. Another new feature will display block-level elements as tables with the help of CSS. I agree that there will always be some people that cling on to tables, but I don’t think we will have to suffer too much for much longer. Tables will get you on the air with display compatibility quickly and with confidence. (10-20 is most common.) How does it suggest we should use tables? From what I can see most people who argue against css simply haven’t taken the time to learn to master it. This series of articles will thrive to explain the possibilities you have in positioning. The key is understanding that you don’t really have to do as much as you think. These must all be on the same horizontal line to work, and if one has a word or two text change, only that column will “flow” properly, and I have to do lots of editing of the other columns. When you create a table structure in html it displays a table and your content is wholly dependent on the source order of the code. This argument usually includes the time taken to learn to use divs, which isn’t a fair comparison. Even a new convention of double colons :: is also added. It's used on block elements i.e. I think not. I look forward to the day when a page renders the same way in all browsers for specific CSS statements. Years ago it moved away from tables and towards divs and css for layout. We’ll stop here as there could be a separate article on Flexbox altogether. It can be used to fix an element somewhere on the page, give a relative or an absolute position, or no special position at all. Just change the template file. But sometimes it's quite hard to navigate and pick correct approach. Nice article. It’s a great way to learn. If you need to create a modern site that supports an older browser, CSS imposes huge costs. 4. It takes some practice, but it’s really much easier than you might think. but i do straight apps, nothing pretty.. data-driven stuff…. I’ve been doing web design since the beginning of the internet as a hobby and now professionally and I like a combination of both worlds. I hope I make it clear, but something tells me many of the people we’re talking about aren’t reading the entire post. CSS doesn’t restrict anything. I do think css is the better option, but feel free to develop sites any way you want. Thanks Craig. It might be a few days before I can get to it, but I will take a look. more flexible – since one div is not dependent on the other divs on the page it allows for more freedom in your design, quicker to load – blocks of code can be presented right away instead of the browser requiring an extra pass. Of course that depends on the developer more than the code itself. display: flex vs. display: inline-flex). Like others have pointed out, fixing display bugs related to just about any css based layout often takes entire release cycles, just to get ruined even more by some other dopy designer. As networks improve the speed advantage becomes less meaningful and for a small site it’s not going to be a big deal either. If I ever learn CSS completely, I’ll use it more often as you can’t fight progress but I’ll never discount tables from the equation. There are SOME layouts that to use entirely CSS requires an inordinate amount of extremely messy code to represent. Like I said the debate the won’t die. What it really means is “relative to itself”. I also kept all my university textbooks “just in case” I would need them… guess what? John if you’re having to adjust margins and paddings and height and width because you’re updating text you’ve done something wrong when setting up the code. Kind of ironic. They aren’t called floating blockists. Key Difference: The Table tag was initially made to add and control tables in a website. The problems I run into are on updates: adding a few lines here, and changing the text there. The comics are great. We’ll first discuss the fundamentals of Positioning, Floats, Flexbox, and Grids so that we’re on the same page, and after that the best practices to choose between them or a combination of them according to your requirement. Just because you didn’t get it working on your site, don’t blame css as though you can’t build a site that works across browsers. The developer must know CSS and understand the difference between block-level elements and inline elements, when to use floats and when to use absolute positioning and how to solve browser bugs. The one that continues using tables is because it does not dominate or does not know CSS. I agree that CSS is much better in theory, but as long as people use IE and Microsoft refuses to be standards compliant, I don’t think CSS for structure is the greatest idea. Did you read the post? If the human eye can’t tell any difference, then what’s the point? I’m surprised this debate continues, though admittedly I’m continuing it right now after the question was raised on my small business forum. You either learn code or you use a 1990’s style basic editor where you can assemble a site in minutes with tables that will adjust to a any modern display or device. And then discover that I forgot a somewhere and nothing lines up with the adjacent cells. With that in mind I prefer divs. If they want to tweak something in the design, again, piece of cake to do. I hope this will show some good ways to the others. Once you specifically set the bottom padding of a paragraph to say 20px, all browsers will give paragraphs a 20px bottom padding. I’ve worked with both, though certainly more with css sites. I came to web design by way of VB. Tables are simply not faster to create. To each their own in regards to tables. This is simply not a point I am willing to debate. My point is that there are other ways to achieve this benefit. No one is saying that a div can do more than a table. The industry is now moving again toward a responsive design workflow. What I’m trying to figure out is the benefits in using CSS for LAYOUT. Using css to layout a site is the most difficult part, but it does come together with a little practice. Both my table and div layouts use css equally. True. I find that unfortunate, as someone who caught the tail end of the “table era” I find it much more difficult to maintain a website which uses tables (because of my own lack of experience with tables I suppose) than to administer a website which uses a CSS layout. LOL, I’m not advocating tables b/c they are infintesimally slower then divs. The CSS float property allows a developer to incorporate table-like columns in an HTML layout without the use of tables. Why css layout over table layout? ... you have seen differences between absolutely and relatively positioned elements. Maybe you want to move the sidebar from the left to the right of the content. That’s not the case. It wasn’t my intention. 2. Let me start by letting you know I fall on the css side of things. Much of the time I don’t have to write anything specific for IE. Laying information out this way is simply more intuitive than floating divs, not from a web standards perspective, but from a “kid puts shapes in the holes” perspective. the ability to do this is what switched me from using the table-based layouts I was first taught. Web is great! Why does anyone really care how something is put together? The default page direction in CSS is LTR. “Tables should only be used to display tabular data” but what is tabular data is debatable. This would be more about inline css or using html attributes like the font tag vs a separate stylesheet. I’ve done a few and have always used photoshop for layout and then created html tables based on that layout. I really like using CSS for formatting text, lists, positioning, etc. The person usually chose a complicated path to solving the problem when a much simpler path existed. I didn’t create the overall frame to the conversation. I think your comments re flexibility and structure have merit assuming the only tools available are html and css. Once to understand the structure and another time to present it. It certainly lags behind other browsers, but for the most part IE fro version 7 on is css2 compliant. Tables to me make for a more complicated structure that often create even more problems. Divs can work independently from each other. For some reason this is frowned upon as well. Epic fight between table vs flex vs grid vs float! The first efforts have focused on creating two or more columns using CSS positioning instead of tables, thus allowing for a (complete) separation of structure from presentation. This debate has been going on for years. Learning CSS/div coding seems a daunting task because they dont really know the code in the first place. I will use them to learn more about CSS. Tables are still very useful for layout given that most sites are still essentially boxes that never move, but adjust in size as needed. We all came to web design in our own way and with our own skills. The defaults only come into play if you don’t specifically tell the browser what to use. Perhaps it’s a matter of experience, but if you know what you’re doing you never need to use any kind of hack. But clearly there are many people who support using tables. Assuming no major errors I think the search spiders will get through your code fine whether it’s css or tables. Sure you can say they just need to learn more, but sorry, they didn’t. I can’t and won’t tell you that you have to abandon tables. Then, I can see how they styled it in the source code. It offers automation to create a layout, or define automatic placement rules that perform placements inside a given grid. This is the same when using divs. May be my knowledge, however tables work great! My bad on missing the context of your statement. Can you recommend several online tutorials on how to lay out a web page with divs, as well as with their accompanying css rule elements? I find that if I have to spend more than a 5 hours trying to figure out the combination of CSS statements to achieve the result I want on just one page, and I can do it in a table (a VERY SIMPLE table), in less than 15 minutes, then the dream of CSS has not been achieved yet. E.g. One debate I’m honestly curious about is the best way to go about table type content with CSS, such as using the actual table properties, using display: inline, using float: left, etc — where’s that write up? Sure you can move stuff around easier with divs “just in case” you need to in the future, but nobody ever does. This is no small drawback!! The posts aren’t just about the code, but I do provide the basic html and css I use now for a 3 column layout. which is all fine and helpful. Is there a way I can pay someone to turn this same homepage design into a total CSS design? HTML and CSS are the core web scripting languages, the primary use of which is to create web pages and web application. I do understand your point. I could create tables just as fast as anyone with css, if you’re not using some noob program like dream weaver. Developers need to realize that it’s okay to use tables when you have to display data and you need to use divs when you have to create layouts. If it were not for the CSS float property, CSS layouts would not be possible except using absolute and relative positioning — which would be messy and would make the layout unmaintainable. I thought the debate was or should have been dead a few years ago. Then I format the text in CSS adding padding and margins where needed. 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