CSS
Harnessing the full power of the new web site development techniques discussed on this site depends on complete integration of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) thoughout the web site.
CSS has become an essential web site component by providing the vehicle to centralize presentational programming and eliminate verbose table-based code.
Tables
Inefficient But Still Widely Used
Unfortunately, table-based presentation is still widely used, especially in "easy web site" solutions such as WYSIWYG editors and pre-built templates.
This "old school" technique burdens your site with the multiple disadvantages discussed here and undermines your site's competitive edge.
Is Your Site CSS Based?
To see if your present site is table based or CSS based,
- Load into your browser window any page of your site that contains paragraphs of text and no tabular columns of data.
- Select the "Source" or "Page Source" option in your browser's drop-down "View" menu. A new window containing the programming code for the page should appear.
- Select "Find" from the "Edit" menu options.
- Search for instances of td
In HTML, the bracketed sequence of "td" stands for "table data." If thoses two letters appear together repeatedly, enclosed in brackets, your site is probably table-based.
Upgrading to professionally developed, CSS based, W3C standards-compliant XHTML programming can improve your search engine rank and yield multiple additional benefits discussed on this site.
Learn more about benefits of CSS based presentation in an informative article at the W3C web site, "Buy Web Standards". (external link)
