Using CSS Instead of HTML Tables

Times have changed on the internet and back when you thought coding couldn’t be made any easier for you to style your websites you were mistaken. CSS has taken the basic HTML coding to the next level and again when you thought your coding couldn’t look any neater, you were wrong. CSS doesn’t need the likes of HTML tables and what a fantastic advantage CSS is and I’ll explain why.

In the old days of HTML coding, website designers would have to use the HTML tables tags which resulted in the coding looking untidy. Not only that, without the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) coders would be coding for a lot longer which resulted in a lot of time was wasted. This all changed when CSS was introduced and don’t get me wrong, a lot of cross browser problems still occur but it’s such a great transformation to the website design industry all this is worth it.

Cross browser problems do occur a lot more often with the use of CSS because some browsers compile the CSS functions differently and cause the website to be displayed differently between most common browsers such as IE7 and FF. There are many myths and different information on the internet which discusses cross browser compatibility and how coders should only code for the latest browers which are the likes of IE8, FF, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari etc. None of this information is true and if you do only code for the latest browsers, a huge percentage of internet viewers still use Internet Explorer 6 so you’re not catering for a huge amount of internet users who can’t view the sites you code properly.

There are many hacks and different CSS functions you can use to cater for the whole internet browsing industry and all you need to do is learn to code for one browser such as FF (as recommended by professionals, given that IE7 doesn’t compile the codes correctly) then once you’ve mastered to code for one browser you can make the specific changes so your site is viewable in all browsers and on all systems.