Why tables are bad for layout

1. Why tables are bad for layout By Mohamed Swelam & Matt Moore

2. Tables are bad for layout • Layout tables are inflexible and less controllable than CSS based html. • They indicates a minor knowledge of modern web technologies. • Page load speed • Tables don’t always print well • Harms Search Engine Optimization http://www.goodwebsiteinspector.com

3. Layout tables are inflexible • Layout tables are inflexible and less controllable than CSS based html. • As time goes on you will most likely forget why you nested a table in a certain way (and other people will have no idea why you did in the first place). http://www.goodwebsiteinspector.com

4. They indicates a minor knowledge of modern web technologies. • Potential employers may want to see your proficiency in using CSS to design layout instead of using tables. http://www.goodwebsiteinspector.com

5. Page load speed • Tables are very slow to render, especially nested tables. http://aspektas.com/blog/three-simple-reasons-why-tables-for-layout-are-bad/

6. Tables don’t always print well • Many table designs don't print well because they are simply too wide for the printer; to make them fit, browsers will cut the tables off and print sections below resulting in very disjointed pages. http://webdesign.about.com/od/layout/a/aa111102a.htm

7. Harms Search Engine Optimization • Causes search engines that are searching for data by scanning table tags on sites to slow down. • “From 0.3 billion web documents, we extract 1.95 billion raw html tables. Many of them do not contain useful or relational information (e.g., be used for page layout purpose);” http://webdesign.about.com/od/layout/a/aa111102a.htm http://cs.sjtu.edu.cn/~kzhu/papers/webtables.pdf

8. Examples for web sites with tables layout http://www.Frys.com http://www.computersonics.com/ http://www.thewebseye.com/using-tables.htm