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5 Reasons Tables for Layouts are BAD!. 1. Complicated & Difficult to maintain 2. Often slow to load 3. Tables can hurt search engine optimization 4. Tables don’t always print well 5. CSS redesigns are more efficient. Reason 1 . Fact: Tables are Complicated & Difficult to maintain
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5 Reasons Tables for Layouts are BAD! 1. Complicated & Difficult to maintain 2. Often slow to load 3. Tables can hurt search engine optimization 4. Tables don’t always print well 5. CSS redesigns are more efficient
Reason 1 Fact: Tables are Complicated & Difficult to maintain If it is not data that could be managed on a spreadsheet, images or graphs will be difficult to upkeep. Resource webdesign.about.com/od/layout/a/aa1111oza.htm
Table used for graph will be difficult to maintain. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/graphs/29.htm
Reason 2 Fact: Tables are often slow to load Resourcehttp://www.alaskanchefshawn.com/Pix.htm
http://www.alaskanchefshawn.com/Pix.htm Here, a screenshot of a of a site using tables to load images is taken before the images loaded.
Reason 3 Fact: Tables can hurt search engine optimization Data inside of tables can be considered less important than data of other sites. Reference http://webdesign.about.com/od/layout/a/aa1111oza.htm http://www.seobythesea.com/2008/08/search-engines-extracting-table-data-on-the-web/
Information in tables will not be given priority by search engine spiders. http://www.lib.purdue.edu/rguides/studentinstruction/evaluation/websiteevaluationchart.html
Reason 4 Fact: Tables don’t always print well Tables can be too wide to print, to make tables print, browsers will cut tables off and print sections below. Reference http://webdesign.about.com/od/layout/a/aa1111oza.htm
Reason 5 Fact: CSS redesigns are more efficient Redesigning a website using tables is significantly slower than redesigning a website using CSS. Reference http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/ http://www.chromaticsites.com/blog/13-reasons-why-css-is-superior-to-tables-in-website-design/
Example http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/03/24/align-images-html-tables-for-wordpress-blogs/
One of NY Times worst rated sites http://pol.illinoisstate.edu/jpda/charts/bad_charts1.htm#NYTimes
Summary • There are better ways to layout images than tables, for example, CSS. • CSS layouts for images will load faster. • Less priority is given to data if it is inside a table. • User experience may be poor if they find it difficult to print your information as it appears on page. • When using external CSS style sheets, it is much easier to maintain visual consistency throughout a website.