Although CSS layouts have been around for years, they haven’t become so commonplace until recently. This was basically due to limited browser support (especially from Netscape 4) – nowadays though, CSS 2.0 (which introduced positioning) is compatible with over 99% of browsers out there (check out the browser stats over at The Counter5).

So, why should you convert your website from its current table-based layout to a CSS layout? It’ll make you money. Simple really. And here’s four reasons to explain why:

Reduced bandwidth costs
Web pages using CSS for layout tend to have much smaller file sizes than those using tabular layouts. It’s not unusual to see reductions of 50% or more in file size when switching from tables to CSS. Smaller file sizes obviously mean reduced bandwidth costs, which for high traffic sites can mean enormous savings.

The main reason for this dramatic decrease in file size is that presentation information is placed in the external CSS document, called up once when the homepage loads up and then cached (stored) on to the user’s computer. Table layouts on the other hand, place all presentation information inside each HTML, which is then called up and downloaded for every page on the site.

Additionally, CSS can be used to replace JavaScript image rollovers, again allowing a large reduction in overall page size. See the article, CSS navigation menu6 for more on this.

A higher search engine ranking
A CSS-based website will appear higher in the search engine rankings for three reasons:

The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines
Important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document
There is a greater density of content compared to coding
A higher search engine ranking means more site visitors, which, provided your website is usable, should lead to an increase in enquiries or sales.

Faster download speed
A faster download speed will make you money? Well, yes. Slow download speed is often cited as one of the biggest usability complaints for websites. A faster download speed therefore leads to increased usability, and a web usability redesign can increase the sales/conversion rate by 100% (source: Jakob Nielsen15).

CSS downloads faster than tables because:

Browsers read through tables twice before displaying their contents, once to work out their structure and once to determine their content
Tables appear on the screen all in one go – no part of the table will appear until the entire table is downloaded and rendered
Tables encourage the use of spacer images to aid with positioning
CSS generally requires less code than cumbersome tables
All code to do with the layout can be placed in an external CSS document, which will be called up just once and then cached (stored) on the user’s computer; table layout, stored in each HTML document, must be loaded up each time a new page downloads
With CSS you can control the order items download on to the screen – make the content appear before slow-loading images and your site users will definitely appreciate it
Increase in reach
The more people you can reach, the more visitors you’ll get to your site and the more enquiries or sales you should get. A CSS-based website is compatible with PDAs, mobile phones, in-car browsers and WebTV. Don’t underestimate the importance of this: In 2008 alone an estimated 58 million PDAs will be sold (source: eTForecast16) and one third of the world’s population will own a wireless device.

You can make an additional CSS document specifically for handheld devices, which will be called up in place of the regular CSS document, thereby ensuring your website is accessible to this lucrative market. This isn’t possible with a tabular layout.

Conclusion: Switch to CSS!
Switching your website from a table layout to a CSS layout can be a long, arduous process, especially for large websites. Given the money making possibilities though, it could very well prove to be well worth it.

This article was written by Trenton Moss. Trenton’s crazy about web usability and accessibility – so crazy that he founded Webcredible, an industry-leading user experience consultancy17, helping to make the Internet a better place for everyone. He’s very good at running CSS training13 and spends much of his time working on the world’s most accessible CMS18.

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Web Designing Mumbai

RMS has been installed all over the world in more than 20.000 sites, and has been renowned in an e-commerce development environment as an economical, flexible, sound, and powerful solution

The intent of web design is to create a web site (a collection of electronic files residing on one or more web servers) that presents content (including interactive features or interfaces) to the end user in the form of web pages once requested. Such elements as text, forms, and bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs) can be placed on the page using HTML, XHTML, or XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) usually requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web pages by using HTML or XHTML tags.

Improvements in the various browsers’ compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance of XHTML and XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements. The latest standards and proposals aim at leading to the various browsers’ ability to deliver a wide variety of media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins.

Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic.

• Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a human (web master or programmer) manually updates the page.

• Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on the end-user’s input or interaction or changes in the computing environment (user, time, database modifications, etc.) Content can be changed on the client side (end-user’s computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript, JScript, Actionscript, media players and PDF reader plug-ins, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (PHP, ASP, Perl, Coldfusion, JSP, Python, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex applications.

With growing specialization within communication design and information technology fields, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services

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