CSS – Why Use Modern Design Techniques?

And for those who do not understand the reason why standards are important, this is a very good question. The great part is that the article below does such a great job at breaking it all down into easy to understand tidbits for everyone’s benefit.

This article aims to demonstrate the advantages in learning modern web design techniques, focusing on CSS. We’ll learn what CSS is, explore the business factors in building websites in a modern way and find out how much easier and beneficial it is to design using CSS. What this article isn’t is a guide on how to make websites with CSS.

So what is CSS?

CSS (Cascading style sheets) in very basic terms is a way to style elements of your website. It is purely a presentation tool.

Despite many threads in forums and amateur articles, it is not a replacement for table-based design. Actually, CSS can be used to enhance table-based designs. But CSS comes into its own when combined with div-based design. We’ll go into this later…

Business drivers for using CSS

CSS and div-based sites produce cleaner code. No table rows and columns in the code. So what does this cleaner code mean?

Well, firstly it means that search engine spiders see a higher ratio of useful content compared to table designs. This leads to higher rankings in search engines in most cases. The search engine can also ‘see’ the page more clearly. It will not have as much trouble finding links on your pages as there is less ‘coding rubbish’ to contend with. Essentially, a modern site will be friendlier and accessible to a search engine.

Secondly, cleaner code often means smaller file sizes. Shaving off a few kilobytes from your web pages may seem like no real advantage to you, but imagine your site has a high amount of traffic. You may save massive amounts of bandwidth over time thus saving you money on hosting. Another upside of smaller files is that the user won’t spend as long downloading your pages and ultimately be happier when browsing your site. So your site is more efficient.

Another point to take onboard is that modern sites are actually quicker to build. Once the basic CSS techniques are understood, there is no reason why it should take longer than a site built with tables. The cost saved on development time could be huge on a larger site…. Source: site-reference.com

[tags]search engine,css,modern web design[/tags]