Is table-less worthless?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by webcentred

The argument regarding CSS is futile - inline styling does no favours (generally) compared to an external CSS files. The only limiting factor here is the size of the CSS file at the initial page view.

Technologies now and in the future may utilise tag semantics, but despite Googles' outward promotion of their semantic web, the general use SERPS don't reflect this. It seems as though this is more of a market signal to achieve their efficiency goals.

Other search features such as images, maps and XML may consider this more important, and while it without doubt the way of the future, the majority of users don't use Google Maps for their primary search functions, and for the time being, neither do the big search engines.

Here is the id of a customers CSS tag used in the HTML of their document - this is a very large multinational company - do a google search and it doesn't show up "_ctl0__ctl2_btnSearch"

If semantics were important for today's SERPS - it would show up.

My very very very personal view, is that the next generation of websites will be XML driven with, XML Schema for validation, XSL(T) transformations and / or CSS for styling, XLink for semantic linking etc.

But that is my very personal view, and quite another story.

Related links:

W3C Technical Reports and Publications

Creating a Science of the Web

To sum up:
Time is money Q.E.D.

[DrTandem1]

AHHH! The original post hit the nail on its proverbial head, "....should i persevere in learning and building the site in this format or would the labour and time spent doing this be better spent somewhere else??!"

Yes, it's a waste of your time. There is little (if any) benefit to tableless design. While one poster is correct in saying that tables were not meant for layout, the original intent of the internet never invisioned what it has become. Before CSS, there wasn't really any other way of making a layout. Also, don't worry about mobile devices. Their browsers are catching up with regards to surfing the internet.

Practice the tabless stuff when you have time. Until browsers refuse to display tables, there really isn't any reason to get worked up about it. I can now hear the parade of accessibilty-mongers approaching. There are ways to allow the visually impaired to use web pages with tables. That's another sunject.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Therefore, table-less rules for every case. PERIOD!

lol

Are you saying that a site will out do another site just because it is table-less?

[Webnauts]

Kjell I never said a word here or elsewhere that the use of tables are bad.
I say though, that the inappropriate use of tables suck.

Tables are for tabular presentation and not for layout.

Just to make things clear here.

[webcentred]

Originally Posted by inertia

Well! For a second there i was even more confused than when i first asked the question!

lol - if you intend to have a website over the longer term - which most do you should consider external CSS. If you want to make your site primarily formatted using CSS then take the time to learn how it is done. It does take some time to learn how to do it though.

There are are a number of cross-browser issues that exist but it is really quite easy to learn how to get around them - there are some hacks to get IE to behave, and this does mean a form of mental shift in terms of design, but eventually you will discover how to overcome crossbrowser issues and fully realise the benefits of CSS design.

Some will say that it will enhance SERP performance, but in my experience it is a myth. When done correctly it will improve accessibility, but if you add ids to many html tags you will achieve this also.

CSS based design will mean that your site will be ready for WAP and other technologies that will emerge.

For this reason, at the very least one should consider CSS for design. I use it and while it pains me to say this - it isn't necessarily for everyone.

For a short term benefit you need to consider whether this time couldn't be better spent generating quality unique content or building quality incoming links.

Over the longer term you will find CSS pays off.

Good Luck which ever direction you take

[E-Platform]

Their are really only a few ways to view this -

1) Tables can be used to build a validated, nice looking site, cross browser compatible, with exceptional SE ranking. This is a fact . . . for now.

2) The use of tables seems to becoming less desireable by the W3C and the SE's - especially in terms of accessibility. You can try to ignore trends but things do move on.

3) CSS, at present, is the way to go if you are a forward thinker. We are migrating this direction. Sure it has some challenges but we have been very pleased with the progress and performance

Change is not always fun and always involves more effort to implement. The end result is better 99% of the time. If you want to make it easier try to utilize a site with more white space and less graphics that touch/overlap. Avoiding these critical alignment situations will alleviate a lot of hassles.

You could redesign your site with tables and have it ranked well and then find yourself down the road in another two years wondering why you didn't use CSS. My suggestion is to take the time to learn it, build it out and upload it. Your existing site sounds like it is okay for now. Take time, enjoy learning and get ready for the next phase in web design.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by E-Platform

2) The use of tables seems to becoming less desireable by the W3C and the SE's - especially in terms of accessibility. You can try to ignore trends but things do move on.

Do you have any proof of this?

Originally Posted by E-Platform

3) CSS, at present, is the way to go if you are a forward thinker.

I guess Google is not a forward thinker?

[E-Platform]

I got challenged on my comment about "CSS being for forward thinkers" with a question towards me not considering Google a forward thinker.

While the question in itself is too ridiculous to warrant a reply I shall do so anyway - of course Google is forward thinking. Do you know everything that Google is thinking???


1) I believe that Google will, over time, show preference to CSS sites. Especially as more are built.
2) Google is the giant but you need to step back and look at W3C standards, etc. Its there for a reason. Denial won't change the direction in which things move.

For those that say they don't see big SERP impact - no one is saying that launching a CSS site is going to skyrocket to the top. CSS alone is not going to override algorithms but in the long run it will be the superior way to create a site. In the meantime carry your bag phone out to the car and call me on my cell phone.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by E-Platform

I got challenged on my comment about "CSS being for forward thinkers" with a question towards me not considering Google a forward thinker.

While the question in itself is too ridiculous to warrant a reply I shall do so anyway - of course Google is forward thinking. Do you know everything that Google is thinking???

They have bought youtube.com and at this moment video seems to be one of the hottest things going on.

Originally Posted by E-Platform

1) I believe that Google will, over time, show preference to CSS sites. Especially as more are built.

At this time they are not a forward thinking company but will become one in the future. Some inside information. Thanks.

Originally Posted by E-Platform

2) Google is the giant but you need to step back and look at W3C standards, etc. Its there for a reason. Denial won't change the direction in which things move.

Now we are into W3C. lol

Are you saying we need W3C to rank well on Google?

Originally Posted by E-Platform

For those that say they don't see big SERP impact - no one is saying that launching a CSS site is going to skyrocket to the top. CSS alone is not going to override algorithms but in the long run it will be the superior way to create a site. In the meantime carry your bag phone out to the car and call me on my cell phone.

I do not have a bag phone, as a matter of fact I have a BlackBerry. You seem to think that because I questioned you I do not use CSS and this is not the case.

My problem was that you were stating things as fact that were incorrect or that you have not tested yourself. So I questioned you on that. There is no reason to get personal my point was that CSS has nothing to do with forward thinking or ranking in Google.

It is a good design tool.

[inertia]

Now...now...we've all had a drink but there's no need for this! lol!

[janeth]

Originally Posted by inertia

Now...now...we've all had a drink but there's no need for this! lol!

I didn't get my drink.

[Dubbya]

Ceee...essss..esss...bargh....

ha-ha.... hooz bin drrrrrinkin??? hargh...cough, sputter...spit.. Yoo wan toolz? I got yer toolz..... har, har... ya bunch uh.. ya bunch uv BUNCHES!! BIG bunches of, er... hah...*snort*

Lemme tell ya sumpm, can I say sumpm?? Ya know what? Hey, ya no wwwhaaattt??? Tee-hee... HEY!! Hey, HAAAYYYUH!! Lissin.... LISSINNN!!

(long pause) CEE-ESS-ESS ROOLZ!! Iss the future an stuff!! Thass what!! An thass all I gotta say about that... *snort*

[bj]

When will ad providers start to deliver well-formed XHTML code? I can not worry so much about valid code on my ad driven sites, since the code I get from providers are malformed. Should I take them to court for destroying my eProperty

Amen, Brother! I finally got the firefox validator extension, and chose the SGML validation that separates out what errors are within MY code (none) from what errors are in the google adsense iframe (a bunch).

And the other snippets from ad providers and blog services are not any better. I love it when I'm troubleshooting a client page that he or she says 'alluva sudden broke' only to find s/he added a snippet of code from one of these providers and it has stuff like tags in caps, badly formed tags missing the ending / before the > and other syntax errors.

[Orion]

Wow... I think maybe I should apologize for lighting the fuse on this here bomb lol.... not the intention...

Fact is every post here has at least a degree of validity.

1. using div over table is there seo benefit?

A. Google has long stated that the order the tags show up in the code has meaning.. an <h1> at the top carries more weight than an <h1> at the bottom. Divs with CSS let you place that at the top in the code yet have it show whereever you like in your design.
B. As google and yahoo have both stated in the last year they will be looking to pay more attention to sites which are accessible. how and when they do this no one knows, when they do you'll need to redesign your site again to keep your position.
C. there is a huge drive towards rss (video / photographs / widgets), and mobile. These technologies bring great profits (at least to everyone I've seen using them) and require table-less layout

Don't confuse table-less layout with not using tables for tabular data!.. CSS does have the ability to line up numbers in columns along the decimal point but it's not easy to do. tables are still valid but you should have summary and caption for them to be correct.

SE's don't care if your code is valid, they prefer it cause it's easier to index, and your site can sometimes get listed faster with valid code (not always depends how bad the unvalid code would be). They have shown that they want to start caring that your code is accessible... meaning that they will care that it is valid eventually.

So if you don't know how to do a table-less design simply and easily that works cross browser, not a bad idea to start learning how to. Along the learning curve don't be afraid to use a table to meet a deadline!

lol...

[bj]

Wow... I think maybe I should apologize for lighting the fuse on this here bomb lol.... not the intention...

Yeah, uh huh. Like this argument never started here before. *smirk*

I am encouraged to see a (very) few of the former holdouts finally bending toward css even if their own sites aren't yet converted.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Orion

Wow... I think maybe I should apologize for lighting the fuse on this here bomb lol.... not the intention...

Fact is every post here has at least a degree of validity.

Did I say something that was not valid? I don't think so.

Originally Posted by Orion

1. using div over table is there seo benefit?

A. Google has long stated that the order the tags show up in the code has meaning.. an <h1> at the top carries more weight than an <h1> at the bottom. Divs with CSS let you place that at the top in the code yet have it show whereever you like in your design.

Can you tell where did Google publish that? Just curious.

Originally Posted by Orion

B. As google and yahoo have both stated in the last year they will be looking to pay more attention to sites which are accessible. how and when they do this no one knows, when they do you'll need to redesign your site again to keep your position.

Can you tell where Google publish that too? Yahoo I already know.

Originally Posted by Orion

C. there is a huge drive towards rss (video / photographs / widgets), and mobile. These technologies bring great profits (at least to everyone I've seen using them) and require table-less layout

Well I already use handheld and aural media stylesheets on my site. Great to hear that it makes sense.

Originally Posted by Orion

Don't confuse table-less layout with not using tables for tabular data!.. CSS does have the ability to line up numbers in columns along the decimal point but it's not easy to do. tables are still valid but you should have summary and caption for them to be correct.

I mentioned above that tables are not for layout, but for displaying tabular data. And I would like to add here that they are important as they cannot be replaced with CSS.

Originally Posted by Orion

SE's don't care if your code is valid, they prefer it cause it's easier to index, and your site can sometimes get listed faster with valid code (not always depends how bad the unvalid code would be). They have shown that they want to start caring that your code is accessible... meaning that they will care that it is valid eventually.

Did you probably forget to mention the problem about nested tables? Like 4 times or more? And SE mostly prefer and require Webmaster Help Center - 304 (Not modified)
I use that too.

When did they show that they start caring? OK Yahoo I know. I watched all their videos about that. But Google? Because of their Accessible Search? Aha. Interesting...

Originally Posted by Orion

So if you don't know how to do a table-less design simply and easily that works cross browser, not a bad idea to start learning how to. Along the learning curve don't be afraid to use a table to meet a deadline!

lol...

AMEN!

This post of yours Ron looks like one of my posts I wrote here at WPW some years ago and everyone turned me down.

When I read such posts, my feeling that I am coming from the future is getting more strong. And to be honest it is getting pretty scary.

Twelve Monkeys Effect? I think I will change my nick from Webnauts to Jame Cole. LOL.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Dubbya

Ceee...essss..esss...bargh....

ha-ha.... hooz bin drrrrrinkin??? hargh...cough, sputter...spit.. Yoo wan toolz? I got yer toolz..... har, har... ya bunch uh.. ya bunch uv BUNCHES!! BIG bunches of, er... hah...*snort*

Lemme tell ya sumpm, can I say sumpm?? Ya know what? Hey, ya no wwwhaaattt??? Tee-hee... HEY!! Hey, HAAAYYYUH!! Lissin.... LISSINNN!!

(long pause) CEE-ESS-ESS ROOLZ!! Iss the future an stuff!! Thass what!! An thass all I gotta say about that... *snort*

Is this that Rappers CSS song?

[Orion]

Originally Posted by janeth

Are you saying that a site will out do another site just because it is table-less?

If you took the same site and it ranks with tables.. redesign it table-less and you should see a small increase in it's ranking. It's worked on over 100 sites I've redone in the last couple of years.

Same content just updated the site to table-less design, some would just a full page others only one point but every site would show some increase within the first 6weeks. Only had a couple that would take longer.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Orion

Same content just updated the site to table-less design, some would just a full page others only one point but every site would show some increase within the first 6weeks. Only had a couple that would take longer.

Are you sure that no one linked to any of those sites?

I have a hard time believing that just adding CSS in place of tables caused over 100 sites that you have done to increase in ranking.

[Orion]

Originally Posted by janeth

Are you sure that no one linked to any of those sites?

I have a hard time believing that just adding CSS in place of tables caused over 100 sites that you have done to increase in ranking.

believe as you like but it's a fact...

Of course all those sites (as they were existing sites) had IBLs but there wasn't any notable increase in the IBLs to those sites during that time. Even when I've changed page names on a site and 301'd them with the update, there's been a slight decrease in rankings for a few weeks while the IBLs are all udpated then at the end off it all the site ranks better.

I've been optimizing websites for over 7 years now. Updating the code, making it valid and more accessible has always benefited it's rank and position in the search engines. I've done work for AT&T, Governments of BC, ON, US, CANADA, School Boards, Charitable sites, and numerous corporate websites over the years. I've had the pleasure of working along some of the greatest renowned SEOs and SEMs over the last 8 years, the benefits are real, the logic works.

Google says design your site for the visitor, if you're not building sites that are at least partially accessible then you're alienating a growing portion of your audience. Study the demographics.

It's only been the last 2+ years that I've been updating to table-less design though, before that it was valid xhtml and using tables for the most part. I moved very slowly from 2000 to about 2004 switching from tables to table-less, though I started implementing xhtml and css into my designs when it was released beginning of 2000.

I have to ask what do you call optimization if it's not optimizing the code and layout of a site? SEM (marketing) is all the business surrounding submissions, tags, content etc.

Lastly.. the Google Webmaster Guidelines clearly state that they recommend you create your site for the users. The spirit of that is allowing everyone to be able to access your website. I'm still searching for a few chats with Matt Cutts, and I've read it in his blog also regarding using up to date, valid content, accessibility and how these are the crux of what google is looking for, even if all of these things are not currently addressed in their algorithms and those that are may not carry a lot of weight with SEO, but any weight at all is a help.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Orion

believe as you like but it's a fact...

No offense intended but I get an email a minute claiming something or another. I kind of like to test things a bit on my own.

Originally Posted by Orion

I've been optimizing websites for over 7 years now. Updating the code, making it valid and more accessible has always benefited it's rank and position in the search engines. I've done work for AT&T, Governments of BC, ON, US, CANADA, School Boards, Charitable sites, and numerous corporate websites over the years. I've had the pleasure of working along some of the greatest renowned SEOs and SEMs over the last 8 years, the benefits are real, the logic works.

AT&T does not have valid code but I am sure you have your reasons.

Originally Posted by Orion

Google says design your site for the visitor, if you're not building sites that are at least partially accessible then you're alienating a growing portion of your audience. Study the demographics.

I build all my sites for my visitors and have never had any trouble ranking them or them being accessible to my visitors.

Originally Posted by Orion

I have to ask what do you call optimization if it's not optimizing the code and layout of a site? SEM (marketing) is all the business surrounding submissions, tags, content etc.

I agree with the content but the rest is only good for non-competitive keywords. As long as Google can follow the links and you have good title tags and plenty of incoming links with good anchor text you can rank a site for any keyword you want.

Originally Posted by Orion

Lastly.. the Google Webmaster Guidelines clearly state that they recommend you create your site for the users.

My users could careless rather I use CSS, tables or if the site validates. I build my sites for the users. As a matter of fact I am one of the few people that make my total living online. No phone book ads, news paper ads or anything else. If they do not come through my site or from another customer they do not find me.

Originally Posted by Orion

The spirit of that is allowing everyone to be able to access your website. I'm still searching for a few chats with Matt Cutts, and I've read it in his blog also regarding using up to date, valid content, accessibility and how these are the crux of what google is looking for, even if all of these things are not currently addressed in their algorithms and those that are may not carry a lot of weight with SEO, but any weight at all is a help.

Everyone can access my sites but I would rather spend less time trying to show how well my sites validate and how good I am with CSS and more time trying to build a site that will do what my visitor is wanting the site to do.

PS

You may want to get on that AT&T thing

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Orion

believe as you like but it's a fact...

And it is not a matter of what I believe or do not believe we did some testing on this about a year ago.

We never saw a change in ranking.

[Orion]

Originally Posted by janeth

No offense intended but I get an email a minute claiming something or another. I kind of like to test things a bit on my own.

Don't we all, lol.. And I agree you should test it out see how well it works.

Originally Posted by janeth

AT&T does not have valid code but I am sure you have your reasons.

The work we did for them about 4 years ago did... wasn't for att.com either.

Originally Posted by janeth

I build all my sites for my visitors and have never had any trouble ranking them or them being accessible to my visitors.

Have you actually tried to look at your sites on a cell phone or had someone with a speech browser visit them?

Originally Posted by janeth

My users could careless rather I use CSS, tables or if the site validates. I build my sites for the users. As a matter of fact I am one of the few people that make my total living online. No phone book ads, news paper ads or anything else. If they do not come through my site or from another customer they do not find me.

Same here, I run a business 11 years now solely online same as you. In fact I support our family of 5 plus a couple other families =) It's all good.

Originally Posted by janeth

Everyone can access my sites but I would rather spend less time trying to show how well my sites validate and how good I am with CSS and more time trying to build a site that will do what my visitor is wanting the site to do.

Still skeptical on how well everyone can access your sites. I'll let you know when I check them out later tonight. Personally I find it a LOT quicker to create a site with valid code than not. If you know how to do it and you get used to it it's faster. But then whatever you get used to is easier, lol...

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

When I read such posts, my feeling that I am coming from the future is getting more strong.

And I from another planet, XML.

Valid code: My impression is that the big players do not care much.

Remember time is money and it is 2 early 2 know the future.

[langsor]

Originally Posted by kgun

Valid code: My impression is that the big players do not care much.

And this is the truth!!!

My friend works remotely for the #1 NY digital ad agency and they pretty much only develop Flash sites targeted for IE on Windows and barely check for Mozilla browser compatibility if they have time (which they never do)...and I don't even want to think if their scripts, et.al are standards compliant, but my money is they're not.

What are they doing? Pumping out "top-end", "cutting-edge" sites for some of the biggest names around the world!

Do they care about validating on W3C? Of course not (maybe a couple of the lower-players do?) because they're making $$$

*KA-CHING*

...okay, I just W3Ced two of their sites, their main site and one client site...neither validated...proof for the puddin'.

[Orion]

I'm talking about consistent top 10 rankings with NO paid listings no PPC strictly organic SEO only. Some code, some content, some tags, top 10... continue developing links and updating content regularly to stay there. That's what we've been doing for the last 10 years with clients and it's always worked.

[Urbanxtremes]

At the end of the day you have to decide which is best for you, I have built over 300 major websites of which the majority have been HTML tables; all cross browser and OS compatible. The SEO factors for them are top-notch. Recently I have started building sites using CSS, which have proved to be an interesting challenge.

The accessibility factor is important for large companies, especially in the UK; as the government have started fining companies that do not at least comply too priority level 3. As usual the accessibility factors are blown out of proportion. The UK figures are such: out of 6.8 million people with disabilities 808 thousand people are benefiting from accessible websites. The 6.8 million is a bit of a lie, as they have included everyone that is: visually impaired (including people that wear glasses of mild prescription.), Hearing Impairment, Mobility or Dexterity Impairment and Learning Disabilities such as dyslexia. Would be nice to include the true figures…
(Source: Isolani / National Statistics / W3C Organisation)

Now, web agencies have played on this accessibility issue and are charging considerably more money to companies; under the cloak of the need of CSS sites for accessibility and SEO. Of course they are going to say you need a CSS site, it means new revenue. The company I work for finished building their site last year, at a healthy tune of 1 million. The development company and ad agency have both said that they now need to rebuild their site using CSS otherwise they will not get anymore SEO and have the possibilities of getting fined. They believed them, so we are embarking on rebuilding the site using CSS at a considerable cost.

Do I agree with these agencies: NO

Our site is table based, hits Priority 3 and receives 130k visitors from Google alone per-week and my table based personal news network site gets 12k from Google every day.

If you are not confident in coding in CSS and learning all the hacks, then stick to standard HTML, following SEO guidelines. However, consider using XML and the style parameters for your sites content, this will see you proud in the long term and when you have time, learn a little CSS...

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Orion

I'm talking about consistent top 10 rankings with NO paid listings no PPC strictly organic SEO only. Some code, some content, some tags, top 10... continue developing links and updating content regularly to stay there. That's what we've been doing for the last 10 years with clients and it's always worked.

How about a couple keywords?

And why don't we put this to a test?

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Urbanxtremes

Now, web agencies have played on this accessibility issue and are charging considerably more money to companies; under the cloak of the need of CSS sites for accessibility and SEO. Of course they are going to say you need a CSS site, it means new revenue. The company I work for finished building their site last year, at a healthy tune of 1 million. The development company and ad agency have both said that they now need to rebuild their site using CSS otherwise they will not get anymore SEO and have the possibilities of getting fined. They believed them, so we are embarking on rebuilding the site using CSS at a considerable cost.

Do I agree with these agencies: NO

It is a tool for web designers to use to make money. If I want my site to be W3C compliant and table free I only have to walk down stairs and tell my guys I need this.

And it will be done in a couple hours. I will do it when they get here to prove how easy it is to do. But my site will not start ranking all of a sudden for any new keywords.

It will not move at all.

[Urbanxtremes]

Originally Posted by janeth

It is a tool for web designers to use to make money. If I want my site to be W3C compliant and table free I only have to walk down stairs and tell my guys I need this.

And it will be done in a couple hours. I will do it when they get here to prove how easy it is to do. But my site will not start ranking all of a sudden for any new keywords.

It will not move at all.

Then you are lucky that you have a department to go to. A lot of companies have no experience in building sites, and as such believe all the hype that goes around.

Development agencies exaggerate on times, especially when the companies have no idea on time ratios. For example: 11 days effort to build a contact us page at a cost of £7,150 + the technical spec £11k. Funny, this task would only take me about 1 hour effort. No wonder companies are looking to Eastern Europe to get their websites built.

In fact by rebuilding the site in full CSS from being tables will affect the SEO; as all the previous efforts of getting pages linked, will be broken as new page names will replace the old: creating dead-links.

[kgun]

Urbanxtremes: Interesting arguments.

May be a side note. Did you read my post at the top of this page regarding XML. You can use CSS and XSL(T) to style XML documents. What is your opinion of pure XML driven sites? Do you think that is the next wave?

XML has some very big advantages as far as I can see:

1. Single sourcing: One source, many applications (presentations). In other words, you create a style sheet or a transformation to make your XML presentable in a given medium. You can make your document available as HTML, WAP, RSS, XHTML, PDF, (La)Tex, Scientific Word, Postscript etc. etc.
2. Reuse: By separating information from presentation, makes your XML documents reuseable. XML is also compatible with SGML as a simpler subset of SGML.
3. Document control: By defining your own XML Schema, you get much better control over your documents, both at the individual and at the corporate leve.
4. Robustness and stability: XML is a continually increasing family of technologies that is standardized and as such more stable and robust. In addition document security is very important part of XML. XPath, XQuery, XSL(T) etc. etc. are close to seamless languages, that makes the need for scripting languages like PHP and ASP less important. Don't use a scripting language before you need it. In addition, the need for a complicating database platform is reduced, since native XML databases are emeriging. Organizing your documents as XML files, also have SEO advantages compared to hidden information in a database.
5. Well-formedness and validation: By definition an XML document has to be well-formed. That is an argument for accessibility and usability.
6. Web applications. XML parsers and other XML technologies are being developed. Note that the X in AJAX stand for XML.
   
   An example what is possible with XML. As far as I know, Mr. Mirror is made in C++, by a Dutch company WarpGear. I used Mr Mirror to export a subset of my interent favourites to an XML file with an accompanying XSLT stylesheet that does the styling and transformation. Note how simple it is. Everything is done automatically.
   
   In my opinion this is the future.
   
   If you want to start simple, start by learning XML, XSL and / or CSS for the styling. That is the basics, and you should be able to produce fairly well XML driven sites with these technologies alone. For browser compatibility you produce an XML stylesheet:
   
   

   <xsl:output method="html" />

   to transform the document to an html document.

Tutorials: W3 Schools have what you need to get a kick start.

More advanced topics: ForumNorway

More precisely these two subforums:

XPath, XPointer, XLink and other Xtechnologies (Open to read without logging in).

eBooks and eMagazines (Need to register)

May be opened if I get better time after refreshing my computer. May be I will thank you virus provider when I am finished reformatting and reinstalling. One of my principles that I learned from a good young boss, is:

Turn a disadvantage (virus infection) into an advantage (reformatted more efficient computer).

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Urbanxtremes

Then you are lucky that you have a department to go to. A lot of companies have no experience in building sites, and as such believe all the hype that goes around.

I have found the more people I hire the harder I have to work.

Not sure how lucky I am.

Originally Posted by Urbanxtremes

Development agencies exaggerate on times, especially when the companies have no idea on time ratios. For example: 11 days effort to build a contact us page at a cost of £7,150 + the technical spec £11k. Funny, this task would only take me about 1 hour effort. No wonder companies are looking to Eastern Europe to get their websites built.

And after telling their clients how bad it is to outsource the jobs a lot of them contact companies in India to do the work. I do agree with the over charging but feel a lot of them do not have much work and need to make as much money as they can off each client.

Originally Posted by Urbanxtremes

In fact by rebuilding the site in full CSS from being tables will affect the SEO; as all the previous efforts of getting pages linked, will be broken as new page names will replace the old: creating dead-links.

So it will hurt your site, not help it.

I am not a designer but I am wondering why the page names will need to change?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Urbanxtremes

Our site is table based, hits Priority 3 and receives 130k visitors from Google alone per-week and my table based personal news network site gets 12k from Google every day.

Just curious: Does your hosting company provide you unlimited brandwidth?

[bj]

Just curious: Does your hosting company provide you unlimited brandwidth?

ROFL! Moving to xhtml/css site would cut that bandwidth by what? 75%? maybe more? Probably cut cpu hit as well during slashdot effect moments.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by janeth

I have found the more people I hire the harder I have to work.

Not sure how lucky I am.

Then you delegate too little, Janeth.

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Just curious: Does your hosting company provide you unlimited brandwidth?

Brandwidth (a new word in digital branding invented by WPW's Webnauts) or bandwidth?

[janeth]

Originally Posted by kgun

Then you delegate too little, Janeth.

I was thinking the same thing and I am trying to hire more people at this very moment.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Just curious: Does your hosting company provide you unlimited brandwidth?

I have my own server, so yes. And while I do not get as much traffic as Urbanxtremes I do get around 60k per month on one of my sites and have no problems with bandwidth at all.

[kgun]

That is not enough Janeth, employ (a) good sub leader(s) that you rely on. Then you can use more time on your family.

Clients + Shareholders + Management + Team + Network + Competence + Creativity = CSMTNCC, invented by kgun

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by kgun

And I from another planet, XML.

Valid code: My impression is that the big players do not care much.

Remember time is money and it is 2 early 2 know the future.

Come on Kjell. If you have experience in web and software development, you must know that debugging requires more time and therefore more money.

That is what usability testing is about. But I do not want to go further into this topic.

I wish everyone who claims that table-based web sites are equal or more accessible, usable, search engine friendly, and upon all that cost-effective to go more backward and start thinking seriously to build in the future their sites with frames.

Me not! I do development and business in and for the 21st century and not the 20th.

Just a side note I had the urge to add: Look at my site with IE3 or NN 4.7. Isn't it accessible? And I am wondering how can someone make an existing site created with tables handheld compatible without creating a second version in Mobile XHTML. Anyway. Not my problem and will never be.

Since the thread is in the search engine optimization forum, I would like to give my two cents:

Tableless site design means less bandwidth. Google in their webmaster technical guidelines say:

Originally Posted by Google

Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.

Source: Webmaster Help Center - Webmaster Guidelines
Additional info: Webmaster Help Center - 304 (Not modified)

Do you think Google cares about your bandwidth expenses and server load? Your costs?
If you are using tables and this technique, is it more efficient in these terms if you use tables instead of CSS?

Just wondering and pondering...

Before anyone responds to my post here, please take a minute a read this first: Benefits of CSS in Search Engine Optimization

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

That is what usability testing is about. But I do not want to go further into this topic.

I wish everyone who claims that table-based web sites are equal or more accessible, usable, search engine friendly, and upon all that cost-effective to go more backward and start thinking seriously to build in the future their sites with frames. Me not. I do development and business in the 21st century and not the 20th.

Of course you are correct. I will not listen to the spaghetti coders, but

1. Time
2. Third party providers of code

are limiting / restriciting inputs to digital production. So I have to use spagetthi code since my sites are ad driven. That makes me overall sloppy on these sites.

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Come on Kjell. If you have experience in web and software development, you must know that debugging requires more time and therefore money.

Do you think Google cares about your brandwidth expenses and server load?

1. John I have to leave now, to debug my computer.
2. I can tell you my personal opinion. Of course there is a relationship between SEO, accessibility, usability, technology and presentation. I know why your pages have higher Tb PR than most of the people posting on this forum. Read my posts along or between the lines above.
3. Start using XML and much of the problems disappear. The documents have to be well-formed. Hokus Pokus.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Do you think Google cares about your bandwidth expenses and server load? Your costs?

I have my guys changing the site over now but I am willing to put money on the fact that my rankings will not improve nor will I save money on bandwidth.

[janeth]

According to others if I do a search on Google I should see nothing but W3C compliant and table-less designed websites. I have asked Maria to do some searching and post the information here on the forum when she finishes.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by janeth

I have my guys changing the site over now but I am willing to put money on the fact that my rankings will not improve nor will I save money on bandwidth.

Then the project is misunderstood. Make a site with 100 000 pages.

1. Make it in pure HTML and use tables for design overall. How many Mb's will that site be?
2. Make the same site in CSS, with a single site-wide stylesheet that is loaded into memory once. Use <li> for links.
3. Compare results.

It is reckognized by most Web Masters that HTML was wrong from the very beginning, mixing content and styling. CSS driven sites separates content from presentation and it is much simpler to reuse.

P.S. Which site is easiest to update?

In the short run it may cost more (increased investments in human capital). In the long run it will save you money.

Learning:
Competence in short term memory are almost useless. Competence in long time memory is gold. Read, reread, repeat, repeat until the skills are drilled into long term memory.

I go for XML. In sum efficiency and minimalism.

Good news, I leave now. Bad news, I may return. It is weekend.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by kgun

Then the project is misunderstood. Make a site with 100 000 pages.

1. Make it in pure HTML and use tables for design overall. How many Mb's will that site be?
2. Make the same site in CSS, with a single site-wide stylesheet that is loaded into memory once. Use <li> for links.
3. Compare results.

It is reckognized by most Web Masters that HTML was wrong from the very beginning, mixing content and styling. CSS driven sites separates content from presentation and it is much simpler to reuse.

P.S. Which site is easiest to update?

In the short run it may cost more (human capital costs). In the long run it will save you money.

Good news, I leave now. Bad news, I may return. It is weekend.

You are talking about design and I agree with that but this is in the search engine optimization forum.

If we are talking about design then it needs to be moved.

[weslinda]

SEO is not the only reason for tableless. There are other reasons. Including and not limited to:

1. Ability to reduce code on the page, allowing for improved page load times and server load and performance.
2. Ability to semantically layout your content to allow for easier interaction with various mediums including print, screen readers, mobile browsers and more.
3. Ability to easily update and change the visual appearance and layout of the site through a single file, allowing for much easier conversions of the site from a visual perspective.

These are just a few of the things that you can do when moving to CSS and Tableless designs. Of course, most people don't want to think through these types of benefits when developing a site. Everyone is much more concerned about the initial effort it will take to develop a quality site based on CSS and no tables, versus seeing what the long term benefit can be outside of the SEO positives.

I think that too many people want to be on the extremes of the discussion, either on the "it doesn't matter at all" side as you are Janeth, or the "tables are the devil" side from you Webnauts. I think that we need to realize that SEO isn't the only reason to change a site to tableless and there are numerous reasons and benefits to such an endeavor.

[MuNKyonline]

Originally Posted by Urbanxtremes

Then you are lucky that you have a department to go to. A lot of companies have no experience in building sites, and as such believe all the hype that goes around.

Development agencies exaggerate on times, especially when the companies have no idea on time ratios. For example: 11 days effort to build a contact us page at a cost of £7,150 + the technical spec £11k. Funny, this task would only take me about 1 hour effort. No wonder companies are looking to Eastern Europe to get their websites built.

In fact by rebuilding the site in full CSS from being tables will affect the SEO; as all the previous efforts of getting pages linked, will be broken as new page names will replace the old: creating dead-links.

I think you have exaggerated quite a lot here on the costs for developing a website in CSS compared to tables. I dont know of any companies anywhere that would charge something like that for one page lol. You must be looking in the wrong places if you're getting quotes like that!

Tables would take far longer to load, as BJ has pointed out, increasing the bandwidth usage.

If anything, I can create an accessible website in CSS/XHTML far more quickly than I could when I built websites in just tables controlled by CSS. So my labour expenses are less.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by kgun

Then you delegate too little, Janeth.



Brandwidth (a new word in digital branding invented by WPW's Webnauts) or bandwidth?

It was a misspelling/mistyping error Kjell. I never have that problem when I am coding though! If I start posting such rude statements about someone misspelling of mistyping, and that person speaks 3 languages (Greek, English and German), I guess I will not be very welcome here anymore.

Should I start correcting you too buddy? No, no. I am far beyond that level.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by janeth

I have my own server, so yes. And while I do not get as much traffic as Urbanxtremes I do get around 60k per month on one of my sites and have no problems with bandwidth at all.

I have a dedicated server in Germany, two shared servers in the US (one for "Round Robin DNS Balancing").

As I am concerned about my bandwidth and of the search engines too, my sites are table-less and additionally I use HTTP-Conditionals, as Google requires and as I explained previously in this thread.

[kgun]

John, it was a joke, funny misspelling.

If you should start to correct my English, you would have to have more than 24 hours a day and night.

I should have left long time ago.

P.S. Day and night="Døgn" in Norwegian. Any single English word for day and night?

[weslinda]

Isn't the ability to rearrange content within the code a benefit from an SEO standpoint? As you are able to move the most relevant content to the top of your code?