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Web Site Design Articles
Web Site Design
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Why Using CSS?
- Reduce Page Size
A table could be used to position content on a page. Tables where never intended to be used for layout but worked good and was easy to learn. Not only is a complex design with tables nested inside other tables difficult to understand when looking at the code -the size of the page can easily reach 65 KB+. When the code for the page outweighs the content of the page you have a problem and that is a problem which is easy to get when using nested tables since they need lots of code. With CSS you will use much less code and your page will be 'slim'. Compare the code of a nested table layout with a CSS layout and the difference in complexity will be huge. - Faster loading time
Reduced table use and reduced image use will lead to faster loading time and quicker scrolled. This is a huge deal to most web surfers as well as webmasters because speed is a huge implication in whether someone stays on your page or moves on. CSS increases speed, and as a result is a tool you must learn how to use. - Manageable Design
You can edit your website design if you need to for whatever reason without that much hassle if you are using CSS. All you do is go in and edit the definition. This is a lot easer than searching and replacing of years past and you do not have to edit for each page. - Flexibility
CSS can be applied to content in several ways. The key feature is the ability to cascade style information specified in the default (user agent) style sheet, user style sheets, linked style sheets, the document head, and in attributes for the elements forming the document body.
- More Options / design effects
CSS offers you more design effects than normal HTML. With HTML you can change the color, font and style of your content. With CSS you can change the background color (e.g. set it to yellow to create a highlighter effect), create borders, change letter spacing, word spacing etc.
Providing authors with a rich set of rendering effects increases the richness of the Web as a medium of expression. Designers have been longing for functionality commonly found in desktop publishing and slide-show applications. - Easily Make a Print Version
When you use CSS you can also include a printer friendly version of the website that makes it easier to print and can eliminate color, images, and other things that do not print easily. - Present Data Logically
When you use CSS in the layout of your website you can present your data in a logical way and CSS can then manage how the information presented. - Complements HTML
Another reason CSS is a must is because it complements HTML. HTML and CSS alone both have weaknesses, but when used together your website design will be significantly stronger.
- Usability / accessibility
CSS layout is a must for a website that should have high usability and accessibility. A layout made in CSS degrades gracefully in browsers that do not support CSS, a site made with tables do not. The point is you can not know how a visitor to your site will browse it, with a CSS based design you know that the content will be fine if they browse it with some unusual program.
- Search engine friendly
Search engines works by sending out spiders that follow links and gather information from pages around the net. There are many reasons a CSS layout is important to have when making a website with SEO in the back of your head. For example, spiders like to have lots of information to index early in the HTML file. With CSS you can put your content at the start of the body tag and have your menu appear at the bottom of your body tag even though your menu appears first in Internet Explorer and Firefox. It is also hard to make pages where the content outweighs the layout parts if not using CSS or long articles. - Device, platform, and vendor independence
Style sheets enable documents to remain device, platform, and vendor independent. Style sheets themselves are also vendor and platform independent, but CSS 2.1 allows you to target a style sheet for a group of devices (e.g., printers). - Network performance.
CSS provides for compact encodings of how to present content. Compared to images or audio files, which are often used by authors to achieve certain rendering effects, style sheets most often decrease the content size. Also, fewer network connections have to be opened which further increases network performance.
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