HTML table is a method wherein web designing is done without the use of HTML tables and hence is termed as table-less HTML designing or Table-less web design. Instead of the tables of HTML style sheet languages such as CSS or Cascading Style Sheets are being used.
Introduction of CSS
In order to improve the accessibility of the web and also to make the code of HTML more semantic instead of it being only made for presentations, the CSS was introduced in the year 1996. It was around the same time that most of the sites were designed using tables of HTML.
Conversions such as PSD to HTML, PSD to CSS and PSD to XHTML became quite popular then on. The main reason why the HTML tables gained popularity was because CSS was not supported by many browsers at that time and therefore many of the web designers were not aware of how to convert PSD to CSS.
However in recent times many of the professional designers have understood the functioning of the CSS. They have also understood the limitations of the tables of HTML and therefore the popularity of CSS has increased. Another major advantage of the use of CSS is the improvement in accessibility of the information that is available on the net and therefore more users find this useful.
Advantages of table-less HTML
Apart from the improved accessibility of the information available on the net the other advantage of this conversion is the amount that can be saved on the bandwidth. This is because of the large amount of tags that are practically meaningless that can be removed from many of the pages. This leaves the site with only significant headings that are few and also less number of paragraphs and lists.
Another advantage of converting PSD to XHTML is that it makes it easy to maintain the site and also to change it according to the requirement of the company. All this can be done just by incorporating simple alterations in the mark up of the particular CSS. This immediately changes and affects every single page on the style sheet.
Another important advantage of table-less designs is that they follow a logical structure and that makes it easy for the regular readers and also users of the Braille devices. It is also very helpful for people who are using search engines because searching too becomes very effective.
It is also very useful for deployment of many devices like mobile phones and hand-helds because each design is separated with the help of the CSS and different layouts can be prepared for them.
The conversions, such as incorporation of XHTML slicing, give the user the facility of printing pages, without modifying or changing the advertisements. There is also a lot of saving that can be done in terms of bandwidth and this is because the pages that need to be downloaded become much smaller.
This is mainly due to the fact that unnecessary tags get deleted due to the CSS conversion. It is imperative today to gain some idea about the need to convert PSD to HTML, convert PSD to CSS and/or convert PSD to XHTML as well as understand what table-less HTML is and what are its advantages.
