MacRaven - Dave Haxton's Weblog

Mon, 08 Dec 2008

OK web designers of the world here's your opportunity to weigh in on a real world redesign in which you'll not have to bear the consequences in any way of your advice! I need your rede on the following weighty question:

CSS and stylesheets or frames and tables?

I am well aware of the difficulties search engines have with frames, but I'm not certain that I care - most of the stuff on haxton.org isn't exactly high traffic in any case, and this blog doesn't get indexed per policy. But what other problems will frames induce? Should I be concerned about mobile devices accessing my personal and family home pages?

And as for the CSS style - well, how dramatically will it increase load times if every page has to reload the navigation images? Should I even care, as the browser cache should take care of this? What are the hidden pitfalls of using CSS extensively - are there any browser quirks that I need to be aware of?

By all means, writeback and give it to me straight!

/Technology | 7 writebacks | permanent link

On 12/8/2008 11:39:16
Art S wrote

Speaking only as a does-web-as-a-random hobby developer: Tables are easy, but when you hit the limits of what they'll do you hit hard. CSS can be annoying get started on, but nice for other things, and hasn't seemed to hurt my load times significantly. Frames are annoying to navigate as a user, and seem to combine the straightjacket of tables with the varied implementations of CSS.

On 12/8/2008 15:07:05
Chas S. Clifton wrote

You can do a lot with tables, as Art S. wrote. Frames are an annoyance, trapping users and making it hard to use the "Back" button to navigate. CSS allows all sorts of elegant stuff, but you have to devote time to learning it. Loading time is not an issue, based on what I have seen.

On 12/8/2008 16:20:06
jhc wrote

I agree with Art & Chas. - I've never seen a performance penalty using CSS. (I'm sure it's possible to design a set of stylesheets that will choke a browser but I've never run across such a thing.) Tables are OK but frames are teh suxor. I'm no CSS expert, but I'm pretty comfortable with it (now). It took a little bit to get to this point but I think it was worth it and I actually *like* CSS. Plus... you never know when you might be looking for work again. A little new knowledge might help sell the package, eh?

On 12/9/2008 03:54:48
Lorrie Wood wrote

More Agreement

I use a little CSS on a couple of the newer sites I've written, and I also fancy tables--in their proper time and season. I've not seen a real performance hit with CSS, either. -- L

On 12/9/2008 11:58:18
Analemma wrote

Frames are not Heathen, because frames are of the devil and the devil is not a Heathen concept.

On 12/9/2008 12:59:36
Thud wrote

OK. Speaking as someone whose done this stuff almost every day for twelve years on a professional level: * Table-based layouts are hard to maintain, hurt mobile accessibility, and also are a terrible strain on people using assistive technologies to visit your site. * As long as you don't worry too much about IE 6, your compatibility issues will be minimal. * CSS can get you a performance increase because you're using a lot less markup. Linked stylesheets (instead of sheets embedded in a page) get cached too. Read: Web Standards Solutions, Dan Cederholm (basic concepts) then Bulletproof Web Design, Dan Cederholm (advanced concepts)

On 12/10/2008 14:54:37
Dave H wrote

I have heard

and will heed - frames and sets will never be: CSS it is for me! Thanks for the writebacks! And keep a eye on haxton.org - that's where the changes will appear before they show up here. Be well, Dave H.

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MacRaven
Dave Haxton's Weblog
Musings, Reflections, Rants and Comments from a Hoosier Heathen husband, father, grandfather, farmer and software engineer. There's really only one of me ...

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