Tableless CSS Driven "Fluid" website Design
By this time you may have heard about the "next generation" of website design, known as tableless css-driven web design, or "fluid" design. Many people have heard the term around the internet and wondered what exactly the term means and what, if anything, it can do for you and your website. We at DCD Designs have run extensive tests on this design style and have found that redesigning your website in this manner may dramatically improve all the aspects of your website, from marketing to load time this type design has come of age!
The concepts behind this design style are actually over 10 years old but many web designers have stayed away from them due to lack of browser support. Like
everything else in this world bad habits become set in stone
and many web developers simply keep coding like they always have. Our services, and these
techniques break those bad habits once and for all, allowing your website to reap all the benefits available while enjoying full cross browser compatibility on all 5x
and up browser versions.
So you may be asking "what are tables and why does removing them from my website help?" Glad you asked! Tables have mistakenly been used for many years
by designers to piece a site's graphic layout back together, similar to a jigsaw puzzle. Many designers (ourselves included at one time) built their website layouts in a graphic program
like Photoshop™ and then sliced them up into smaller graphics using a program like Adobe's Image Ready™. Theses sliced
images are then pieced back
together using html tables to create a visually seamless layout. This practice has been the rage
for many many years
and creates bandwidth hog that also breaks every principle of web design standards, hinders your website's search engine rankings and creates accessibility nightmares for many
of your users.
First and foremost, removing tables from the website can dramatically improve your search engine rankings with no other work required. The concept is
simple, the less un-indexable
code the search engine's spider has to crawl through to get to your readable (and indexable) content the higher your
content to code percentage comes up. It is well known that most search engines set limits on how long a spider is allowed
to spend reading a given
page. If the spider reaches that limit before it is able to completely read your content your rankings will suffer.
The second but no less important effect of this table removal is a savings in bandwidth of up to 75%. We all know bandwidth is expensive and the larger
your website grows the higher your hosting fees or bandwidth fees get. Storage space is also reduced on your server as file sizes can be reduced by the same
amount. Along with these bandwidth and storage savings your user will see drastically faster page load times, allowing them faster access to your information and
products. Removing tables from non-tabular
data will also allow those with disabilities and image disabled browsers a more meaningful experience with your
website and as more and more non computer
devices are able to access websites your site will be ready to go on them!
Last, but no less important is the fact that since your website is no longer driven by table layouts that require massive amounts of development, editing and redesign time your company can literally save thousands of dollars a year in technology costs. A tableless CSS driven site allows complete control over every aspect of your site's look and feel from a single style sheet. Don't like the text color? One line of code in one file changes the whole site instantly. Want the navigation bar on the left instead of the right, again one line of code. All of these task can now be completed in minutes, not hours or days. Tech costs money so why not get the best for every dollar you spend!
So finally your probably asking "These websites sounds a little plain and ugly, can I have a graphic site using this method?" The answer is a resounding YES ... You're actually reading one of these sites right now!
Contact US today to make the switch to a more profitable, usable website!
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