- Home
- Web Development
- CSS
- What's Table-less CSS Menu Markup?
What's Table-less CSS Menu Markup?
- By Ethan Kaufman
- Published 8 June 2009
- CSS
- Unrated
Ethan Kaufman
Ethan Kaufman a developer at PluginLab with over 7 years experience in developing standards compliant websites. His expertise are Web Site Navigation and CSS Menu scripts.
View all articles by Ethan Kaufman
These concerns in combination with the rise of mobile web devices have caused many designers to look elsewhere for web design enabling technology. The recent emergence of "tableless" cascading style sheets (CSS) markup language is one answer that promises much greater flexibility and control, smaller bandwidth requirements and better overall performance.
The linear "table" approach to web development caused HTML pages to require complex formatting and substantial bandwidth. Before a browser could load a page, it would have to download all components completely before displaying anything on the screen. This slowed the load-time process and sometimes caused jumbled content on the screen. The main reason for this is that the use of tables in programming integrates the "content" and the "presentation" components of web pages resulting in far less flexibility and heavier content.
Furthermore, the table approach does not support mobile devices such as telephones and PDAs which are certainly becoming a large player in the Internet landscape. Tableless CSS markup is becoming quite ubiquitous around the world for its ability to separate the "content" from the "presentation" on web pages and create a more semantic - rather than linear - organization of content on web pages.
With the absence of tables, pages are able to load sequentially rather than all at once, which speeds up download times for users. Other key benefits of a tableless web environment include:
1. Greater flexibility and control over page design - content and presentation aspects of pages can be managed individually and centrally for changes across entire websites. An example would be in the a sites CSS Menu navigation system where by changing the style sheet the entire site navigation can be updated instantly.
2. Browser interoperability - different browsers can all present HTML pages the way they were meant to be displayed, using CSS markup espeically in CSS Menu can often resolve these issues.
3. Less bandwidth usage - with the separation of content and style, pages are smaller and require less bandwidth.
4. Support for mobile devices - Laptops, PDAs, cell phones, etc. have a much easier time properly accessing and displaying web pages
When designing HTML documents, and espeically CSS Menu navigation it is important to follow proper CSS markup standards to make future changes easier and to enable other developers in the organization (that have been given access) to modify both content and presentation without problems.
The use of CSS style sheets in developing and maintaining CSS menus within web pages is also growing in popularity. Today CSS menus are used pervasively across the Web and the ability to easily create and modify them is important to designers.
The linear "table" approach to web development caused HTML pages to require complex formatting and substantial bandwidth. Before a browser could load a page, it would have to download all components completely before displaying anything on the screen. This slowed the load-time process and sometimes caused jumbled content on the screen. The main reason for this is that the use of tables in programming integrates the "content" and the "presentation" components of web pages resulting in far less flexibility and heavier content.
Furthermore, the table approach does not support mobile devices such as telephones and PDAs which are certainly becoming a large player in the Internet landscape. Tableless CSS markup is becoming quite ubiquitous around the world for its ability to separate the "content" from the "presentation" on web pages and create a more semantic - rather than linear - organization of content on web pages.
With the absence of tables, pages are able to load sequentially rather than all at once, which speeds up download times for users. Other key benefits of a tableless web environment include:
1. Greater flexibility and control over page design - content and presentation aspects of pages can be managed individually and centrally for changes across entire websites. An example would be in the a sites CSS Menu navigation system where by changing the style sheet the entire site navigation can be updated instantly.
2. Browser interoperability - different browsers can all present HTML pages the way they were meant to be displayed, using CSS markup espeically in CSS Menu can often resolve these issues.
3. Less bandwidth usage - with the separation of content and style, pages are smaller and require less bandwidth.
4. Support for mobile devices - Laptops, PDAs, cell phones, etc. have a much easier time properly accessing and displaying web pages
When designing HTML documents, and espeically CSS Menu navigation it is important to follow proper CSS markup standards to make future changes easier and to enable other developers in the organization (that have been given access) to modify both content and presentation without problems.
The use of CSS style sheets in developing and maintaining CSS menus within web pages is also growing in popularity. Today CSS menus are used pervasively across the Web and the ability to easily create and modify them is important to designers.