I have been able to get some really nice layouts etc. using tables but I have also heard that using them slows down the load time of a page.

Do they really slow down the load time to where one should not use tables if possible?

Heidi

Swings and roundabouts. It all depends on how you use them. If you nest your tables heavily and can split them into rows (with a new table for each row) then you can get a percieved speed increase because you won't need to wait for the whole table to load before seeing the page.

On a personal level, I've got rid of my tabled layout for my Site Owner site, but it wasn't for speed reasons, more because I wanted to use more logical code than anything.

as tiigy said, using multiple nested tables can really slow your page load time.

instead use rowspans and colspans to achieve what you looking for..

also be sure to specify the width for the table and for the columns, so that the browser will load it little faster.

personally i use tables a lot in all my sites.

For what I do - when setting up schedules for Sports Teams and Popular - Current Music and Artist info, it seems fine. A 56 K - seems to load them fine. But, the bigger the table the long it takes. I keep them short. I love tables, not only for the organization, but for the pleasing to the eye factor - you can put color and creativeness into them. Good Luck!

ditto.

Unless you go absolutely nuts with multiple nested tables, I don't see how tables will hurt your load time. Just make sure that you always include the width and height attributes. The less you leave for the browser to figure out, the quicker your page will load.

Then, as already mentioned, there is the "perceived" load time. If you have a large image, for example, slicing it up and putting it into a table will give the visitor a sense that the page is loading quicker, since slices will start to show sooner.

Vito

Hi,

I agree with what has been said. Unless you use heavily nested tables, speed shouldn't be that much of a problem. I also use a lot of tables on my sites. However, often it does become necessary to use nested tables if you want to create a neat looking design, and I agree with Tiggy; that can become very confusing. It does make things harder to edit because everything is scattered and hard to find.

I have realized that in order to get certain layouts, you must either use frames or tables. And in that case, I would definitely use tables, since frames are bad for SE placement, bookmarking, refreshing, and sometimes for different browsers and resolutions. You can try having an extremist "table-free" website, but that would probably result in a Geocities-like creation.

I got a table free layout! I don't think it resembles any Geocities creations... but then I've not been to a Geocities site for years, so someone will need to get back to me on that one...

Originally posted by Tiggy
I got a table free layout! I don't think it resembles any Geocities creations... but then I've not been to a Geocities site for years, so someone will need to get back to me on that one...

Wow...that's actually very amazing, Tiggy! I see you used other alternatives instead of the table. I would never be able to come up with such a creative idea! Great job on the site design, BTW! I'm really impressed.

That is very interesting Tiggy and I see that you do use div class and others. I see what it does but how browser compatible is it?

Also is there a site link that can teach me a little more about this?

Looks can be pretty deceptive can't they?

I changed to the tableless layout when I did my major site update in December and managed to replicate the table version very well! I dare say that having cleaner code gets me a better ranking at the search engines too... H1 is used for the main heading, H2 for sub headings and H3 for navigational headers... my menus are lists (well thats what they are aren't they?) and all style changes are kept to the CSS allowing me to may changes quickly...

Looks good on IE6, NS6 and Opera 5 and 6 if I recall. I can't say how it looks in IE5 (not too different I would imagine but there is a "refresh" bug in one version of IE when using the float property). Netscape 4 doesn't load the style sheet so looks very boring, still logical and usable if a little awkward.

There is a problem with the style sheet in MacIE (needs a rendering tweak like Opera and NS6 did), but when I ask people for help to fix it (since I can't test changes) their enthusaism dwindles!

Anyway, the resources I used for developing tableless pages...
http://glish.com/css/ (templates you can use to base your own design around).
http://www.alistapart.com/ (sorry, I don't have a direct link to the page, but I think it's at Glish somewhere)

Thank you Tiggy!! Those links are great. I will have to look more into them as I have the time. I have bookmarked them.

Hi Tiggy,

Thanks for those links! I'm going to take a look and see if I can build a table-less layout of my own. It is pretty amazing; I didn't think it was possible. Oh well, I guess I still have a lot to learn.

BTW, I can tell you right now that your site is compatible with the latest version of Mozilla. So it looks like MacIE is the only one that isn't yet compatible. Sounds pretty good to me!

*EDIT* Ah, should have thought of this earlier...I know this stuff! I just didn't realize it was CSS. I prefer tables over this. From what I've seen, the speed difference is minimal at best.

I didn't do it for the speed difference Conker, I did it for the logic of the presentation... when I redesigned the layout I had the text parsing browsers in mind, the search engines and the text readers. Making the menus lists rather than a formatted paragraph makes it a bit clearer that my menu is a menu... the old way I was using tables just to make my style cross browser compatible could confuse text readers as the flow of the content is not always the way the text should be read.

Of course, if you convert complicated tables, the speed difference can be quite noticable if you are on a modem.