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Vancouver · Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 2:47 pm Post subject: Tableless Designs

Ninety percent of the website designs on the web are created with tables. Have you considered what can be accomplished using W3C standards-compliant CSS designs? You won't find templates for sale using pure CSS (at least that I can find but please enlighten me if you know). From an SEO point of view, you have less clutter in your source code, a higher keyword to text ratio, and complete control over the ordering of the parts of your site (so, for example, you can move the navigation, with minimal keyword density, to the bottom of the source code).

Here is a site that demonstrates what can be accomplished with pure CSS (if you look at the source code, you'll see how clean it is): CSS Zen Garden

Try changing the design by clicking the various options in the right navigation menu--it's really neat! Note how the HTML never changes, only the CSS. No javascript, frames, etc. is used with any of these designs, only pure, spider-friendly html markup.

For a traditional design, take a look at State Driving Law

Just remember - Please don't copy the designs, they are not templates and the designs are copyrighted!
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Fab · Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 4:25 pm Post subject:

Hi Philip,

I totally agree with you. But... and this "but" is a big one: You must be a css guru to make it look the same on EVERY computer. I lately tried a design based on the site of someone who knows his stuff. Everything looked fine until I looked at it with a Mac Sad

And if it does not work, depending on the layout, it can happen that your navigation drops down that you need to scroll doen for two screens.

It's easy to lose potential customers. I wouldn't risk it...

Fabian

Vancouver · Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2005 4:42 pm Post subject:

Hi Fabian,

I agree learning CSS takes some time and to make results appear across browsers can be tough at the beginning but the results are, in my opinion, definitely worth it. Changes are easy across the board (as demonstrated by CSS Zen Garden) without having to resort to messing around with the content. Also, spiders are designed around W3C standards. You don't need to be a CSS guru to make simple designs that are highly effective and a little testing will usually get a design cross-browser friendly.

Cheers.
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netadventures · Joined: 27 Jun 2004 Posts: 135 Location: Canada

Thanks for posting this site, Philip. I am only just starting to figure out my way around CSS, but I like the possibilities - particularly being able to put the nav bar at the bottom of the source code.
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Superpreneurs.com · Joined: 06 Oct 2004 Posts: 146

How do you put the navbar at the bottom of the source code? That would be AWESOME...

BTW, CSS doesn't have to encompass a whole site. You can use it in conjuction with Virtual Includes just to make a site easier to update. You can also use it to do rollover effects of whatever.

Personally I use a simple table and CSS structure. Works for me - at least until Dreamweaver makes CSS EASY.

-Dan

Vancouver · Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2005 2:17 pm Post subject:

Dan,

I can't really answer that without going into a whole tutorial. I suggest you study the designs at CSS Zen Garden and maybe check out the books at Sitepoint. If you use a table, you cannot accomplish absolute positioning of your navbar.

Cheers.
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edburdo · Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 1750 Location: Bangor, Maine

Go check out Open Source Web Design - http://www.oswd.org/ and do an Advanced Search. Then choose XHTML and CSS.

They have hundreds of true CSS designs that work on all (or the majority) of browsers, and are free to reuse. Some want a link if you use their design, but most do not want anything in return.

There are several places to find good CSS only templates for free. Why bother trying to find a place to buy them?
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BobsStuff · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 5:21 pm Post subject:

ERIC!! WOW!
More fantastic information. Love the link to the CSS site. I have only begun trying to understand and use CSS.

I do have a Mac out back. I think I'll bring it in and connect it to the internet and see what it does to my pages.
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ljevans100 · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 1 Location: Oklahoma

I am very interested in using a tableless design in my pages. Can you recommend a good book?

edburdo · Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 1750 Location: Bangor, Maine

I don't know about books, but I have two links for anyone interested in buying templates or having custom sites designed.

http://www.goldenpinecone.com/

http://home.wi.rr.com/gronitz/ <- Tell him that Eric sent you. Razz

I have had him design a few of my sites (the drop shipping link below, and my LEGO Robotics site) and he REALLY knows his CSS.
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modestmouser · Joined: 10 Jan 2005 Posts: 150

I recently started changing some pages on my music site over to CSS, and I love it! It is cleaner, and superior in many other ways, IMO. I'm just getting into it, though, but playing around with the Zen Garden was a big help.

The *best* CSS book I've found, one that I'm currently reading, is designing with web standards:
http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/

Check out his site for great examples, testimonials, and info about his book.

It describes CSS and its importance in a straightforward and enjoyable way. The guy's really one of the top names in web design - he also did some of the blogger.com templates.
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Andrea Thomson · Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2005 9:23 pm Post subject:

thanks edburdo - appreciate your referral.

We're just wrapping a big project in which all of our affiliate templates are updated to address Firefox (and Safari, and all the other popular SE's).

In this update, we also made sure that the templates are w3.org compliant - for html and css. If you're on Michael Campbell's newsletter, you know how important this is now.

And, we've really streamlined the use of tables. We've kept some tables simply because a table-less template tends to be for the more advanced webmaster (not for newbies - as it's hard for them to find the placeholders to enter their content).

Check it out - and feel free to PM me if you have any suggestions for the advanced templates - they're COMING SOON!

Smile

Cheers -
Andrea
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arcamanik · Joined: 20 Dec 2005 Posts: 7

I just join this forum yesterday, sorry for this late response to this thread.

Vancouver, do you mean that extensive use of CSS (aka: a cleaner page of HTML tags) is basically best from an SEO point of view?
FYI, I still use table tags on my current sites to position text elements on the pages. While I keep it to minimum, I am not aware of implications of HTML tags on keyword density , etc.
Thanks.

Andrea Thomson · Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2005 11:53 pm Post subject:

I'll have some tableless designs available in the next couple of weeks - just fine tuning them now.
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arcamanik · Joined: 20 Dec 2005 Posts: 7

Hi Andrea,
The last week I struggled with CSS from scratch. Just launch my first tableless site (as below); great .. it helps reducing previous HTML size with 25-30%. Well, surely not a well design as I'm not a web designer at all Smile

.
Am I doing right?
PS: It displays well on my Opera but don't know how it looks with Mac and with other browsers.
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