does table-less created sites have a disadvantage?....

[P!TBO!]

i've seen some table-less created sites, im wondrin' if these sites have a disadvantage when it comes to SEO's?

[alex-party]

No, it does not have disadvantages (well maybe a little hard to css it). But In fact, it has many advantages:

1. table-less design is accessible - that's the main reason to use it towards people with disabilities. Using tables requires additional attributes, such as "summary" which I haven't seen on any web site - web developers just forget it or don't pay much attention to it.
2. Google support w3c/accessibility standards and gives much greater value to such web sites. I witnessed it myself.
3. divs vs tables - easily readable, keeping html structure clean and simple. Search Bots like that.
4. I haven't met any self-respecting designer to ever use tables for a mark-up and decoration purposes, even more, when interviewed, designers being asked if they know table-less design techniques.

Holy heaven! I forgot to mention that I became a member of gawds (guild of accessible web designers) a couple of days ago....so I kinda know stuff

[P!TBO!]

thanks for that!

i've read some post in the forum that spiders could have problems or something when it comes to framed contents, i just thought that maybe table-less sites would also have disadvantages like the one that framed contents have although i really know some of the advantages of table-less sites, i just wonder if it would be of the same as in framed contents.

at least now i know!

[hcastor]

i actually don't apply either this table-less because as far as i know it will really take time for you to create layouts and it will minimize your space. maybe this is the advantage on my part

[alex-party]

framed contents are the worse solution than tables or anything else, you should avoid using them at any cost. There are css rule "overflow:auto" to simulate scrollable areas - try this on your page:

<div id="frame" style="height:20px;overflow:auto">
hello<br/>
hello<br/>
hello<br/>
hello<br/>
hello<br/>
hello<br/>
</div>

As to hcastor post, "it will really take time for you to create layouts and it will minimize your space" - not sure what you meant by "minimize space", but you will eventually spend more time promoting your web site than doing it once right and enjoying top positions in google. I had saw many times PR1-2 table-less web sites on top of PR5-6 sites. Both having good contents but 1st had valid xhml, the second had 200 errors and ugly html. I still can't explain what impacts such positions rather than this.

[fjpoblam]

...that is, if you mean, when using tables for LAYOUT as opposed to tables where they're intended, for presentation of tabular data. When I converted to table-less layouts throughout my and my clients' sites, I found:

• a SIGNIFICANT improvement in load times
• easier to make an "elastic" layout for larger/smaller screens
• easier maintenance: a two column layout, for example, with a main column and a side bar, was easily "swapped" side-to-side by simply swapping the definition of a "div" in a css file instead of copying and pasting a set of "tds"
• easier readability (i.e., "accessibility") by screen readers, important for one of my clients, an education-supported group: if you want a demo of this, fetch a copy of the Firefox extension, Jaws, which gives you a screen text equivalent to what a screen reader would pronounce...interesting...

It's worth the effort! Get'er done!

[zagu060807]

No, it is an advantage to SEO because it is Search engine friendly.

[toinkzzz]

table less sites are search engine crawler friendly.. it can easily check the content of your site..

[testsherpa]

Alex, thank you for sharing your expertise. I have a few sites that are pretty table-intensive and FrontPage puts a bunch of garbage in the code as well. And, to top it off, some are educational sites so I have "chunked" the educational information into smaller readable pages rather than cram all into one page.

I'm considering switching the content to a Wordpress blog as I am not a CSS expert. Do you believe this would improve my rankings?

[alex-party]

Originally Posted by testsherpa

I'm considering switching the content to a Wordpress blog as I am not a CSS expert. Do you believe this would improve my rankings?

It may sound lame, but I never had a chance to look inside wordpress templates, never had such need. But as long as they use clean html, preferably table-less, it's fine. I can also give you several links. Maybe you will find something for your web site:

Free Website Templates
Free Website Templates - Web Design Templates - PowerPoint Templates
Content oriented web templates and custom web development - GetTemplate

Good day,