[thelist] An argument for CSS that a client can appreciate

[Richard Bennett]

Hi,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua Olson" <joshua at waetech.com>

Ideally you shouldn't need to do all this explaining anyway - they should
just trust your judgement.
But then again, maybe you've started the uphill battle of getting other
desingers to change their habbits...

> The basic premise is this:
>
> Search engines have better success indexing pages that rely heavily on css
> for presentation because there's a lot less garbage html on the page.  The
> content is therefore less chopped up, the content is closer to the top of
> the document, and the page weight is much smaller.
I don't think this is a correct comparison, you compare badly designed sites
with well-designed ones.
Putting a table in a well-designed site will not make it less search-engine
friendly, and css-sites can also be bloated.

> Thoughts?  Are there any major fallacies in this argument?  Note: the
above
> text didn't even mention accessibility or syndication of content or any of
> that nerdy stuff because I've found most business owners don't know or
don't
> care about that stuff when they go hunting for a person to make their
> website.
You are arguing for good page design, not necessarily css or tables based
design.

I wouldn't even use the words 'css' or 'tables', they're too nerdy already.
I try to look at the whole thing from a more positive view-point.
So my work doesn't 'degrade well' but is 'forwards-compatible', and is in
line with International accessibility laws.
It incorporates search-engine considerations from the start, eliminating the
need for expensive SEO later on.
I present the difference in design between new and old browsers as an
advantage, showing how older browsers will look the same as the very latest
mobile and PDA browsers, without having to redesign everything for each new
browser.
I have screenshots of the way the design can look in various browsers, PDAs,
Web TV, Mobile browsers, etc.
(can send if you need)
I don't argue for css versus tables, but for good design (code-wise) .


Richard.