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

[Joshua Olson]

Hi gang,

Lately I've been trying to correctly articulate an argument in favor of
creating tableless designs that a client would fully appreciate and be happy
with, even if the design looks really cruddy in some browsers (eg, NS 4.x
and basically any browser on the Mac)

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.

This argument is relying on a couple assumptions about how search engines
work:

1.  Search engines do a better job of indexing content if the content is
broken into paragraphs AND paragraphs stay fairly close to each other IN THE
SOURCE CODE.

2.  Search engines may or may not look past X number of characters in the
document for indexible content OR place considerably higher weight to
content at the top.

3.  Search engines may have short timeout's for requesting pages or give
indexing preferences to sites that respond faster.  The HTML portion of
tableless designs are typically much smaller than the tabled designs and
should load much faster.

The basic conversation I've worked out so far goes something like this:

"Search engine indexing, as you've mentioned, is one of your absolute top
priorities and the principal reason that you contacted me today.  Using a
technique introduced a couple years ago we are able to make pages that are
easier to find in search engines.  Using the same technique we are also able
to make pages that show up considerably faster, maybe as much as 10x's
faster.  There are some side-effects though.  On some browsers--older
browsers that a small number people still use--the site will not look the
same.  The information will all be there, but it will look basically like
plain text.  [pull up www.beckyolson.com (*) in NN 4.x to demonstrate the
difference].  We can make the website look approximately the same in all
major browsers, but the initial cost will be higher and the people will have
a harder time finding your site in the search engines."

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.

(*) www.beckyolson.com is in progress so please do not bother posting
critiques at this time.  :-)

<><><><><><><><><><>
Joshua Olson
Web Application Engineer
WAE Tech Inc.
http://www.waetech.com
706.210.0168