4 replies to this topic

[Foops]

From the standpoint of a Search Engine Spider, is there really a difference? I've recently rebuilt a clients site and built it in <div> tags and not <table> tags...

Will this site really benefit from 'clean coding'?

Please inform me...

Thanks, Ted

[linux_lover]

Will this site really benefit from 'clean coding'?

Did a designer really say that? How far are we removed from the old 28.8k modems

The point of using DIVS from a search engine / user point of view is:
Smaller file size less code == less bytes == faster loading
its more accessible to screenreaders...
The fact that the pages are smaller in file size means more efficient spidering - which can only be good.
Its more logical, spock. Tables are for tabular data, not design - as the W3C specifications say.
Another fact about tables is that the content will only appear on the page after the whole table(s) has loaded - whereas DIVS load based on the order of code.

I am sure there are more.... This is coming from a bloke who was pro tables about 2 months ago :S

[Ron Carnell]

Convert a single-cell table into a DIV and you'll save about 22 bytes. Convert a two-cell table into two DIVs and your savings could drop down to 20 bytes. You'll potentially continue to lose another two bytes for every cell after that, until soon enough your tableless design just might result in a *larger* file size rather than a smaller one.

There are a lot of very good reasons to eliminate unnecessary tables. IMO, file size and SEO aren't on that list of good reasons.

[linux_lover]

Accessibility and order of loading are my main two....

I was making a point about efficiency with the size bit.
What are yours Ron?

[Ron Carnell]

Accessibility is a good reason to avoid unnecessary tables, LL. I'm not sure I would agree that order of loading is a reason, and I don't think size is a good reason, either. Efficiency? If you're talking about browser efficiency ("content will only appear on the page after the whole table(s) has loaded"), I really don't see a lot of difference. The browser still has to compute size, location, and z-index of a DIV before it can start displaying it.

If you're talking about development efficiency, however, then I wholeheartedly agree that using unnecessary tables in a design can be an impediment.

Best I can tell, though, to return to Ted's question, from the standpoint of a search engine spider there really isn't any difference between tables and DIVs. At the end of the day, there's a whole lot of table-based pages ranking very high in the SERPs.