The Advantages of CSS3+DIV

By utilizing CSS3 and DIV tags you reduce markup code, speed up page downloads, separate content from its visual presentation, and bring your code close to W3C standards compliance, all the while making your website more attractive to search engine spiders.

As we surf the massive network of the Web, we are able to appreciate several page layouts via different websites. These websites run the gamut of classical but highly effective two and three column designs, to those exotic and truly original designs which seem not to fit into any specific category.

For several years, Web designers have been firmly sticking to table based layouts, achieving fluid and consistent looks by utilizing complex table nesting techniques, gif spacers and other popular design techniques. At present table layouts still continue to have a strong presence on the Web, since it provides comprehensive cross-browser compatibility. Tables are well supported elements for browsers, and that’s an extraordinarily powerful reason to use them for Web page layouts. However, this strong compatibility comes with an extra added expense. Typically, nested tables introduce lots of additional markup, increase file size, download times and server queries when using graphics as spacers, even if they are cached later.

Extra HTML forces the relevant content farther down in the source code, making it far less likely that a search spider will give Web pages a high “relevance” score for the keywords. Now with the use of CSS3 and DIV tags, we can achieve the exact same table layout effects, reduce our markup code noticeably, achieve faster page downloads and separate content from its visual presentation. We are growing closer to standards-compliant code, and our Web pages are more attractive to search engine spiders.

The advantages of using CSS3 and DIV tags are plentiful, and certainly are appealing to many Web designers as contemporary browsers add more reliable support.