Recently I have tried to make the change from setting up websites in table form to that of using divides. It has been a difficult transition as most of my life I have used the table to do all of my work. I must say that my early impression of the <div> tag is that I am liking it a lot. There are many reasons for this:

The most important difference I see in this is that the use of the <div> tag has reduced the amount of coding that is needed. When using the table to set up web pages I was seeing the code getting longer and longer as I tried to create a website with some graphical pizazz. This really got on my nerves when it came time to make changes, whether it was with the page or with the style sheet. Since I have used the <div> tag I have found it much easier for me to find what I need in the code and in the style sheet.

The page load time is much quicker. This is helpful for many reasons. The most significant is that this allows me to use cleaner images. When I had to worry about the code I found myself making the images smaller and smaller in size. Now with the <div> tag being used I can keep my images cleaner. The reason for this is that the page does not have to work through as much code.

The search engines seem to like the cleaner code as well. They like to go through the site and find what they are looking for. They have no use for tables, especially when it is table after table.

In summary, I have become a fan of the <div> tag, even though it has been a headache understanding the way the site should be laid out and what needs to be done with the stylesheet to get it to work correctly.

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Tags: help tips, Web Design —