CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a set of styles or rules used to define how a webpage or the whole website is going to be formatted. It was introduced in order to standardize the ways through which web browsers deciphered webpage formatting. Cross browser compatibility was another important factor which led to its beginning. It was impossible to creatively design anything if the designers had to worry all the time about the compatibility of what they were designing. CSS has proved to be a very successful and necessary technique. CSS layouts have become commonplace due to its increased compatibility with over 99% of browsers.
A CSS based website has become almost indispensable in today’s website development. Style sheets provide many advantages for websites and more and more people are converting their webpages to a CSS layout. Its importance cannot be denied at all and its value is increasing day by day. Here are some of the most important advantaged of having a CSS based website:
- It’ll save you money by reducing bandwidth costs. If you are using a CSS based layout for your website pages, your files could be reduced to a much smaller size than of those websites which use tabular layouts. For a high traffic website, this is very economical since smaller file sizes mean lower bandwidth costs. Additionally, CSS can be used to replace JavaScript image rollovers. This will allow an overall decrease of page size.
- It increases the search engine rankings for a website because the source code is more accessible to the search engines. Also, content is suitably placed and has a greater density. Higher rankings would mean more visitors coming to the website, which will in turn increase the chances of potential customers coming to your site. This could help to boost your sales and revenue.
- CSS results in faster download speed which will attract and retain customers to spend more time on your site. Thus, it will lead to increased usability.
- CSS based layouts require less coding which means page loading times are fairly decreased and the content to code ratio increases. This also means that search engine spiders can read more content and less code when indexing.
- It can also help in downloading content before the images which will definitely be appreciated by your users.
- A single Cascading Style Sheet can be used on multiple pages which mean that once a style sheet has been read by a browser it doesn’t need to be reloaded. This also results in faster downloading.
A CSS based website is more compatible with various browsers than the table layout website. This can increase your reach which would help attain more potential customers.
Despite the fact that Internet Explorer (newest version being IE 7) is not 100% compliant, it is compliant enough that CSS based websites allow designers and web developers to build true cross browser compatible web applications with less hassle.
- Use of style sheets to control layout and presentation could prove far easy and user-friendly than a table based layout. This can’t be done without your site being CSS based.
- Marking and listing things properly would be very difficult without a CSS layout because in its absence, a list would have plain bullets and odd spacing.
- CSS based designs are more search engine friendly, efficient, effective and easy to manage.
- CSS based designs could do better because of the aspect of accessibility. CSS based layout allows a simple HTML markup that can be understood and accessible by anything and anyone.
- Multiple versions of the site can be used to meet special needs. There are innumerable choices for colour schemes and text sizes. It makes the site more handicapped friendly, especially for the visually impaired and search engine friendly as well.
- CSS based websites are more aesthetically designed and shaped.
- CSS is said to be representing the technology of the future.
- If CSS is correctly used, you only have to make one change on one page to carry out changes you desire on others with the same formatting. This gives consistency to all the webpages of your website.
- Your web site can be redesigned easily by changing the style sheet.
- The structure and content management of a website can be defined using CSS. Also, a single CSS sheet can organize the font, positioning, colour and style information of an entire website.
- CSS makes it flexible for certain elements like web links or columns to be positioned, replaced or removed. Thus, it reduces the risks associated with a website’s maintenance.
So, if you are thinking of creating your own website, it is advised that you build a CSS based website instead of one having a table layout. If you already have a website built on a table layout, you can convert it to a CSS layout. Changing your website’s layout from table to CSS can be time-consuming and demanding especially in case of huge websites but it would prove worthwhile once you are done with it. Etrix Technology Limited can help you in the redesign and redevelopment of your existing website. Contact us today and we can help you make your own CSS based website.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:24 am
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