Aug 24 2007 at 11:17am
Can a Great Website use Tables for Layout?
Laura wrote me and asked why the three sites I have discussed so far in my Great Websites series use tables for layout. Good question! I did notice this about them when I first wrote up my crtiques, but it didn’t affect my decision to include them in the series (although I hadn’t put 2+2 together and figured out that all three were table based). Why? Because I was already drawn in to the site. That’s what really matters – the user experience. Who cares if the site is using tables for layout when the experience is that good?
Well, okay, I care a little bit. I was disappointed to see that, but it still didn’t leave too much of a dent in my overall impressions of the sites. I was intruiged by the methods they used to pull the user in and market their message. I think these are things that we all need to pay more attention to. There are other imperfections I could have pointed out in my reviews, but I chose not to because I wanted to focus on the key message.
Web designers often get so caught up in the code that they forget the bigger picture. I’m guilty of that too. We agonize over the finest detail of the mark-up, and delight over new CSS techniques and smarter ways of doing things. This happens with other web professionals too — we’re not alone. It’s how we become good at what we do. But while we’re focusing on the finer details of the code, who is worrying about the user experience? For the lucky few who work on specialized teams it may be someone else’s job. But for many of us it falls through the cracks.
I’m certainly not saying that it’s okay to use tables for layout. Of course it’s not the best way to design a web site, especially if someone is paying for your services. I would have been even more enthusiastic about these sites if they didn’t have those tables in there. I’m just saying that there are many more important quesitons we need to be asking ourselves: How can we communicate better? How can we market better? How can we create a better user experience? How can we pull the user in? How can we create an emotional connection?
Jeff Croft August 29th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Well-said!
Alojamento September 10th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Amazon uses tables for layout, even the minimalistic design of Google uses tables for layout – CSS is good for a lot of things but at this point I feel that it’s not as flexible as it should be. Table-based designs take less work and are more predictable on browsers.
Megan September 10th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I’d really rather not get into a discussion about whether tables are bad or not. That wasn’t really the point of this post. Amazon and Google wouldn’t necessarily fit my definition of “Great Websites” here. However, they do help to prove the point I was trying to make in that the CSS/tables question isn’t exactly pivotal in the overall success of a website. I think all of these sites would be better served by a CSS layout but, again, that wasn’t the point