Why use CSS instead of Tables?

Question

Why is CSS better than Tables, and where I can learn CSS!?

Answer 1

Refer to this site, actually its a "must look" site for designers http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/

Answer 2

Look at HTML tags. You have paragraph tags, heading tags, emphasize tags, blockquotes, and so on. Notice how you don't have tags for red text, or big text, or text with a lot of space in between lines. That should give you a big hint about HTML's purpose: to indicate the semantical structure of a document. That's why all these “div” layouts are no better than table layouts; they miss the point.

CSS is used to design layout. HTML table tags should only be used to indicate tabular data.

Here's a resource you probably want: http://www.alvit.de/handbook/ . Spend some time in the daily css reading section. Mezzoblue, Alistapart, and 456bereastreet are good sites to read.

Answer 3

CSS helps on any kind of output device and invisible if done correctly, but use of tables only helping the layout on a graphical screen that runs somewhat aging but still decent browsers like IE 3 and NN 3.

Since I fancy myself as learnt intermediate I go straight to W3C's website and read up standard unannotated specification; but to a beginner http://www.w3school.org is a good place to start.

Answer 4

CSS separates the instructions from the content and therefore pages load faster and with fewer errors. Tables are still OK for tabular data but are not recommended for layout.
A good tutorial can be followed at the link below.

Answer 5

Because with CSS you have more control over the look - the location and many other options.

CSS is like clothes - they look good.

Tables are plain - which there isn't much you can do to change the look of them other then the size and width.
Here is a site to look at http://www.decloak.com/Dev/CSSTables/CSS_Tables_01.aspx