Tables or DIVs for webpage design...

[Johnnyboy]

I am working on my html and CSS skills and have a serious question.

What are the disadvantages of using tables for the basic structure of a page and then using CSS to do all the formatting?

My plan is to create a basic html layout and CSS structure and then turn it into a joomla template.

HELP!
And thank you for your time and knowledge.

[Jordan]

I know one advantage of using pure CSS (rather than tables) is the ability to change the appearance of your website by a single click. For example the color buttons at the top of this website. That is just the color but you could change the way the entire site looked very easily.

Other than that and what was discussed here: <div> instead of <table> I'm unsure what the advantages are.

I know one major disadvantage of CSS is that IE does a very bad job of parsing it so your site may look good in every browser except the most used one.

[Johnnyboy]

Thanks Jordan... I checked out that other posts and some others on the forum. They were helpful.

I'm gonna give divs a shot and I'm sure I'll have more questions.

[Kaabi]

From what I know about CSS, it is best to stick with that for all formatting, since you can't do so much with so little. As Jordan says, color change with a click.

[ETbyrne]

Don't be so quick to shoot down table based designs! You can use CSS with table based designs too you know! For instance, for the navigation at the top of this page the designer used a layout like this:

<ul>
<li><a href="#">Link1</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link2</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Link...</a></li>
</ul>

You could also use a table for this, like so:

<table><tr>
<td><a href="#">Link 1</a></td>
<td><a href="#">Link 2</a></td>
<td><a href="#">Link...</a></td>
</tr></table>

I'm not saying that tables are better, just that both methods would work fine.