Nuno Silva

Divs instead of tables

One of the complicated things when we are doing a design is to doing it only using divs and not tables. Some of us always use tables. And why? because it’s simple? Maybe using div’s is not so dificult after all.

First, there are several reasons to use a div layout instead of a table based layout:

• Flexibility: The main reason not to use tables in the main layout of your website is, in my opinion, flexibility. Has you can see in csszengarden, using divs to divide the content, turns the page layout into a flexible layout where you can make almost everything you want without change any html. If you want change the style of your page, you change the css. This is the way it should be made.
• Separation of Concepts: Using a table based layout you are mixing two concepts: Style and Content. Why? Because using a table based layout you only need to write some xhtml (has you will see below).
• Accessibility: Div layouts are more accessibility friendly.
• SEO Optimization: A Div layout is more optimized for search engines crawls.
• Bandwidth: using divs saves bandwidth because you need less xhtml to reach your objective.

I will take has example webgames.zi-yu.com, a website whose design is integrally constituted by divs but, in it’s original form, it was made using a table.

Let´s start with the layout of the page:

As we can see in the image above, there are 4 main areas, each one divided in subareas:

• A: the main title
• B: the left menu
• C: the main content
• D: the footer

Using tables this layout would be very simple to make:

	<table>
		<tr>
			<td rowspan="2">A1</td>
			<td colspan="2">A2</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td colspan="2">A3</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td rowspan="2">B1</td>
			<td colspan="2">C1</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>C2</td>
			<td>C3</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td colspan="3">D1</td>
		</tr>
	</table>

With div’s the layout would be even simpler (and more easy to read - in my opinion, semantically correct). Let’s start by the beginning. We have 4 different areas, so we will have 4 different divs:

<div id="allContent">
	<div id="topMenu"></div>
	<div id="leftMenu"></div>
	<div id="mainContent"></div>
	<div id="footer"></div>
</div>

Now that we have the sections defined, let’s take care of the sub sections:

<div id="allContent">
	<div id="topMenu">
		<div id="logo"></div>
		<div id="topMenuUp"></div>
		<div id="topMenuDown"></div>
	</div>
	<div id="leftMenu"></div>
	<div id="mainContent">
		<div id="mainMenu"></div>
		<div id="mainContentLeft"></div>
		<div id="mainContentRight"></div>
	</div>
	<div id="footer"></div>
</div>

At this point all the sections of the page are defined. We only need to apply the css style to adjust it’s position and size. In this style (and in all the styles i make) i always consider a resolution of 1024×768. For this resolution, the maximum size i use is 1000, because of the vertical scroll of the browser. Normally this scroll is hidden but when it appears, the size of the layout is reduced and the horizontal scroll appears (thing that we don’t want).

So, considering the width of the layout 1000 pixels, let’s start with the logo:

#logo {
	width:252px;
	height:110px;
	float:left;
}

#topMenuUp {
	height:20px;
	border:0px;
}

#topMenuDown {
	height:90px;
	padding-left:0px;
	text-align:center;
	border-bottom:solid 1px black;
}

What the css above will do? Normally the 2 divs are positioned by default one below the other. So we will maintain that behavior for the div’s with the id topMenuUp and topMenuDown (only the height of them will be adjusted). Regarding the div with the id logo, we need to align it to the left, so we use float:left to obtain that result.

Next, the main content and the left menu. Generally i use the following stategy: if i have several containers in the same level, i separate them inside larger divs. So, i separated the leftMenu (area B of the picture above) and the div’s in the area C. The div’s in the area C i putted them inside a larger div in order to aligned them all at the same time into the right of the leftMenu div:

#leftMenu {
	width:252px;
	float:left;
	display:block;
}

#mainContent {
	width:745px;
	float:right;
	display:block;
}

Regarding the different sections inside the div mainContent, there is a top section (area C1), that will fill mainContent top, and two other div (areas C2 and C3) that will fill the rest of the div.

So regarding the div mainMenu (area C1), we will apply the following style:

#mainMenu {
	height:48px;
	padding:0;
	margin:0;
	clear:both;
}

The clear:both style is very important. It allows the div mainMenu not to have any content at it’s left or at it’s right. So, if other div (like the ones below) have a float style applied to it, that div will appear below mainMenu div.

Because the div mainMenu has the clear:both applied, the divs mainContentLeft and mainContentRight can be aligned with floats without a problem:

#mainContentLeft {
	float:left;
	width:584px;
}

#mainContentRight {
	float:right;
	width:160px;
}

Finally the footer. To this div i’ll just apply a clear:both style just to guaranty that no other div will overlap it:

#footer {
	height:48px;
	clear:both;
}

And that’s it, a layout that, at first sight, would be difficult to be made with divs, but, with simple css, it becomes very simple.

In conclusion, using divs, floats, clears and widths you can make almost any layout you want.

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