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HTML HTML Tables Rows and Cells

Why is it considered bad practice to use tables markup a website?

Does it have negative affordances? Just trying to get more transparency on this whole technique.

3 Answers

Hi James,

Here are some reasons why table layouts are bad:

  • Tables are semantically incorrect markup for layout.
  • Tables are horrible for screen readers.
  • Tables break text copying on some browsers.
  • Tables are usually more bytes of markup. (Longer to download)
  • Tables lock you into the current design and make redesigns MUCH harder than semantic HTML+CSS.
  • Tables prevent certain layouts from working within them
  • Once you know CSS, table-based layouts usually take more time to implement.

Hope that helps.

Also , tables were used when the web started to layout a webpage . Now that we have CSS , webpages are layout with it . Tables are good in some place of the web , but never for a layout . Plus you can style one cell different than other and all the above what Michael Jurgensen said .

Just remember that it's only bad practice to use tables for design / layout. If you have tabular data which belongs in a table, then a table would be the most correct mark up.

Yes , I agree. in other videos they will talk about it more :)

in colleges, in uk, they make you use dreamweaver and use tables. This is why computer science at college or any sort of it is bad .

The wb pages look terrific , ugly uh. In a way.

Much appreciated Michael Jurgensen!

No problem :)