[ic] IC vs. CSS

Grant listbox at email.com
Tue Jul 15 11:56:51 EDT 2003


> On Mon, 2003-07-14 at 11:53, Grant wrote:
> > I've started redesigning my online store and I was using CSS to
> supplement
> > my HTML when it dawned on me that I could probably be using
> something like
> > this in IC:
> >
> > variable.txt table:
> > TABLE	align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0"
> cellspacing="0" width="100%"
> >
> > page code:
> > <table __TABLE__></table>
> >
> > instead of this:
> >
> > CSS style sheet:
> > align: center;
> > border: 0;
> > cellpadding: 0;
> > cellspacing: 0;
> > width: 100%
> >
> > I wouldn't have to worry about CSS support in browsers that
> way.  I suppose
> > it would make my pages' sizes a little larger, but I really
> don't think it
> > would make much real difference to the user.
>
> In my experience most browsers today most users use browsers that work
> with CSS very well.
>
> With the idea you express to use you will triple or more the size of
> each page. Instead of defining the table once you will define it each
> time the table is created. To be more definitive, i.e
> CSS table defined once for 20 tables.
>
> 20 tables defined without CSS would be 20 times larger. The user will
> have to download and process each table which would be 20 time longer.
>
> It is enough that IC only uses CSS about 1/3 of the time for creation of
> tables, you need to do as much as you can to reduce the size.
>
> I have noticed on my site that when I have not used CSS in most areas
> that I can, users will not stay as long or go any further than the front
> page. After cleaning up and reducing the size of my pages with CSS I get
> an average user staying and hitting at least 3 to 4 pages. The results
> show in our sales.
>
> >
> > Does anyone have any words of wisdom for me before I completely
> abandon CSS
> > in my site redesign?
> >
>
> My thoughts are to go with CSS as much as you can it will almost always
> reduce a page enough to effect sales and users.
>
> > - Grant
>
> Only thing you need to do, as in all web design is check the site with
> the lowest version browser you expect to support, and just do not check
> with IE alone, try other browsers and use some form of HTML syntax
> check. If you follow the standards for CSS you will find very few
> browsers will have problems.
>
> One more suggestion is, define specific table names, do not just
> globally set all tables with one configuration, unless you have a
> default you want to see. You will run into many problems when your
> expected results are not met.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply Phillip.  I do think I'll stick
with CSS.  Thanks again!

- Grant



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