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I am curious as to what are all the advantages of using DIV's over Tables and vice versa.

Thanks, XaiSoft

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Just do a search on SO... –  jeroen Feb 18 '09 at 14:06
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marked as duplicate by cgreeno, John Topley, annakata, Xaisoft Feb 18 '09 at 14:10


2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

This question gets asked a lot. Take a look at these:




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lol guess I should have searched first. –  Xaisoft Feb 18 '09 at 14:10
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Here's another one:

To summarize all those links:

It's not div vs tables as much as it is semantics vs tables. Div and tables (used appropriately) are each only a small part of a semantic layout.

There a number of reasons to use a good semantic layout. Most of them come down to supporting "fringe" browsers, but you might be surprised how many of those there are:

  • Screen readers and other accessible browsers (and if you work for the US government, your sites are required to work with these)
  • Mobile browsers (smart phones)
  • Older browsers (IE6 and earlier, netscape 4.x and earlier). There's still a lot of IE6 out there.
  • Google will do a better job indexing and ranking a semantic layout, and the google bot is just another kind of browser.

Also, you'll get better separation of content from function, making it easier to maintain the site between a separate designer and programmer

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