Table-based Design

In an earlier blog, I posted several examples of good typography. In this blog I am going to rexamine these sites see if they use table-based design or CSS-based design.

http://online.wsj.com/public/us is very rich in graphics, in text, and in design. Upon researching the source file, it becomes evident that this site uses CSS-based design.

http://www.technology-blog.com/blogs/computer-blog.html is much more basic, but still visual pleasing and well organized. I looked at the source file and this site uses table-base design.

This blog website uses CSS-based design as well.

With all the wonders and ease of CSS design, we have to ask ourselves why so many sites are still using tables. What I've noticed from the sites that I've looked at is that usually sites with multiple pages are the ones using CSS-based design. This would obviously be the least time consuming method for the web developers of these sites. A site with hundreds of pages, such as my first example, would take hours, if not days, to edit with tables. But a site like the computer blog I posted isn't as dependent upon CSS as these others because it is a single page. The web developer can design it with tables without have to copy all the design information to multiple pages. Some might think that there's no point to using CSS unless you are going to have multiple pages with the same design, but in my opinion it's good to use CSS anyways because you never know if you're going to want to eventually add more pages to your site. Why make more work for yourself in the future?