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5 reasons for not using CSS
Published: April 29, 2005
Controversial? Maybe! Reality? Yep!
I've met enough web designers and seen enough businesses to have come up with 5 reasons for not using CSS on a commercial website. I'll try and keep the reasons as balanced as possible and explain the perspective and context the point was made in.
Reason 1 - CSS is too hard
I can relate to that. As an application developer, I know a program won't compile if there is an error. Once debugged and compiled, the program works as intended. On the surface, CSS looks straight forward but when you start to get into consistent positioning across a variety of browsers it's harder to polish than an Egyptian brick. You could argue that it's a developers duty to learn CSS but all too often I hear that people are better spending time on PHP/ASP instead. "It still looks right in IE and FireFox, so why change it?"
Reason 2 - My clients don't see the benefit
You're right, most don't, or at least understand the benefits. That's because they're too busy running the business they're good at and not interested in the source code of their website. The only benefits of a website are increased potential clients and a resource for existing ones.
Reason 3 - My market won't pay for a CSS website
Define "market". The web design industry is abundant with great designers who use Adobe Photoshop but when it comes to hand coding HTML and CSS, there are very few about. That's because of the local newspapers with little adverts from people offering sites starting from £199 and the local business groups and federations all want a lot for not very much. I blame Macromedia and Microsoft for making web pages too easy to build. Why does Microsoft Word have a "save as web page" option? A good 10 page website written in HTML Strict and CSS surely can't cost less than £1000 so maybe there's a point there as the sub £500 website market is fairly large.
Reason 4 - CSS support isn't consistent enough
So why bother eh? Well, to a degree you're right. I've recently read an article over at CVWDesign that I couldn't help but comment on, which advocated using tables for layouts and why it was commercially correct for their clients to do so. My argument was positioning isn't the problem it needs to be. Nested DIV's maybe required but they pose less of a problem than tables.
Reason 5 - My client only wants one page
So don't externally include it then. You can use CSS in the header, or even inline in you have to. You still reap the benefits of seperating style from content and creating a more usable, search engine friendly site.
Conclusion
The pattern here is that the majority of the small time designers are at the bottom end of the market so if a company want a low end website, take your pick.
I learn everday. If I haven't, I've wasted it. If you have time on your hands either learn a new skill or get some exercise. As a business, you have to stay ahead of the game and if you want an edge over a competitor, grapple with CSS and code validation. The results will be worth it.
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Comments
Clive Walker says:
Chad Holden says:
I think this is an interesting article and you make some valid points, however i would have to advocate the use of CSS for one simple reason. I control the look of thousands of pages at UofT; within a template you can link to a CSS file and can go into that file and change one hex colour your change will immediately propegate through all of your pages. Another good reason is for Printing. If you have a page that has a LOT of text, you can include a Print Media CSS file and not include your menu's and set the page widths and such, not as easy with plain tables and HTML, the text always end up getting cut off.
Paul Mason says:
Ooh! sweety..you are sooooo missing out
You're right and the nature of the small business web design market makes it difficult to spend more time (with no extra payment for this from the client) on a website using a less familiar CSS approach rather than sticking with the older tables method. I guess our 'tables-lite' method is partly dictated by our distaste for all the methods we saw that used hacks to get round various issues and so that we could use a method that used a stable outer framework. The 'tables-lite' method is more practical for us at this moment in time but we are using more pure CSS websites in some personal projects (normally these are a bit of a test area for us).