As an avid Firefox supporter I’m very pleased to see that as of May 2009 Firefox has taken the lead as most used browser.  At 47.7% Firefox is being used by almost half of all computer users.  I raise my glass in cheers!

I am equally pleased to see that users of Internet Explorer 6 has finally dropped below the 15% mark.  I stopped support for this defunct and completely insecure browser at the end of last year.  I look forward to it’s complete fade out.

Every so often I will get a comment from a client or a technical inquiry from someone who states that their site is not displaying properly.  Something may not be centered appropriately or “sitting way off to the right”.  My first question to any inquiry of this type is “What browser are you using?”  I don’t get these inquiries very often thankfully, but when I do it’s almost always a reply of “Internet Explorer 6″.

I instantly advise these people that if they must use Internet Explorer at all that they upgrade to version 7 immediately.  Here are the reasons why.

As of January 10, 2009, Secunia reports 142 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6, 22 of which are unpatched, some of which are rated moderately critical in severity.

As a result of its many problems, some security experts, including Bruce Schneier, recommend that users stop using Internet Explorer for normal browsing, and switch to a different browser instead. Several notable technology columnists have suggested the same, including the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg,  and eWeek’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols.  On July 6, 2004, US-CERT released an exploit report in which the last of seven workarounds was to use a different browser, especially when visiting untrusted sites.

In 2006, citing its lack of security, PC World named Internet Explorer 6 number 8 on their list of the “25 worst tech products of all time”.

In addition to the security issues, Internet Explorer 6 only has partial support for CSS Level 1.  It’s 2009…we’re already using CSS Level 3.  THIS is why most compliant and modern websites and blogs do not display properly in IE6.  It’s also why if you are to stubborn to stop using it that you have to pay people like me more to create alternate style sheets to “force” it work for you.

Seriously, if the security aspect alone isn’t enough to make you switch…

More browser talk coming another day.  I have lots of great things to say about Firefox 3.

Once upon a time, way before most of us were building compliant websites using CSS and divs, tables were all the rage.  Whenever we wanted to place text to the right of an image – BAM! Tables.  A series of images in a row?  Tables.  Specifically spaced paragraphs?  TABLES!

The problem with this “solution” however is that the real intention of tables was for “tabular data”.  It was not developed as a way for designers to position items on a page…although it was often being used for such.  (and still is in some cases – I’ll explain why later).

There are many reasons why you shouldn’t be using tables for layout.

1. Tables result in slow page loading times.
2. They cause accessibility issues for handicapped people – namely those using screen readers.
3. They make it MUCH harder to do redesigns.
4. They affect page rankings in search engines.
5. The code necessary to create tables is way more complicated in comparison to CSS.

Here is a great reference site for Why Tables Are Bad For Layout.

Now, having explained why tables are bad for layout, what can you do to build a site correctly?  You’ll need to learn CSS.  This may seem like a daunting task, especially if you are so used to building with tables and you like going with what you know.  However if you learn and keep up with the changing pace of CSS you will not only be doing yourself a favor but also all those who view your site/s on the web.

People are unfortunately impatient.  In most cases you have very little time to capture their attention.  If your visitors have to wait more than 15 seconds for your page to load chances are they have already clicked away from your site.  CSS allows you to create compliant web pages that load quickly and cleanly.  And if you ever want to change the look and feel site-wide, you can do so by editing one css file (versus editing every page of your site).

A good reference site for CSS is W3Schools.  If you tend to learn quicker working in a trainer led course, I offer group trainings online a few times per year.  I also offer one-on-one online training in Dreamweaver CS4, basic CSS, HTML and WordPress.  Click here for more information.

Earlier in this post I mentioned that there are still some cases where using tables is still “acceptable”.

One case of course is for tabular data.  Not sure if what you have is tabular data?  Ask yourself these questions:

• “Do the rows or columns of information share a common attribute?”
• “If I changed the order of the rows or columns, would it still make sense?”
• “If I transposed the axes of the table (made rows into columns and vice-versa) would it still make sense?”

If the answer to the above is generally “Hrm…I guess not,” then you shouldn’t be using a table. Source

The other case is when working with email based newsletters.  Unfortunately, many of the email clients in existence today are way behind the times when it comes to compliance.  Most do not yet work properly with CSS, so we are forced to use tables for layout in this case.  Some email clients support CSS more than others, but the idea behind email newsletters (aka ezines) is to reach everyone with minimal display errors.

It’s a rule of thumb if you are sending an HTML newsletter to also send along a TEXT version in the event that you are sending to someone whose email client does not support HTML email or is set not to display HTML for security reasons.

So to finalize, if you are still using tables for website layout there are plenty of reasons why you should learn to implement CSS.  You can still use your love of table layouts for creating ezines and get your fix there.