Sometimes developers use HTML tables to control the positioning of items to create a layout in webpage. This is a very common practice but not the best one. Also W3C discourages it by saying that <table> should be used to mark up tabular data such as sign up pages with many fields but not to create page layout. To create a layout <div> tags with "css" features should be used. These are why:

 

1. By using <div> and a separate stylesheet then we don't need to repeat this definition. This leads a site that is both faster to develop and easier to maintain.

 

2. Seperate .css files are cached by the browser but not html tables. So when we use <div> with .css files we get much faster loaded web sites. This is much more important in heavily loaded websites because sending less few bytes with thousands of users means much more efficient bandwidth usage.

3. By using <div> and separate stylesheet we can define multiple different themes and style sheets that users can select by considering preferences. These preferences can be colors, pictures and layout of <div> tags. (at top, at right etc.) Especially when changing position of some columns using <table> (i.e. exchanging positions of left and right column) is much more difficult than manipulating <div> tags.

4. For different screen resolutions, especially for PDA's to adapt the output for them is very easy by defining different stylesheets. Also hiding some content (i.e. some banner) by <div> is much easier than <table>