Practical Web Design

Table-based layouts

Web design became more interesting with the introduction of table markups in HTML. Web designers saw the opportunity to structure their design with the original table markup (sneaky as they always are). Sites were still text heavy, but at least they could separate the content into different columns, rows, and other navigation elements. The usage of spacer GIFs, introduced in David's Siegel's book Creating Killer Sites in 1996, allowed web designers to play with white space (basically, small transparent GIFs were placed in between the content), and by incorporating a sliced image background, users would have an illusion of a simple structure, whereas in reality there was a table layout behind it. Designers could finally ...