There was a time when the browser called Netscape Navigator 4 was ruling the web browser market. During that time designers planned layouts with the help of tables. If you see a layout in a webpage, it is actually a table. For uncomplicated designs also designers had to use tables. Using one or two tables in a webpage wouldn't be a problem but it required more than 10 tables at times. Moreover, the one table had to be placed within another table.
Dreamweaver even today use such tables actually meant for tabular representation of information to design their web templates. CSS was not supported by Netscape Navigator 4 and therefore there was not much use for CSS in this browser. Soon the war between the browsers settled and Internet Explorer established itself as the winner. Internet Explorer was more compliant with W3C and it supported tables.
CSS was again used for web designing. There was no problem using tables to substitute for layout but it just didn't feel right. It is a wonder that no other web design language developed soon enough to solve this problem. Many web design programs did come later but the gap between necessity and lack of technology was wide for several years. CSS came to be used for designing layout for WebPages and this also had the additional of being recognized by search engines. CSS has been a subject of contention ever since it became known because even today web browsers support CSS with certain limits.
While solely relying on CSS was not a solution for layout problems and web design issues because web browsers have their own way of representing WebPages at times and the display might be slightly different. CSS follows a set of rules which does not apply with all the browsers. Designers who are already used to designing with the help of tables will find it difficult to work with CSS.
They will find it confusing and might try to use the same tabled principles of designing while using CSS and will get everything wrongly done. CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 are the latest versions of CSS web design standards that have more applications inbuilt and designers have to just experiment with the many features to make full use of it. Vertical positioning and other problems like full-length footers were rectified in the later versions of CSS.
CSS layouts have been used for widely nowadays for web designing purposes. It has in fact completely replaced table- based layouts. Those who are using are finding CSS easier and are gradually switching to it. Internet explorer 6 is considered to be the biggest hit of web browsers after Netscape Navigator 4. Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 have released and they are ruling the browser market with their excellent features. CSS has combined with XHTML to create better solutions for web designing and there seems to be no limit for its expansion. The World Wide Web has created a lot of demand in terms of design and understanding between the browsers and the web design languages.
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