the table trick

I am interested in hearing peoples oppinions regarding the table trick. I am considering using it, but I'm worried about compatibility problems with old versions of netscape. Any thoughts, experiences or comments would be apresiated.

"trick"? I don't know what the table trick is, but is sounds spammy. Do tell.

mac was the biggest problem with it.

I think that if you use include files (move the junk off the pages) and proper coding/optimisation that you don't need to do the code trick..

If you run multiple sites it gets confusing when you go back to them to do updates.. HA.. I ran into this just recently! and thought to myself.. WHY the frell did I ever do that!

adding for St0n3y - "the table trick" is just a HTML webpage layout idea that pushes the traditional navigation code position within the code to the bottom of the "content" area.

Very simple. There are some tutorial type pages out there, I dug this one up for you...delorie.com/web/ses-hint.html

The worth of it (in my opinion) is not much if anything and it used to cause cross browser compatibility problems as well as update headaches (for me) as mentioned.

I hand't considered doe to usability issues, but since less people use old browser, I decided to see what others think of it (and update myself). Thanks

BTW Stoney, it is perfectly legitimate (as legitimate as SEO is going to be).

Use it.

It's a simple as that. There aren't any browsers that will really struggle with it - and you can code the empty cell so it's rendered properly anyway.

Sounds similar to DIV positioning, which is another (IMO) legitimate SEO "method".

"DIV positioning"? Can you explain...

I once saw a site done completely through div tags, but it was so horrible to work with, I re-did it in html tables and CSS styles.

DIV positioning requires CSS. You can see an example in the comments section of my profile.

The text is positioned on the page while showing at the top of the code.

sorry I can't really explain it much better, as I'm not an expert in the how-tos of CSS.

[I realized I probably should not have posted the URL here so I removed.]

[ Message was edited by: St0n3y 08/26/2004 11:13 am ]

Thanks stoney

What's the trick?

If you are referring to my link above I never called it a trick. Just simply positioning the text anywhere on the page while it appears at the top of the code rather than halfway down.

The div thing is like:

<div id="position underneath navigation"> here is the page content </div>

<div id="position at top of page"> navigation stuff here </div>

using CSS to specify the position of each div.


The table trick is such that the top left cell of the table has no content (and zero height), and the top right cell has the proper page content which then is the first thing the spiders see. The bottom left cell has the navigaion within, and renders normally, but appears after the content as far as spiders go.


Both methods are valid, but it is unknown how much of a boost you get from using them. Most people would not class either method as being spam.