Graphic Spacers RIP

Before CSS started to become widely used for designing and developing web site, the only way to enforce consistent spacing between various elements of web pages was often to use graphics as spacers. These graphics were usually transparent .gif files or images that blended in with the page's background color. Most of the time, a sophisticated HTML table was created to hold content and spacer graphics in place.

Now that CSS is in wide use, it's time to put those graphic spacers (and most of the layout tables) to their grave. They served an important purpose, but they also made pages a complicated web of nested tables that required a lot of HTML code. This made the pages difficult to maintain, and the code was often very difficult to read and understand.

Another big benefit of refitting pages with simpler layout tables (or no tables) is that the pages use simpler HTML code and will draw faster on the screen. And because we're not using as many graphics, the pages will also download faster.

There's no good reason to wait ... site administrators should begin using CSS for most of their page layout, and they should seriously consider re-fitting existing pages to use as much CSS spacing as possible.