In HTML, one of the most basic principles of design is the distinction between content and presentation. This is important because using HTML gives you the chance to feed the same text to a different set of clients, who will then format the text according to their preferences. Take for example a cellular phone’s browser. It does not have the same capability as a desktop browser as Mozilla Firefox. As a case in point, a browser may not make a full visual display as it reads the user a document.

It is therefore important that HTML efficiently renders a document’s meaning before its appearance. The important thing is HTML styling is more flexible for users. One reader will be given the choice to select his or her preferred fonts and colors instead of being fed a page’s default. To put it more simply, each user has a unique preference. A 30-year-old pilot with a perfect vision has different requirements compared to that of an 85-year-old grandmother. A colorblind user has no use for a red and green design no matter how attractive it may be. A driver using his cell phone to listen to a page while driving may not be able to comprehend a beautifully arranged table.

In effect, you don’t say that the title of this post, “Why Not CSS,” is to be formatted 10-point Trebuchet, bold, left-aligned in HTML. Instead, you refer to it as an H3 header. Well, you might have had up until Netscape introduced the font tag and several other elements that can be used for presentation. CSS, introduced by W3C, came along but might have been a little too late. Cyberspace became a host to hundreds of web pages cluttered with all kinds of presentation elements, including font, frame, and marquee.

Semantic elements, including block quote, table, img, and ul took the backseat as layout support. Admittedly, this did not work to well but for a while, we had no choice.

Fortunately, CSS empowered us to create better layouts and presentations than back when we used hacks such as frames, spacer GIFs, and image text-wraps. CSS layouts are more attractive, functional, and accessible. They are faster to download and offer better display. With some improvements, CSS-coded pages will work better under all browsers on various platforms.

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