It was just the first quarter of this year when I started using pure CSS implementations in some of the websites I did. Table less they say, as part of “Web 2.0” is the current trend in website design and development today. Well, contrary, when you’ll view on the source codes of Yahoo, MSN and Google, you will still see “table” codes but very minimal (as of this writing), I think it’s more on the prerogative of their developers. But if I’m not mistaken about a couple of years ago, their codes were still in table format. In fairness, as a designer (and sometimes a developer), myself, seeing the “table” code is reasonable enough. They have to use it, I think. Nevertheless, as I said, it’s the common “norm” now in website design and development. Although for reasons of speed and if the client is not too much sensitive in the use of such trend in coding, I still use tables for other projects.
Well, going back to the topic per se, when using ID or CLASS, I think it would be up to the coder. As a basic concept, a CLASS can be use as many times as one need it in one kind of tag (i.e. <td>) while an ID can be applied in all kinds of tags that uses it (i.e. <td>, <table>, <font>, etc.). For me, I use ID and CLASS depending on the usage I know it will fit in my code. I sometimes use it to give value to the design of my code and even for the reason of Search Engine Optimization, also for deployment purposes in the web. I have read a book sometime ago that for faster loading of page, you need to consider the number of letters and spaces being read or recognized by browsers. This is similar to reducing the size of an image in order for any browser to load such particular image faster.
So, as I have said in the previous part of this article, I think it would be choice of the coder or programmer to what will he use if its ID or CLASS. But maybe, many will go in contradiction to my opinion. Well it’s just an opinion anyway, that’s why it is called an opinion. LOL.
Jefferson Danipog