Design - Website Layout
The web designer has no control over the default settings of the web visitor's computer, such as: the web browser used, monitor size/resolution, font size and types. However, careful coding can allow the web designer to override these defaults to have more control over how a webpage is rendered.
Tables:
Starting in the 1990s, website layouts were created using 'tables' consisting of 'rows' and 'cells'. Simple tables were effective for rudimentary websites. In order to create more robust and complicated web layouts, designers started nesting multiple tables into one another. This would create larger amounts of code, resulting in slower download time. This also created greater barriers of code that the web crawlers would have to sift through, in order to find pertinent content and key words for the search engines. (Many web templates in Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors still use an exclusively table-based layout read more here).
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): The use of a CSS-based web architecture has been gaining more momentum in the last few years. This allows for a simpler layout design with faster download. CSS also creates a layout for text content that is easier for web crawlers and search engines to find.