> ASP.NET Basics > Web Page Standards, Layouts and Usability > Creating Columns Using CSS

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2. Creating Columns Using CSS

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When developing a professional web page, it is a good practice to divide the web into three or four sections. These sections include a header for the top of the web page, a content are in the middle and footer at the bottom. These sections can then be divided into smaller sub sections.

For example:

The header section can be further divided to include a banner, an advertisement, menu or even breadcrumb lists and the content area can be further divided into two or three columns.

The alternative to this was to create a large table with merged cells, spanned columns, and rows. This can be still used, but professional web designers do not practice this anymore due to the following reasons:

  • HTML table tags are meant to be used to present tabular data in a meaning full way and not as page layout design.
  • HTML table tags are not user friendly as it is hard to navigate and interpret content when it is put in cells.
  • HTML table tags take time to render when it becomes large and complicated.

The following ASP.NET tutorial helps you learn some of the significant of layout features.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - HTML Web Standards
        Chapter 1.1 - Visual Studio and Standards
        Chapter 1.2 - External XHTML validation
» Chapter 2 - Creating Columns Using CSS
        Chapter 2.1 - Page Layout using <div> tags
        Chapter 2.2 - ASP.NET Document Outline
        Chapter 2.3 - Style Rules for <div> tags
Chapter 3 - Improving Web Page Performance
        Chapter 3.1 - Turning off ViewState
        Chapter 3.2 - Caching Content
                Chapter 3.2.1 - Page-Level Caching
                Chapter 3.2.2 - Cache Period
Chapter 4 - Accessibility Requirements
        Chapter 4.1 - Image Alternate Text
        Chapter 4.2 - Avoiding Table for Layouts
        Chapter 4.3 - Client-side Scripts
        Chapter 4.4 - Validating Web Accessibility
Chapter 5 - Increasing Web Page Usability
        Chapter 5.1 - Tab Order
        Chapter 5.2 - Access Keys
        Chapter 5.3 - Default Focus and Default Buttons

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