13 June 2007

The use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in website design can impact positively upon both accessibility and search engine optimisation (SEO), an expert has claimed.

CSS will become more important for accessibility as the global use of mobile devices continues to increase, said Mikhail Tuknov, writing for HTML Goodies.

The expert cited figures revealing that one-third of the world's population will have web access via a mobile device by next year.

Furthermore, CSS can help to attract "lethargic" search spiders as tables can make Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) more difficult for them to scan, said Mr Tuknov.

"Font tags and tables make HTML code cumbersome ... if you use external CSS files to determine the design attributes, the HTML code will be clean and will create better search engine rankings," he wrote.

The World Wide Web Consortium recently released the latest working draft of the CSS Multi-Column Layout, in a bid to assist page information presentation on mobile devices.

© Adfero Ltd

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