Swapped a table-based layout for CSS grids on a 90s site rebuild and the difference was night and day

I was working on restoring my old Geocities tribute page last month, it had this massive nested table structure that took forever to load on dial-up. Switched to a basic CSS grid with fixed width columns and the page rendered in like 2 seconds instead of 15. The old tables were a nightmare for alignment too, everything shifted if you resized the browser. Has anyone else noticed how much smoother old site content works with modern layout tricks?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_wendy19d ago

Lol right? Tables were basically holding the whole internet hostage with their janky alignment issues. Now it's like "oh wait I can just tell the browser where to put stuff instead of praying to the table gods.

wesley_hart19d ago

Man I was totally in the same boat until last year. I always thought tables were the only way to keep things lined up proper because that's how we learned it back in the day. But I rebuilt my old Angelfire site for a laugh and tried CSS grid on a whim. It was crazy how much cleaner the code looked and how fast everything snapped into place. Now I honestly can't go back to tables for anything more than like, actual spreadsheet data. It really does make that old content feel way more modern without losing the retro vibe.