Comparison of CSS and HTML Technologies advance so rapidly that it seems that as soon as a technology becomes widely accepted, it is replaced by something newer and superior. Technologies in the field of web design are no exception. As web-related hardware and software components have become faster, more reliable, and easier to use, the web has exploded with new websites leading to a dramatic increase in web usage around the world. But as web designers and the public know, the web is still in great need of improvement. Long loading times, inconsistent page rendering, and a myriad of other problems plague the web, creating endless hassles and frustrations. However, an emerging technology, cascading style sheets, could eliminate many of the web's biggest problems by replacing the web's primary language, Hypertext Markup Language (or HTML). HTML doesn't work well as a web page design language, and I never intended to. It was originally intended to be used as a language that contained very simple content for the page, but was not supposed to greatly affect its appearance (Rotter, Web). However, when the potential of HTML to define the layout and appearance of web pages was discovered, web developers began to invent new HTML code for these purposes. "The result?" writes Steve Mulder in an article for Adobe, "A mess. HTML has been diverted from its original mission, and we still aren't getting the presentation control we want. Plus, it's a pain to force HTML to do the presentation. " Is this the cause of the HTML problems though? The vast majority are derived from HTML tables, used to control the layout of the Web page. Tables in HTML are similar to tables in most computer applications. They consist of one or more... half of the sheet... May 2001. Jupitermedia. November 19, 2003 .Mulder, Steve. Style sheets: why should I care? and Adobe Systems. November 19, 2003 .New features highlighted. September 5, 2003. Adobe systems. November 30, 2003 ."New CSS stylesheet features in Dreamweaver MX." Dreamweaver Tech Note. September 24, 2002. Macromedia. November 19, 2003 .(now unavailable. Try this link for comparable information: http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/productinfo/features/static_tour/css/) Web Standards (XHTML and CSS). nd Slanted design. November 19, 2003 .(may not be available)