Greater Control Of Presentation
CSS allows for more control over the presentation of your web pages. Given how little control web designers can sometimes have it’s nice to know there’s a way to get some of it back. Aside from the fact that CSS has more formatting options over HTML such as options to control the spacing and leading of text, CSS can also determine in what order the page itself displays. If you do have some heavy graphics you can place them last in your code to ensure your visitors can at least have some text to read while waiting for your grahics to load. With tables it’s all or nothing. you won’t be able to get one part of your table load before another part.
CSS also gives you greater control over different media. You can organize your code to make it easier for screen readers to follow, making for a more accessible web page. You can learn more about the Accessibility Features of CSS at the W3C.
One of the more common uses of CSS is to present the same page differently to different media is in making your documents printable. Web pages have not always been printer friendly. Using CSS it’s easy to tweak a few styles to get a completely different look on the screen and through the printer. Visitors to your site don’t need to do anything special either. They can print your pages right through the browser and get a document unburdened with background colors and images that will only waste their toner or ink.
Search Engine Optimization
While it’s not generally agreed by everyone it’s likely that CSS can help get your pages found in a search engine. Because your CSS site contains less code and has a simpler structure it’s easier to read not only for you, but also for search engine spiders. Allowing search engine spiders to get through your code faster means your web pages can be indexed faster. There’s also a chance that less code will be interpreted as text improving the keyword density of the page. With less code to muddle through it’s easier for search engine spiders to determine what the page is about. All other things being equal the web pages that use CSS to layout their design are more likely to rank higher in search engines.
The benefits of cascading style sheets are many and given the support of modern browsers there’s no excuse for not learning to use them. If everything above hasn’t convinced you consider this. Much of HTML has already been deprecated and at some point in the future it will no longer work in browsers. When that time comes many of today’s browsers will fail to display and need to be re-coded. Those that are already making use of cascading style sheets will continue to function normally.