Do Spacer Images Make your Site FAT?

Recently I read an article or statement either on a website or in a book that was downgrading the use of nested HTML tables and promoting layout positioning using CSS instead. Although we believe and support the idea of external CSS and CSS-P, the use of pure CSS-P technology for a website that will receive a diverse group of traffic is just not logical nor effective - yet. When you see the majority of the top dogs in the industry such as those listed below using this concept, then you can be sure that your site will benefit from it as well.

mapquest.com
infospace.com
amazon.com
yahoo.com
ebay.com
microsoft.com
cnn.com
weather.com
match.com
nytimes.com
webshots.com
pogo.com
about.com
dell.com
tripod.com
real.com
expedia.com
iwon.com

One of the reasons to avoid using HTML tables which was stated in this article/book is that the spacer images used to "hold open" a table cell caused the page to load slower. Wow! I instantly wondered about the author of this misinformation.

For those who are not familiar with the spacer image, it is a transparent .gif file that is 1x1 pixel in size. It weighs a smidgen of 1KB. Regardless of how much a spacer image is stretched to prevent the collapse of a table cell, it will still weigh the same amount (a smidgen of 1 KB) and will have very little effect on the page load time. Even if you have 12 spacer gifs that are stretched 100x100 pixels, they will still weigh a smidgen of 1KB each and you will likely see no difference at all in page load because you used them.

Related Articles:

Should you Use CSS-P (Table-Less Layouts) on Your Web Site?

Web Template Designs: FAT vs. PHAT