


What are slices, and how were they traditionally used for web design layouts?
Jun 13, 2025 am 12:04 AMSlices in Adobe Photoshop were used to divide web layouts into sections for exporting images and generating HTML tables. They allowed designers to create rectangular areas around components like logos or navigation bars, export them with custom settings, and produce table-based layouts that mirrored the design. Common uses included exporting headers, footers, and background graphics while speeding up development. The process involved slicing a design, exporting files and HTML, and arranging images using table cells. Though outdated due to modern CSS layouts like Flexbox and Grid, slices were essential when browsers lacked consistency and CSS was limited.
Slices were a feature in Adobe Photoshop (and earlier tools like ImageReady) that allowed designers to divide a web layout into smaller, manageable sections. These sections could then be exported as individual images or turned into HTML and CSS later on.
Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, slices were commonly used for building web layouts because CSS wasn’t advanced enough to handle complex positioning. Designers would create a full webpage mockup in Photoshop, slice it up, and developers would piece those slices back together using tables in HTML.
Here’s how they worked and why people used them:
What Exactly Were Slices?
Slices are rectangular areas defined in a design tool that let you export parts of a composition separately. In Photoshop, you could draw a slice around a navigation bar, logo, content area, or any visual component.
- You could create user slices manually or auto-slices based on layers
- Each slice could have its own export settings—like JPEG, PNG, or GIF
- When exporting, the tool generated an HTML table that lined up all the image pieces
This made it easy to turn a visual design into something that could display on a browser, even if the developer didn’t write custom HTML or CSS.
Why Slices Were Used for Web Layouts
Before modern CSS layouts (like Flexbox or Grid), developers relied heavily on HTML tables to control page structure. That made slices a natural fit—they could be exported into table-based layouts that mirrored the original design.
Common uses included:
- Exporting headers, footers, and sidebars as separate images
- Handling complex background graphics that couldn’t be easily coded
- Speeding up development by skipping hand-coding for basic sites
It was especially popular when working with clients who wanted pixel-perfect results and didn’t care how it was done under the hood.
How Slice-Based Layouts Worked in Practice
Once a designer sliced a layout, they’d typically use Photoshop’s “Export As” or the older "Save for Web" feature to generate files and HTML.
The result looked something like this:
- A folder full of small image files (buttons, backgrounds, icons)
- An HTML file with
<table> tags arranging those images side by side<li>Inline styles or attributes controlling spacing and alignment</li> <p>Developers would sometimes tweak the generated code to clean it up or add functionality, but the layout was essentially a collage of images stitched together with table cells.</p> <h3 id="They-re-Outdated-Now-But-Not-Without-Reason">They’re Outdated Now, But Not Without Reason</h3> <p>Today, slices aren’t used much at all. Modern web design relies on CSS for layout, typography, and responsive behavior. Tools like Figma or Sketch don’t even offer slices anymore because we no longer build pages by cutting up images.</p> <p>Still, slices had their place when browsers were inconsistent and CSS was limited. For many years, they helped bridge the gap between design and development—even if the result wasn’t always semantic or accessible.</p> <p>Basically, slices were a practical workaround for a time when the web wasn’t built for designers.</p> </table>
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