| re: CSS sucks for layout
I'm with the Doppeldoctor on this one, I'm an ASP.NET developer and *gasp* I use CSS layouts. They work, they're accessible and fulfil Section 508, WAI guidelines and *gasp* UK Disability Discrimination Act law from 2004 onwards.
CSS layouts, arguably, are more difficult to create, but that is because a new level of understanding about how each browser interprets CSS rules (IE6, IE7 and the standards-compliant ones - Firefox, Safari, Opera etc.). It's called browser rendering and border-box model and does require some in-depth research, as CSS can be used to exert some serious presentational power over HTML markup - much more so than tables can or could ever do.
I suggest that if you seriously want some help without offending a lot of people who use this extremely powerful method to produce high-quality, accessible, functional websites, then go to www.w3schools.com/css and read up on their tutorials.
Or, if you don't have the time to do it yourself, search for "CSS layouts" on Google and buy a pretty template from one of millions of companies to do the job for you for $10 one-off (I am rubbish at design so this is a good technique for me to get quick mockups).
Or check out this site - www.glish.com/css/ - it gives you the CSS to do a basic two- or three-column layout with header and footer, just like you want, so you can write your own markup and say to your manager "look boss, no tables!".
Not that I don't appreciate that sometimes speed over quality is necessary - my boss has insisted that for speed, my latest creation be done with tables (shudder), and the client isn't too fussed, but CSS layouts are preferable from a semantic perspective.
The idea of CSS layouts is to ensure that ANY device can read what is being rendered even if CSS isn't supported. Ultimately, someone should be able to read the raw markup and make sense of the document. That's semantics and that's about writing good HTML and using CSS to format it, otherwise your markup gets peppered with unnecessary presentational code, which then confuses search engines and your (albeit small) population of blind people who use screen readers to browse the WWW.
Please don't flame again, it's not necessary. We all have to do things in life we don't like, there's no need to take it out on the users of this board.
medicineworker
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