I have been struggling on a Joomla site that started out with the quaint idea of table-less design.  If you read any of the jibberish out there the current web development thinking is that tables are passe’ and css-only layout is the way to go.

Great idea.  Let me know when you find a browser that does anything consistently. 

Surprisingly, I have been finding that IE does a better job at layout than FF.  I guess this makes sense as IE accounts for all kinds of developer hacks whereas FF and the like take the high road: if you don’t follow the rules I quit.  However, the result is that IE appears to layout ‘better’ than FF.  So, taking a noble approach really doesn’t work.  Yet another surprise, huh?

Some of the simple things that can be done easily with a table layout but can be done painfully using css: virtually any vertical spacing, being exact about width, ditto height.  These are not unusual features of a web page.  I think it’s great that the W3 committees get together and design really interesting features, but give me something that works, today.