Tables vs CSS-P (was Re: [WEB4LIB] Re: Question 2)

[Kristina Mairi Buhrman]

At 10:25 AM 8/7/2002 -0700, Kevin W. Bishop wrote:
>Think of using CSS for layout (or positioning) as less a "work around" for
>tables and rather a vast improvement that replaces the klunky, messy markup
>that pixel-perfect table layouts require.

I haven't had much luck with using pure CSS-P for creating "liquid" layouts 
(those that rearrange to any new browser window size) with anything more 
complex than a two column style layout. Has anyone had any particular 
problems or successes with this that they could share?

(Currently, a project that's being worked on here has a header, and then 
four columns of information in the main body, and the programmer on the 
project is using fixed width for his tables. I'll be having to take 
elements of this project's design and applying it to the web pages of the 
unit libraries I work for, and I really prefer having the information fit 
the area of presentation, rather than sit frozen in a box, so this is 
currently on my mind. Unfortunately, we need to allow for a large number of 
Netscape 4 users in our audience, and so table-layouts are probably here to 
stay for us for a while. But I would like to have some hints for when the 
time comes that we can move away from tables.)

Thank you for your input.

-Kristina Buhrman  kmb19 at cornell.edu
  Web support specialist
  Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences Libraries
  Cornell University