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What a genuinely bizarre thing to say.

CSS ... makes updates and general maintenance a pain. We've done a few sites that way and they are the ones I hate working on when [the] client calls with updates, enhancements, etc

Updates/maintenance is one of CSS's strongest points. Client wants all the links green instead of red? Look in my style.css, change a { color:#f00; } to a { color:#0f0; } - instead of pick through 50 pages looking for every <font> tag inside an <a> tag. Client wants the left hand navigation column to be a bit wider? Look in my style.css, change div#leftnav { width: } to something bigger. As opposed to picking through 50 pages trying to work out whether it's the fourth level of nested <table><tr><td> which controls that, or the fifth level.

If he wanted to complain about CSS designs being less consistent than table based ones I could somewhat understand his point. (Although I'd still say he needs to google the IE box model, take his pick from any one of several very easy solutions (including CSS hacks like the Tantek hack; abandoning padding and using only margins, with extra wrapper divs if necessary; serving different CSS to IE via conditional comments...), and then realise the majority of his layout issues have vanished...)

Then again, judging by this:

versus looking up styles

it sounds like he was just lazy and didn't want to learn something new. Looking up styles? Oh noes. Really, you've only got to do professional CSS-based design work for about a fortnight and you've memorised the 90% of the stuff you need on a regular basis. For the more esoteric bits that you do need to look up, it's not like there isn't a vast amount of CSS reference material just one click away.

Tables don't cause any problems if they're done correctly

Well, apart from the huge nest of tables inside cells inside tables inside cells inside tables being (a) a waste of bandwidth and (b) far harder to write and maintain. And being piss-poor for people browsing with screen readers, and by divorcing content from presentation completely all kinds of interesting microformats / data mining / semantic web type of applications become totally impossible.

Obviously I can't argue with the spec as being definitive in theory, but in practice I find this the best manual:

http://dezwozhere.com/links.html

When I give people this link in response to CSS queries, I'm fond of adding "if you can't answer your CSS question within three clicks of that page, your question has no answer (or you chose the wrong three clicks)".

Instead of using some WYSIWYG editor I decided to strike it out on my own and write a page from scratch using the "standards" that the W3C touts.

Writing web pages following the standards is a good thing, but making a complex CSS layout work with some buggy browsers out there is hard. The solution is to not recreate the CSS from scratch, but starting from an already debugged existing layout.
E.g.:

1. http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CssLayouts
2. http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html
3. http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/onetr uelayout/

Too many CSS web developers are trying to reinvent the wheel.

Just my .02 ..
As a college student who has spent the past few years learning "web design" on my own, I'd like to offer a few observations.

1. Design is roughly 80% CSS and 20% HTML.

2. Forget WYSIWYG, I still use notepad

3. Don't feel bad if you have to learn by copying other people's work. Just don't 'release' it, obviously.

4. Don't buy a book, don't take a class - you'll probably learn faster and better on a computer.
http://www.alistapart.com/
http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html
http://glish.com/css/
http://www.csszengarden.com/

5. 'web design' falls somewhere between graphic design (conveying ideas with static images, logos) and creating software (in terms of usability). It needs to look pretty and all, but that's subjective, and you should never let your bells & whistles get in the way of the message you're trying to convey. (and they typically do)

6. Tables should only be used for tabular data
I think that's about it, good luck.

CSS books may be pathetic, but they're also redundant, because the level of CSS documentation on the web is truly awesome.

http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html

I have yet to come across a CSS question that I couldn't answer within 3 clicks of this page. HTH.

Need inspiration?

Go or here

Lots of css goodness, examples, downloadable stuff, etc.

Need inspiration?

Go or here

Lots of css goodness, examples, downloadable stuff, etc.

• CSS Wiki! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Centering advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Centering advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Fix crappy MSIE support! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• tips, tricks and good practice techniques! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Box model Illustrated! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Tutorials, Demos, and Hacks! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices Crib Sheet! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Holly Hack! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• 3 pixel hack! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Firefox webdev plugin! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Mozilla CSS editor! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Debugging Advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Page Building Process! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• selectutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Lists

• listamatic 2 (nested lists)! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• listamatic! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• listutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Piped List! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Floats

• floatutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• float-theory! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Filtering

• Explorer! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• safari filtering! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• filters! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

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