Wherever fixed width CSS layout is used, the CSS must be rendered by supported internet web browsers, so that a fully-styled version of the page is presented to the user. Thanks to the imminent release of Internet Explorer 8, CSS layout has becoming something everybody can learn to do—no chewing gum or makeshift explosives required. CSS layout is powerful enough, though, that many seemingly grid-like layouts can be emulated using some amount of clever tricks and hacks.
If CSS layout is one of the tools in your Web design arsenal, the sites you build will benefit from the advantages presented here. Another nice thing about a pure CSS layout is that it will be much easier to update the design in the future, I’ll just need to swap out the CSS file and some images.
CSS actually includes a feature that works just like HTML tables: CSS tables. CSS not only gives you greater control over the look of the border (solid, embossed, dotted, or dashed, thick or thin, red or green, etc. CSS simply has more style properties, that can be applied to more page elements, than HTML has ever offered.
How do you go about building a full CSS layout. The short, focused lessons presented in Sams Teach Yourself CSS in 10 Minutes will help you quickly understand CSS and how to immediately apply it to your work. The method, based on positioning colored boxes and testing across a range of browsers, can be used to build a wide range of full-CSS layouts.
