The days of using HTML tables to layout the content on your website are well and truly gone, although a surprising amount of websites still use them. The main bugbear in using tables for layout is that they weren't designed to be used in such a way, their sole purpose is to display tabular information - so unless your website presentation resembles an Excel spreadsheet they aren't the way to go.
Something else that quickly becomes apparent with table-based websites is their difficulty to maintain - the presentation is so tangled up in the content that even a minor layout change is a nightmare.
The solution to all this is to use Cascading Style Sheets, a method that truly separates content from presentation. Of course CSS isn't a new concept as it's been around for a number of years, but it is constantly evolving. And in this evolution is a tangled mess of browser support, compliance, non-compliance and bugs.
In a perfect world, CSS design is simple - in reality, it's anything but as each browser from Firefox and Safari through to the much maligned but virtually de facto Internet Explorer have their own little quirks in how they choose to interpret the CSS. In fact, they vary greatly from version to version (IE5, 6 and 7 anyone?) and browser behaviour can even be affected due to running in quirks or standard mode (yes IE6, I'm looking at you).
So, will we ever reach a point where all browsers are equal in their interpretation of CSS? Right now that seems like nothing but a pipe dream, but we can only hope.
In the meantime, I will continue to strive for full cross-browser support in all my website design projects.
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