I hate Cascading Style Sheets. (*.css) I’m getting too old.
Dale
Oh, no way, Dale. CSS rock.
It’s still a bit hit and miss doing column layouts just with divs and CSS instead of tables, but for everything else they are the way to go.
The problems are usually due to Internet Explorer being crap and not being standards compliant.
Amen to that, dude. However, I have to agree with Dale that css is largely a pain in the butt unless you are publishing entire books on the web, in which case they are great time savers for making everything the same. But for just publishing a personal page they are more trouble than they’re worth.
djm
You know, I do, too. It’s so annoying. You wake up in the middle of the night naked and freezing.
Canning the satin sheets will help a lot. If you get a better duvet, the kind that will sift down around you, and cover it in a high thread-count cover, or, better yet, flannel, so that the sifting is not impeded, and do not use a sheet beneath it, so that a “ski slope” effect is not created, this will not happen.
Always happy to help, Dale.
Nope. Even for a single page they make things more controllable, more flexible. They keep page file sizes down, and there are things that you can do with CSS that you just can’t do with old school HTML. Mouseover link effects without JavaScript, for example.
I have a good friend in my office who is a confirmed luddite, and who was CSS sceptic. He is now converted. I never met anyone I couldn’t convince of the benefits and advantages of CSS.
It’s just a learning curve, like anything else.
I work on small sites, medium sites and a big corporate site. CSS has improved ALL of them.
OK, simple stuff aside, I defy anyone to remain unimpressed by:
http://www.csszengarden.com/
Check out the links on the right hand side - it’s the same web page, only the style sheet changes. Awesome.
If you have specific CSS probs just PM or email me. I’ll be happy to convert you! 
Hmm, only the first two loaded, the rest went spinning for over 60 secs (my attention span for downloads). Too many people accessing the site at the same time, perhaps?
djm
Okay…I failed…I am impressed. 
I’m absolutely sold on the IDEA. It’s just the implementation. I’ll be in touch.
Now you’ve done it buddhu…looks like Dale is headed over for a lesson! 
I did something like this on my site, before I totally revamped it recently. I had 4 different layouts you could choose from, and your choice would “stick” via cookie. I didn’t use css, though..I used vbscript and ASP. In all honesty, css would have probably been easier.
What’s the reason behind all this torture Dale? Cat vomit, Times New Roman, CSS… me thinks you should consider becoming a lumberjack.
For most of my personal and community sites these days I use an open source portal script called e107 which I get from www.e107.org . e107 runs on PHP and MySQL and has built in forums, news posting, calendar etc etc etc. It was originally written by a fine chap known as “jalist”, but is now improved by a full development team. I recommend it.
Some of the themes available for that system feature the style/layout thing you describe, Greg, but in that case it is done with CSS.
Due to time constraints, I don’t do as much actual web design as I used to, nor as much as I’d like, but when I do it is invariably CSS-based. The use of the FONT tag should be punishable by a prolonged period in the stocks.
No probs, Dale. I’ll get back to you after work when I’ve had a chance to check out the stuff you sent.