AndyStephens - 11:19 am on Jan 30, 2007 (gmt 0)

Hi all,

I work in a large govt IT department developing websites. We use CSS for basic stuff like font styling, but still heavily use tables for layout purposes, and is something we take for granted. We are now thinking of making the switch to CSS for page layouts, but the thought of it scares the heck out of me! It would be such a big shift in the way everyone here thinks (and develops). Nobody has much experience of CSS.

After a quick look around the web for advice, one of the first things to hit me was the whole 3-column div issue, with entire websites devoted to the subject - seeing these almost put me off CSS for life! Something like this is so trivial with a table! Another example: we develop a lot of data entry forms (which are essentially 2-column tables); again this is trivial with tables but I can't visualise how it can be done with CSS!

Layouts usually vary from one page to the next, and from one site to the next, so I can't see how practical it would be to create a standard company-wide CSS here without seriously restricting what the developers can do (but maybe that's how I should be tackling the issue: tightening up designs to a smaller, more manageable/standard set).

Just to clarify: we apply a standard "template" to all of our pages (header, footer, menu, etc) to provide a common corporate appearance. I'm not so concerned with this side of things, as the more advanced developers can spend the time getting this written using CSS, and once written is used again and again. While this takes care of the high-level page layout, there is obviously still a degree of layout required on the individual pages that all the other developers churn out day to day (which make use of the above corporate template).

As you can probably tell from the tone of my message, I'm a little worried about the amount of effort, training, etc., that would be involved in moving from tables to CSS layout. Many here are arguing why we should ditch a technique that we can all use without even thinking about it, to something that might mean a ten-fold increase in development time!
I'm sure many of you have gone through the same painful exercise and would be grateful for any tips, advice, resources, etc.

Thanks in advance

Andy