rocknbil - 9:56 pm on Jan 30, 2007 (gmt 0)

As a recovering table junkie, I can say you are best advised to make this a slow transition. In the real world we have to keep things running and can't ask our company and clients to wait two or three months while we become experts as CSS-based layouts. :-)

I began by first eliminating nested tables. This, really, is a requirement of accessibility guidelines - so beat this one first.

During this process, begin using a valid document type. This directly has nothing to do with your transition, but using a valid document type will teach you a LOT about CSS, and it will also enable some widgets that are not available in quirks mode. That is, some CSS rules don't work correctly in quirks mode.

Then on the next revisit to the page, explore how you might get rid of the main layout table altogether - by this time you will have more of a grip on how divs work in layouts, and whether it's going to be more difficult to make it tableless than to stick with a bare-bones table framework. This is expecially true if your content varies greatly in size and demand, as in a company CMS.

In the end, you will find that tables are not ready to give up the ghost completely in some situations. Although purists will flame you endlessly for tabling a layout, sometimes you have your reasons. :-) It will still validate and is not the end of the world.