CSS Templates
Coincidentally yesterday there was a post on web-graphics.com on the same topic as mine - CSS. In it the author promises an FAQ to help ease the transition from layout tables to CSS. Should be worth the wait. There's also a page to read if you don't really dig why you should care.
The trouble with using CSS isn't the lack of free templates available - there are loads of them - and the numerous sites offering inspiration. The trouble comes when you start to deviate from these "standard" layouts. Sure, there's one to cater for almost all needs, but if you need to change them you better pray you understand CSS, inside and out. Personally, I would rather spend the time getting to know something else better!
Yesterday's comments seemed to split opinion on when was best to use CSS. I'm sure we all agree we should always use it, but we have other things to learn and do, making learning every CSS quirk of every browser out of the question. My advice is to use CSS for layouts if you can find a template close enough to what you want. If not, just do what you can to get what your boss wants. At the end of the day, if it looks okay, it probably is okay. Shoot me down for saying it but I don't think most readers of most sites don't care about semantics or what's going on behind the scenes.
My overall impression at the moment is that the browsers just aren't ready to do what we want to do using CSS. If you want to use CSS you better be ready to make some sacrifices.
I always take inspiration from:
css Zen Garden: The Beauty of CSS Design ({Link}
Coincidentally, the Zen Garden is a perfect example of how CSS can get it as wrong as tables do. Not that there's anything wrong with the CSS (in most cases), but that most of the layouts depend entirely on the static page content. If we know ahead of time exactly how big a paragraph is and where the words will wrap, the whole thing becomes incredibly simple. Unfortunately, most of us live in the real world of dynamic pages, so we don't know. Proportional typefaces mean that tricks like counting characters and dynamically setting heights and positions aren't going to help, either.
CSS is good. Semantic markup is better. Until there's a CSS spec that both allows the ease of use of an HTML table and is supported widely in browsers, though, neither is going to be a complete solution for "designed" dynamic web pages. It's not that I don't use tables; it's that having to makes my blood boil.
Granted, the designs are all based on the same static page, but that's the point of the site. It demonstrates how many different and unique variations can be made out of the same static page, simply by altering the CSS and images. To me their site drives home the point about seperation from content and formatting. I also find the CSS very useful to peruse through. Many of the authors do a good job of commenting hacks they've had to put into CSS to get something to format correctly in browser a or browser b.
Again though, I go there for inspiration. If I want to dive into the technical aspects, I usually start at "A List Apart".