Tutorial 18: CSS Positioning, Part I
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A while back I covered HTML tables in HTML with Style. In Tutorial 11 I mentioned that by far the most popular use of HTML tables on the Web today is page layout. I also went to great lengths to explain why this is a bad thing, and should be avoided.
In my typically original way, I have provided you with the problem before the solution. I can even pretend this was a good thing. However, what I'm sure a lot of you will be asking is, if not tables, then what?
The answer is a bunch of CSS properties collectively called CSS positioning. CSS positioning can be used to do a lot of cool things. Most "Dynamic HTML" techniques use and manipulate CSS positioning properties to achieve flashy effects. Some uses of positioning properties can even be used to replace despised HTML frames, but for this tutorial we'll concentrate on their use for layout.
In this tutorial, we'll take a look at the theory behind CSS-based page layout, and explain how to do things according to the specification. In the next tutorial, we'll put this theory to the test and see how you can work around the numerous bugs in most modern browsers in order to achieve the effects you desire.
