Do people design website layouts with css instead of tables?

I have always though that (and do) when you design a website, you use tables to create the layout. I use dreamweaver, and when i want to create a site i just you the insert table feature, and add the appropriate number of cells and columns.

Yeasterday I was download some on a web design templates and came across a post that said something about know one using tables anymore, and the latest sites are all xhtml (instead of html), and the layouts are designed using css. I had always thought css was just used for the colour, font, mouse over effect, etc on a hyperlink (this is what i have used it for in the past).

Nope, CSS can and should be used for layout too. With divs and CSS you can do almost any layout that you can do with tables. I'm sure other folks will explain why its better and how to do it...

Tables for layout are still very common but css layouts are slowly gaining prominence. You don't want tget left nehind, quick, go here and develop your skills. You have any probelms then let us know and we'll help you out.

Pete.

The short on it is that tables were never meant to be used to create layout, they are suppose to be use for tabular data. But since browsers weren't getting the CSS specifications right, there wasn't much that we could do. Now ... it's getting better. There are still many CSS properties that aren't being used and could make our life simpler but browsers don't support them ... properly.

Definitely read the thread pa007 posted, you'll find pretty much all your answers in there - Resources for learning how to use CSS for layout