Getting StartED with CSS

Chapter 3. How Can I Improve the Layout of My Text?

Take a look at any page. It doesn't matter whether it's on the Web, in a newspaper, or even in this book. Something that should become fairly obvious is that all pages are laid out as a grid. Headings and paragraphs form blocks that are always aligned in a regular pattern. The grid might not be visible on the page, but the underlying structure is there all the same.

That's why tables became so popular for page layout in the days before CSS could be relied upon. The problem with tables is that, to get the degree of control you want, it's frequently necessary to merge cells and nest tables inside other table cells. Designers who became experts at table layout created some brilliant designs, but ...