Originally Posted by Ron Bennett

The GFY forum uses tables for layout.

Ideally, CSS can be used for both style and layout with many websites having gone completely CSS.

However, some sites continue to holdout due to old browsers and various CSS quarks that make some layouts difficult to do in CSS. Three column layouts in CSS is challenging - it can be done, but takes some skill and testing to ensure it stays three columns, while with tables it will stay three columns pretty much no matter what.

Some posters above mention putting CSS data in a separate file - yep, that's commonly how it's done, but not always. vBulletin puts the CSS info into every page. And there are some good reasons for doing that ... if the CSS file doesn't load in time and/or the CSS frequently changes, the user will see a very bad looking page, likely displaying everything in bland colors all in one long column.

Ron