Topic: liquid design

i would like to get some opinions on weather or not it's better to do a liquid design with tables or css.
i saw the links in the faq and checked them out...but i would like real world opinions i guess. i personally
would like to do a site that's css and stay away from tables (if possible) but that was before i knew really what
liquid design was. my site is only just a personal site...but i still want it to look good to everyone.
since i'm newish in this..i'm sure i'll probably be getting in over my head, but that appears to be the only way i can do things.
thanks for any information

If you're about to try to learn a new design technique (i.e., liquid design), I strongly recommend you do it in CSS.

There is much difficulty involved in making CSS layouts work in grids. It often involves complex uses of absolute and relative positioning, and floating. However, CSS was created to be liquid. How so? Built in, it has many different ways of specifying measurements. So instead of just specifying your page all in pixels (px), you can also do it in percentages (%) or relative to the font size (em, en, ex). Sadly, there are always bugs to be worked around. But that doesn't mean that it won't pay off to learn how to do it the "right" way.

I recommend looking around www.alistapart.com and www.glish.com/css for examples, off the top of my head.

Be careful when you say "I want it to look good to everyone."
This can be interpreted in one of two ways; one way is good, the other misguided.

If you mean "I want it to be accessible and 'friendly' to everyone", that is a noble, and absolutely attainable goal.
If, however, you mean "I want it to look exactly the same to everyone", give up now and start applying for jobs at the local newspaper or print shop.

The first goal is absolutely handled by CSS, tables only get in the way.
As slime said, glish and alistapart are excellent resources. May I also recommend Bluerobot, the noodle incident, and eric meyer's book Mastering the Language of Web Design

slime: i'm newish to designing as a whole, i've only tried one web site and it was all done with tables. it was forcefully explained (you know who you are lol) that css was my friend and i HAD to learn it...so that's what i've been doing...or trying to do anyways. i'm right in the middle of working on a layout now, and saw the info about liquid design in 'site reviews' so checked the links. i figure, i may as well learn it and do it now, as not to have to learn it and redesign my site later
mobrul: i do want it to be friendly and accessible to everyone...as well as looking 'realitivly' the same to everyone. i know it won't look exactly the same to everyone because of how the different browsers work...but i don't want it to look completely different in each browser either. i hope i'm not going to go to hell for that lol

thank you both for the links, i'm checking them out right now!

Nah, wanting it to look pretty much the same in multiple browsers is just fine.

Expecting it look pretty much the same in a new browser, and 4 year old browser on the other hand....is a pointless gesture that will effect only a minimal number of people positively, and will effect a great deal of people (including yourself) as well as web-design as whole rather negatively.

=)

In addition to the great resources Slime gave you, make sure to check out the CSS tutorials at the GN, the w3c ( http://w3.org ), and the CSS links section at the GN.

And this may help you retain your sanity when troubleshooting cross-browser issues:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/css2tests/intro.html

It's fairly comprehensive (and comprehensible!) and current through Opera 7 and Safari. It won't help you solve a lot of problems, but it will tell you whether it's the browser's fault. The link in the first paragraph may be useful after you get your feet wet.

This one may be considered controversial in a liquid design thread, but I've found it useful nonetheless and it reminds me that monitor resolution and non-maximized windows aren't the only things to contend with:

Webmonkey: design: Sizing Up the Browsers

HTH!

While I found the 1st site interesting, I am baffled by his condemnation of DOCTYPEs.

He seems to have the wrong idea of what their purpose is...

Yeah, he says the same thing all the time on thelist at evolt. Everything else he says is really good stuff and usually spot-on. Most people ignore that part of whatever he has to say. I've got my faults, he has his...