Web developers and designers that struggle with learning CSS usually cause themselves more trouble than necessary because they try to start applying CSS to a site they've already created with Dreamweaver (or their crutch of choice) and run into so many problems, it seems that CSS is too hard for them to learn or causes too much "extra" work. I try to collect articles both for myself and for friends with questions. Today I ran across another keeper: Virginia DeBolt's Tutorial: The Early Bird Catches the CSS: Planning Structural HTML.
Do you struggle to make the switch to Cascading Style Sheets? Are you using some CSS but can't quite complete the transition to all CSS?
Your problem may be that you are not thinking about Cascading Style Sheets early enough in the process of making a web page. Before you even begin to think about the appearance of your web page, you need to think about the semantic or structural content of your page so that the HTML is “CSS-ready.” This article will help you start your projects by first making your HTML structurally ready for CSS.
A secondary problem that bothers some folks who are trying to switch to CSS is that they haven't made the connection between familiar HTML presentational attributes such as cellpadding, hspace, or align="left" and the equivalent presentational replacements in CSS. After you've learned how to structure your HTML for CSS, I'll show you a chart that will help you understand which properties in CSS can replace those familiar HTML attributes.
I know, I know... as soon as an article says that it is geared toward beginners, many developers will say "I've been writing HTML for a decade, this isn't for me!" but if you're still writing HTML like it was 1999, you need to step into the 21st century. Why? Because people who have only been writing and designing web sites for a couple years learned things the right way, the modern way, and aren't stuck in the last century. In this industry, you either evolve, die, or become middle-management. Wait... are those last 2 the same thing?