Why Am I Using Css Instead Of Tables??

Just go with what's best for the situation. For example, there is no point in using CSS for tabular display of data.

Anyway, what you did could have been done better using CSS itself.

 

How can people use tables for layouts?

I've never been able to do it. I've made sites before where I've used tables to display SQL results, forms, or parts of a site where using divs would use too much code.

But doing a whole layout in tables? It so....inflexible. When I make a site, I like to never have to see the HTML file again, or open up a PHP file and find tidbits of generated code to edit, which is why CSS is so good - just open up the file, make a change and voila.

Say I had a 2 columned layout - you do it in tables, and you suddenly decide that you eant the columns the other way round - you go into it, and cut the table cell, and paste it somewehre else, or I can do it with divs and CSS, and just go into the CSS file, and change the float order.

Tables make things so much harder to customize - 2 lines of CSS on a div, or f**king around with rows and cells to get the desired effect, which will probably mean I have to add more CSS to the table to get it looking good.

Use what you will, divs are just soooo much quicker and easier to code with than tables.

<div id="header" style="width:780px;>
<div id="header_left" style="float:left; width:20px">Left Side</div>
<div id="header_middle" style="float:left; width:740px">Middle header</div>
<div id="header_right" style="float:right; width:20px">Right Top</div>
</div>

Code (markup):

Ummm...yeah that makes sense, it should look like:

<div>

	<div id="header_left">
		Left Side
	</div>
	
	<div id="header_middle">
		Middle header
	</div>
	
	<div id="header_right">
		Right Top
	</div>
	
</div>

Code (markup):

which is easier to read, style and edit than tables. Or you could just assign an ID to the top div, and leave the others ID-less. If you are going to assign an ID to a tag, then why are you going to put a style on it? It makes no sense. If it was a class, perhaps, since you may want it to behave slightly differently than others of the same class...but meh.

 

I think it was for reference, but you're right it doesn't make sense.

That's what multiple classes are for