Advanced CSS Layouts: Step by Step

The Challenge: Replicate WebRef's front page using CSS. The Solution: CSS and lots of iterations.

Rogelio Lizaolo improves on Kwon Ekstrom's CSS version of WebRef's tabled home page. Months in the making, the final design successfully duplicates WebRef's layout without the use of tables. Numerous bugs were discovered in Netscape and Explorer in how they handle CSS, and we found some elegant workarounds to these and other problems. What follows is a step by step CSS layout tutorial that shows how we got to the final design.

Introduction

In Evolution of a Home Page Andy King threw down the gauntlet, challenging readers to duplicate WebRef's tabled (and fabled) home page in CSS. Kwon Ekstrom came up with a solution, that worked in a number of browsers. After investigating his solution, I found a few problems with his design, and thought I'd try and improve on it. Andy, Kwon, and I went back and forth over a number of months tweaking and improving my design. What follows is a step-by-step account of my attempt to duplicate WebRef's table-like layout using CSS, while avoiding some of the bugs and problems found in other implementations.

The ultimate goal is to create a CSS layout that exactly resembles the WebReference.com layout made with tables and also behaves well with small window sizes and large fonts.