Taking my own medicine

Since we've been talking about web standards, the trend away from html layout hacks and the rising importance of semantic design, XHTML and CSS, I decided to practice what I preach. So I redesigned my home page and associated pages so that they no longer use tables. Now they use an external CSS that defines the look of the pages according to labels (tags) that have meaning. I still have a lot of work to do, including running the site through a validator and checking the pages for accessibility with Bobby...but it's a start. No more spacer gif or nested tables for me :-)

If you're still not convinced, check out Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for Sept 13th, The Need for Web Design Standards. It ain't pretty, but if you want pretty, check out the CSS Zen Garden.