If you are considering trying to do a table-less layout for your web page cause you've been led to believe that this is somehow "more proper", you may want to talk a look at this article on the subject http://www.flownet.com/ron/css-rant.html. The author makes a pretty strong point that using a table-less design does not actually provide for separation of content and semantic layout, it actually makes it worse. And for your trouble you end up with something that doesn't work nearly as well. It's a pretty sound argument and from experience I can attest to the fact that doing multi-column layout without tables is a real pain in the butt.