CSS or Tables? HELP

OK, I've been pulling my hair out for the past week trying to figure out how to make a page work for me... Basically I wanted to have the drop down menus which use layers....and I was under the impression that this meant I had to use DHTML, which I'm still not exactly sure isn't the case, but the bottom line is that I've been using tables, which I love and css as well for other things but never really knew how they could be used in place of tables.... So I just would love some advice, tables? css? if css, then which properties would I be using to position (just an example) and are they really friendly to every browser size? The server this particular site sits on uses Cold Fusion, and php is not an option....just fyi.

CSS can be a pain to write. Since most users use IE 5 or 6 which both render CSS horribly you will pretty much have to bend over backwards to get your site to look the same on each browser. Theoreticaly, though, you should be able to do in anything in CSS that you can do with a table. If you think most of your users will be using an updated browser (version 5 and up) and you don't mind putting some time and effort into learning all the nuances off CSS - then use CSS. It will make your site easier to manage, and in many cases, you can do snazzier stuff with CSS.

Further reading:
http://www.brainjar.com/
http://www.bluerobot.com/
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/properties.html
http://glish.com/css/
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tu...sson/boxes.html

CTSTONE....but you say that IE 5 & 6 render CSS horribly...so then wouldn't people using updated browsers have problems with CSS?

well, they render it horribly compared to say Mozilla Firebird. But you can work around their faults and come up with a CSS that does work. However, I don't believe there are any such workarounds for IE4 - as CSS support was even more dismal then.

When writing CSS, you should aim to design your page so that it can be viewed with or without styles. Take a look at BlueRobot above and find the link to remove styles on the page. The page doesn't look pretty, but it's functional - which is what counts.