DIV is the new TABLE

Ok, I'm not a web designer by any stretch of the imagination, let alone an expert in building layouts using CSS. On the other hand, I've been using HTML and its offshoots since before it was the standard for the WWW. So I'm puzzled that designers spend pages debating the best way to get, say, a 3-column layout to work well in various browsers using CSS, and that there isn't a straightforward declarative way to do it.

I used to do "desktop publishing" (remember that term?) with a Mac SE, 1 MB of RAM and PageMaker. PageMaker had no problem working with all sorts of page layouts: first creating columns and then adding blocks that lived in, around, across, or through those columns, with and without "flow"... on more or less any size piece of paper ... and it could do WYSIWYG on the Mac SE's tiny monochrome screen while delivering mathematically precise PostScript for prepress work. A different but equally effective view of the world was that of QuarkXPress, where content blocks asserted their own column layout, rather than just snapping to column guides on a page. So it's really not such a hard problem in 2007.

There is a CSS3 draft published over a year ago on multi-column layout. The next step in that process appears to be another draft. I have to believe that someone is overthinking the problem. Start with column count and gutter, all uniform, and go from there. Then go back and add uneven columns, blocks that span multiple columns, flow of content between elements.

Never mind that CSS allows (or could allow) you to flip every switch on every element in a page -- good design should let you do first things first. And the first thing for many page templates is a header-multicolumn-footer layout. CSS without core layout declarations is like a sophisticated office phone where you can't find the number pad.

Defenders of the CSS process may blame the browsers, and there is blame to go around on some well-known bugs. But an overly complex (dare I say overengineered?) spec for how CSS must work doesn't make it easy for browser makers to comply. Instead, it gives them cover. Meanwhile Microsoft and Adobe are edging in on "standard XHTML/CSS" with extremely appealing flow document alternatives. I love Flash, WPF, and WPF/E. But I'd hate to see proprietary runtimes become the only way to deliver top quality design experiences on the web.