Structural markup: code what you mean, mean what you code

While writing the actual CSS is simple, using CSS to do your layouts requires a slightly different way of thinking than most of us are probably used to.

Rather than thinking about things like "this goes here and this goes here" while we are working on a page or a layout, we need to think about the kinds of information in our page and the structure of that information.

We give the most important headline an <h1> tag; subheads get marked up with <h2> tags, etc.; and paragraphs are paragraphs.

This is what is known as "structural" or "semantic" markup.

Instead of putting your content inside of tables and table cells, wrap it in div elements. Give your div elements an id or a class that is descriptive of their content and/or function, rather than their appearance.