Well I finally got round to learning how to do pure CSS layouts
I just thought I would post here and encourage anyone who hasn't looked into this yet checks out the following sites:
A brief intro and a good place to start if you want to get an intro then work out the rest for yourself:
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/old/css_3box_plus_topbox.html
(strangely the image has gone all screwwy since two days ago.....)
Alternatively,
http://www.glish.com/css/
has a few good examples with full source code displayed for those people who just want to steal
and finally back to
http://www.thenoodleincident.com to get some useful browser compatibility workarounds:
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/index.html
I decided to look at the glish examples and try to recreate them all on my own. Its taken about an hour for me to produce the following, which I have uploaded to an old geocities site that I never use!! (sorry if you get popups!)
left column with fluid body:
http://www.geocities.com/whataloadof_crap/pure_css/2_col_F-f.htm
left and right fixed columns with fluid center column:
http://www.geocities.com/whataloadof_crap/pure_css/3_col_F-f-F.htm
left and right fixed columns with two fluid center columns (i made this one up all on my own -wheres the oh-so-proud-of-myself smilie?

):
http://www.geocities.com/whataloadof_crap/pure_css/3_col_F-f-f-F.htm
Single column, fixed size, centered in the page:
http://www.geocities.com/whataloadof_crap/pure_css/Centered.htm
multiple columns, all fluid:
http://www.geocities.com/whataloadof_crap/pure_css/n_col_f-f-f.htm
multiple columns, fixed width, centered on page:
http://www.geocities.com/whataloadof_crap/pure_css/Centered_n_col_F-F-F.htm
The point of this?? It's easier to do than using tables!! I always thought most people didn't do it because it was harder, but when you look at it it is sooooo much easier!!
//edit: I'm thinking of neatening up my code and turning these into tutorials to put on the web, but for the time being please feel free to nick my code if you want. The css files are all in the same folder, with the same names as the html documents but with .css extension....
CSS website design tutorials