In the concept for the BlueHat Design web site, I decided to avoid using tables for any part of the layout. My goal was standards-based, validated markup accompanied by a style sheet that would handle all of the layout tasks. Really, this should be the goal for any professional web site. Accessability is important and if your site is not readable on your next customer's Blackberry, you could be missing out. Also important is accessability for visually impaired users.

The search for a good three-column layout approach that would hold up in most browsers was not a simple task. I had several false starts before settling on the version used for the main page. I chose not to re-invent the wheel and use a template as a starting point. The one that I finally settled on is from Alex Robinson's Five Easy Companion Pieces. This is one of many options listed here: ThreeColumnLayouts (home of the css-discuss mailing list). I added quite a bit to the template including a wrapper for the content that includes a background image for the left and right borders along with the left column background color. This all could be done without the images, but both the markup and the style sheet were less complicated this way. I've done some fairly extensive testing, and I find the layout works pretty well across the board with the exception of some quirks in Opera 7, Opera 3 and of course, Netscape 4. I drew the line there. If you find bugs, please comment and let me know what browser you're using.