Using CSS structure to slice up a layout: Best practice?

Question

I used to use sliced up Photoshop files that where held together in a table to create a very graphic intensive web page.
Now that CSS is the preferred method for creating structure within a web page, Im wondering about the correct method to go about it.
With the tables method I might have had 20 slices to accommodate the graphic areas for rollovers.
Is that still considered ok to do with CSS structuring?
Would that many box areas in CSS simply not work? Would it be overly complex?
How would you accurately position all the graphic pieces?
Would you stack a bunch of graphic slices in one CSS box instead of having several separate boxes?

Answer 1

Is this to be
a) a fixed-width design, centered in the viewport?
or
b) a fluid layout whose width, and dimensions, vary as the vewport is resized?
I presume (a), as this appears to be a print-like-layout you are hoping to put online.  That said, you must know that the appearance of your page will not be precisely what you have carefully created.  For one thing, users may resize text (assuming you allow that, which is highly recommended.)
Thinking mostly about your first layout, but the same could apply in general to all of them:
And again assuming (a) this could likely be done with a single background image in a centered wrapper div, with some of the text in a <p> tag with a two column div-based layout with a footer div, with some text in <p> tags with precisely determined left and top margins, and a ul-based nav menu in the right column, and a footer div with its own portion of the bg to house the footer text.
There are at least a million other ways to do this, and no doubt better suggestions will come along, but there would not be a need to the 12 slices I think you'd mentioned before.  I foresee only two slices with my layout idea.  Perhaps the right column would need its own portion of the bg slice, but i doubt it.  You'd have to try all this out and test in various browsers with different user-controlled text sizes.  But simple is better.
Hope that helps some.  And I hope other, surely better, strategies appear here as well.  I myself am now headed out for a stroll on this typical but cooler than usual  Portland, OR day.  Good luck.
Oh a PS - use text rather than images of text wherever you can reasonably do so on this page, else Search Engines will be stymied.
E. Michael Brandt
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