Cascading Style Sheets
and Table-Free Layout

How can we use the second incarnation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS2) to achieve table-free columnar layout? This page gives a demo. I have not yet added fancy stuff to my code, to get good fonts, attractive margins, and the like. But by keeping the code simple, I ensure that the basic idea emerges sharply.

To view this page with full styling, you will probably need a browser from 2001 or later. Under the full styling, you get two columns - a narrow yellow sidebar, and a wide main-page column with the text you are now reading. If you have an old browser, the page should degrade more or less smoothly, staying legible while losing some or all of its decoration.

The ideas in the code are taken from http://www.w3.org/2002/03/csslayout-howto, at the World Wide Web Consortium. For further theoretical background, check chapter 9 of Eric A. Meyer, Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2000).