The Max tutorials are fabulous- do the listutorial as well, you'll get lots of use from it. You're also going to need to learn to clear floats, which can be a challenge at first, but once you get the hang of it is easy. Hint- easiest way to clear a float is to wrap it in another float. Oh, and due to the IE margin doubling bug, display: inline; is your friend . . .
You'll want to read about faux column layouts. Since floats only extend down as far as their content, you put a background on the layer BENEATH the float so it appears to continue down, an optical illusion.
If you get hooked, the way I did, you might consider joining the
CSS-discuss mail list which is not for the faint of heart, but these people are the best bunch of mentors any hand coder could possibly want. Most of the links in my bookmarks are to sites developed by the members of the list as they break new ground with css/xhtml. This list is very high powered, populated by names any good webdev is familiar with- Eric Meyers, Holly Bergevin, and many other top css coders. Even if you don't join, bookmark the css-d wiki, since many solutions to common css problems are listed there.
Happy coding!