Sometimes it's a pain that the web standards and technologies are forever changing...and I agree with 'jtracking' above that coming back to a CSS-div layout and trying to make heads or tails of it can be a challenge (thus the need for plenty of forethought in nomenclature)...but overall I believe that learning the new standards is worth the effort when you know that the standard is here to stay.

I can't tell you how much SEO benefit using CSS-div layout will have, and tables aren't going anywhere either; so if you really are just doing this as a hobby and don't need to design sites that are up to date, then use tables if it's easier.

Otherwise there are a couple points to consider in your learning and researching CSS:

* Use external CSS files and include them on your pages via the <link> tag...this will allow them to get cached like images and make updating your site so much easier.

* Think about the layout ahead of time, and use intelligent naming for your CSS classes and ids, this will help avoid total confusion when revisiting your layout down the road.

* There is more than one way to do almost everything, each approach to CSS layout has pros and cons (such as using floats vs. absolute positioning to create column layouts).

* Check your work in multiple browsers (IE, FF, Opera, Safari, NN), since they will all handle it slightly or radically (IE) different.

* Look at graphics differently, since you will no longer have to chop them up into bitty pieces in order to make your layout work.

* Have fun...since it can be fun and really creative to break out of the box and be able to place any element anywhere on the page and even overlapping other elements.

Check out this site (for one) to see what can be done with CSS only layout:

css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design

Good luck if you choose to go on the CSS journey, in my opinion, it's worth the learning.