Over the last few years now, I have worked with tableless or almost tableless templates.  I have come to the conclusion, they can work well for sites where you  have control on content, but to build for commecial DNN skins, tableless design does not seem strong enough.

For the last week or so I have been working on a skin that started completely tableless along with a container.  I have been through all kinds of problems and solutions including some issues with using XHTML doc types with DNN on some browsers.  In the beginning, I thought there would be a few headaches as is typical with tableless sites, but this has been quite a nightmare due to CSS limiations, browser incompatibilities and DNN issues.  At the end of the day, I am heading back to a more tabled structure for my commerical skins and containers. 

While I can work around some of the issues and produce a decent site, selling skins for DNN to anyone less than skilled, would cause a great deal of work for the clients as well as support issues.  Some may find find them marketable, but I think the effort involved on both sides is not worth the results.  Until CSS comes up with better options, tools such as DNN will have a hard time dealing with content that does not fit destroying either the content or the layout structure.  Tables just are too elastic and controllable.  This is not a problem with DNN, but more with the limitation of browsers and CSS in general.

I will continue to use tableless design where possible, but I have to give up on the idea of commerical tableless skins that play well with novice users and focus on limiting the number of tables.  There is a big battle still brewing in the designer world and tables are often looked at as abused if used for anything other that data, but in situations such as this with content of unknown size. It is best to have a more flexible structure that looks good even if they content does not fit properly without taking a hit on layout or content.

It is my hope that this might help someone who is considering the same and save them hours if not days trying to get the right solution.  While there are tableless skins out there, often they will break if not handled properly (if keep a close eye on your content).

Hello

I have a tableless skin which uses graphics in the content and in the skin, so far it has held up.

The image features are css based only.

http://www.drivewaydesign.eu

Lynn

@Lee: interesting research, with respect to header tags I think you are right on. Unfortunately, I don't know which of the models your present perform better in search engines. Lately, I have used H2 for container titles and advised content managers to use H2 and or H3 in the text. By doing so I stumbled on little things like that I needed to change the css class of the Title object to have the h2 styling be applied.W.r.t. H1 I will sometimes use it in a Headerpane, never thought about using it around the logo though, I am unsure if it does much good, as the Logo is an image.

@Sam: a few weeks ago I suggested a skinning project team to shaun which could do such things but did not get a reply yet. I think there are plenty of opertunities is this area, starting with writing a better skinning document, generating example skins, maintaining a FAQ with common questions,etc.

Peter