CSS has a learning curve yes, so it always going to seem harder than it should be in the beginning, but otherwise it shouldn't make a difference time-wise to create a table or css based layout.
... Until you realize that your fancy CSS doesn't display properly in IE6.
Re:Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
by run4yourlives on Friday January 18, 2008 @07:11PM
(#100624)
Which, on a site like this, can be safely ignored! :)
So you admit that fancy CSS for mainstream sites is generally a huge time sink?
Re:Ask YC: Why is YC's layout table based?
by run4yourlives on Friday January 18, 2008 @07:19PM
(#100627)
No, spending time correcting bugs of a browser that 3% of a particular site's users actually use is a waste of time.
Correcting IE6 bugs on a mainstream site is part of the job. (and not that bad once you get the hang of it unless you've got a heavy design)
I'd be very surprised if a CSS version of Hacker news needed any IE hacks at all really.
I kinda wish I could have an outter body experience +add that with time travel, and go back a few months so I can kick my old self in the ASS(twice) for wasting hours trying to make a forums page in all CSS, only to give up and accomplish it with tables, in what felt like seconds compared to the time I had spent previously.
CSS is of course a really good thing, especially if your building a big site(my site still mainly CSS based), But there's no need to spend unneeded time on things that the end user won't see,notice or care.