As the title says, here are a few links I've gathered over the years on "How to use CSS for layouts". This list has links to information on "why" you should use DIV/CSS for layouts and "how" to use them with tutorials and code.

Why
A better way to build your website
Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered
Ten ways to speed up the download time of your web pages
Nested Tables: About the (ab)use of tables as layout tools in webpages.
Why Tables Are Bad (For Layout) Compared to Semantic HTML + CSS
Why go table free?
Why avoiding tables (for layout) is important
Throwing Tables Out the Window
Integrated Web Design: The Meaning of Semantics (Take I)

How
BonRouge's layouts
pmob.co.uk layouts
newguyinennis layouts
The Noodle Incident: CSS Boxes
glish.com - CSS Layout technique
bluerobot.com - Layout Reservoir
Alistapart - In Search of the Holy Grail
Alistapart - Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins
Alistapart - Faux Columns

Books
Designingwith Web Standards (2nd Edition) by Jeffrey Zeldman
Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook by Dan Cederholm
Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS by Dan Cederholm
CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions by Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Cameron Moll

There's a good start. Feel free to add some more. And let's try to keep this thread with resourceful links. If you have a question, create a thread.

edit

• 2007-02-21: Added some "why" links
• 2007-06-06: Added a "how" link

Great resources there, I'll add to them when I get a chance. It looks like you're going on a crusade against tables, heh.

I don't know if drop-down menus are parts of layouts, but I consider them to be, as they are alternatives to common, collumn menu.http://www.htmldog.com/articles/ has plenty of articles, also regarding layouting forms with CSS, and also it shows the Suckerfish script which enables the :hover pseudo for IE.

I was more looking at the layout in terms of understanding the position and float properties of CSS and how to use them properly. How to create certain layouts like 2 columns fluid or 3, etc...

To me, drop-down menus are just style I guess within the layout.

Did that make sense?

http://cssplay.co.uk has some good script too!

I also found some videos about CSS on YouTube might look for that too.

also if your a beginner you can go to
http://www.w3schools.com/css/

i personaly learned alot there

this is good stuff! many thank youz! - ed havel

Just remember that tables are still fine if people want to use them... many very high-traffic sites use them, I feel that sometimes the forum can seem to alienate people who want to work that way but it's unfair as the important thing is to ensure the sites work, whatever way it's done.

Tables for layout might not fit in with the whole XHMTL/CSS ideal but sometimes people feel that it is easier to do it that way, and I don't think it really matters in the bigger scheme of things... somebody who codes with tables and CSS is doing a fine job... let's just get rid of those horrible font tags, eh, and worry about "purity" when it comes to less important factors later... usability is the main factor, and whilst tables don't degrade as well in many instances as divs they certainly aren't "evil"...

Sean (knowing he's going to stir up a hornet's nest... yikes!)

As this is a resource thread, it might not be appropriate to discuss here, Sean. The main problem is, for a quick reply, tables are often used in very evil manners. We probably won't hate them so much if people made one big table for their layout, but no, they often have dozens of tables on one page. At that point code bloat is really high. And tables aren't exactly easy to HTML-code... They're associated with WYSIWYG editors more.

www.friendsofed.com/ i have learnt a lot by this. here you can get lots of information about CSS and HTML and all. If you want to get more information you can take help from any professional company bcoz i have taken help from http://www.infysolutions.com. I believe it is extremely helpful to everyone .

Two suggestions when coding with css, and Ive learned this the hard way and through trial and error.

#1
The first line in your css should be
*{margin: 0; padding: 0;}

This resets the margin and padding for all elements and normalizes the padding/margins across different browsers.

#2
Encase your page in a wrapper/container div
<div id="wrapper">
<!--all code goes here-->
</div>

Make this wrapper div a fixed width (usually <1024 for 1024x768 resolution).

These two tips will solve a lot of cross browser and cross resolution issues.

Hope this helps

thanks for the information, as a beginner ... this information is very useful for me
regard

Chronocalamity - I completely agree with you when I first started with web design I used w3schools.com for learning everything. The only thing that I would suggest is if you don't go all the way through the catigory you are learning it kind of teaches you some bad things.

Thanks these look great!

That's a nice way to keep things centered. Thanks for sharing the tips

That is a great list of resources, here is one more to add under the layout section w/ pretty much all the different variations you can think of.
All the books listed are great have read all but one of them. I really liked CSS Mastery very well written great examples.
http://www.code-sucks.com/css%20layouts/