Hey, If you look at my website (in profile) you will see there are images and tables. I have been told most, if not all of the template can be done using CSS? Could some one please advise how? I have DW and i use CSS for text and things like that, but i was told i can use CSS to make the layout and search engines prefer it?

Any advice, well appreciated, thanks all...

Sorry - doesn't work on my computer (Macintosh)

But I did look at the source and don't understand all the table cells with little gifs in - what's that all about?

OK just had a second look - the reason it didn't work is that you have only one link on the page, LOL - I'm going to lie down in a darkened room for a few minutes...

Its not that bright is it. I only have one page, i am in a re-design process. I was told that i should have loads of images and then put keywords as the alt? Is this rubbish?

>>Is this rubbish? I'm afraid so. In fact, it is a very dangerous strategy that could get you banned.

Oooo, OK then maybe thats a bad idea. So how does the ALT tag work with the images then. Getting banned is not part of the plan so better get it changed. Thanks for that.

The alt attribute text describes your images, but it can be easily over done.

Google indexes text content first; text that is visible on the page.

BTW, get rid of these tags:
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7">

They do nothing for your page and add bloat to the code. The revisit-after tag is totally useless since none of the significant engines even pay attention to it. And the robots tag isn't doing anything in the form you have it in since you want the engines to follow links and index your pages. Adding the robots tag for that purpose is a waste of code.

And yes, CSS can do what you want rather easily for that particular page design. The green and blue bars near the top can be handled via 2 div's instead of the bulky tables with image spacers. It will also improve SERP ranking slightly. Just remember there are lots of other more important criteria involved with ranking. Your page layout only influences ranking ever so slightly (in the general sense).

Content - visible on the page & displayed correctly - for the visitor - is never a bad thing. If it was - why are you creating a page?

Are there any WYSIWYG editors for making CSS layout? If there is, are there any free ones? I am using DW8, i know it supports CSS but not to sure how or if its WYSIWYG?

CSS is easier to code by hand.

Make the page from headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms.

Banish all <font>, <center> and <br> tags from the code.

Use CSS in an external file to style the major blocks, and use class names to style variants to the main styles (like the footer paragraph, and the navigation list).

dreamweaver 8 should have a CSS wizard to it, I use MX 2004 and that does (8's newer isn't it? lol)

Yeah, 8 Is newer. Its not the text i am having the issues with, its the tables, i am not sure how to create a layout in css and remove the tables but keep the design?

Another CSS thing that confuses me is how do i get different link colors? I can get the hyperlink to change color, but what do i do if i need different hyperlinks to have different colors?

Use class names for elements that are not taking your default page style.

to use CSS to remove the tables, design the site in <div>'s using class names to position the divs absolutely (wherever you want) or relative (related to something else).

I prefer tables coz the layout is easier (and I'm lazy ) but Div's can be useful when tables are being difficult lol

I hope tables never get deprecated to the point that browsers start to ignor them. When you need to create a table that has several rows and columns, divs stink if that were the only method to create such a table. Don't think tables will be going away any time soon as they are still very useful. But alas, there are a good number of instances when Divs are more efficient and condense on page HTML.

>> I hope tables never get deprecated to the point that browsers start to ignor them

I can't see that happening myself - think of the millions (billions?) of pages out there that are based on tables.

Tables are for tabular data, just as lists are for lists.

They will not be deprecated any time soon.