Cascading style sheets were formally introduced by the W3C in 1997 and in the nine years since have made gradual progress to becoming a web standard. Although the W3C mandates style sheets instead of HTML formatting for internal styles, many web designers have been slow to adopt CSS.
Graphic designers, especially, have been slow to accept CSS since it does not allow the complex designs made possible by the use of nested tables without concentrated testing and workarounds. That is because CSS is not universally cross-browser compatible. The first release of CSS in 1997 was notorious for breaking on a variety of browsers. The second, and current, release provides more stability but still causes unexpected results on older browsers.
In light of the cross-browser difficulties of CSS. many designers have adopted a hybrid standard, using CSS for styling text but continuing to use nested tables to structure their pages. This provides a measure of stability and control to a web designer who does not have the time or inclination to learn advanced CSS. However, this practice is severely frowned on by both the W3C and by a small but influential group of CSS designers who...