Starting with the three column layout I’m debating the best structure.
In all my wanderings I came across this: The Perfect 3 Column Liquid Layout: No CSS hacks. SEO friendly. iPhone compatible.
Anyone familiar with it? Is this taken to be “trickery” by the search engines? Or is it common nowadays.
(did search the title, not seeing it on this forum)
That is actually the best solution i have seen, usually when it comes to making column layouts using DIV’s you need to use hacks because they don’t work in IE 6, 7 & 8 but that looks pretty solid.
You might also like to look at Paul O’Brien’s site, as he has some good guidelines for that, such as:
CSS examples - Three Fluid Columns
Rayzur also has some nice ones, such as this:
Three Column Fluid with 25% Sidebars
I’ve tried that layout (and others similar to it). Not bad, but I actually find it easier to write the CSS from scratch than to adapt someone else’s. Ends up being less work in the end, and then you know the guts of your own site intimately. You might check out css Zen Garden for some good inspiration and information.