A number of our colleges and universities have been redesigning their web sites lately, and there’s some very impressive, beautiful work. Two in particular grabbed my interest: Minnesota State University, Mankato and Normandale Community College have implemented table-less layouts, using valid XHTML and CSS.

Now, I’m not a fanatic about this. I don’t strongly object to using tables for layout, as long as they remain simple. You can get a lot of mileage with basic tables (i.e. not nested in several layers) and CSS. But I do have a general preference for CSS-P and still get excited when I see something as marvelous as Normandale’s site pulled off with style sheets. Gives me hope that we might be able to do this on one of the redesigns that I’m working on this summer. Pointing to the CSS Zen Garden can only get me so far. Highlighting a few of our own colleges and universities who are doing this will carry some weight.