[quote:61fa01245c="smallbeer"]The the down side is that you're stuck with the document flow structurally[/quote:61fa01245c]
and that's bad because...?
[quote:61fa01245c]...whereas absolutely positioned elements can be placed anywhere in your markup.[/quote:61fa01245c]
and that's better because...?
Imho, tidy, well-structured markup shoud be a target that we all work towards for the sake of easy x-browser/x-platform/x-media interpretation and (not least) for the sake of the next person who may be required to maintain/update your code site.
Meaningfully-structured markup is a semantic ideal, not a technical limitation.
It's ideally meant to about the hierarchy of information during presentation and how we can make it conform in a way that makes as much sense to as many output devices as possible.
If we start urging web standards to accomodate idiosyncratically-structured markup then we only encourage the kind of browser code bloat and support problems that standards was devised to sift out.
[quote:61fa01245c]
The problem I find is, and it really shouldn't be a problem, is say a simple 2 column layout. Left column positioned relatively with a right margin large enough to position absolutely a right column. The problem is, if you want anything to be positioned underneath these divs, a footer in most cases, the left column always has to be longer than the right.
The only way I've gotten around this is to use floats.
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I'm being a bit dense this morning and having trouble picturing what you are describing. Can you knock up an example or post a screenshot as what I'm imagining is not a complex task at all.
Also, why do you consider using floats to be a problematic method?
I'm not sure whether I'm simply not recognising the problem as you describe it or if you're hoping for a solution to a problem which isn't really a problem at all.