Re(5): rant on = qw(HTML::Mason Embperl Template etc) ;

[stefan k]

While any HTML that displays in any browser can be considered 'good'

Uh, oh, I don't think I can agree with that. To me a 'good' HTML page has a DTD declaration and conforms with that.

I don't necessarily see a lot of designers using that [CSS].

Just have a quick look at your webserver's logfiles and (depending on your content, of course) you'll maybe find that many of them still come with netscape 4.x (which at least when running on linux displays CSS only when JavaScript is enabled), furthermore a not neglectible amount of surfers still uses netscape 3.x!
Thus you need to find a way of mixing old and new style formatting and staying close to standards plus make it look good. Hell, it's really a sucky job sometimes (good that I do that just as a sideshow :-)

(this is a major HTML designer no-no; if you want pixel-perfect, use PDF)

That is a thing that may be hard to 'sell' to the managers of your company (e.g. when they don't understand much of that silly computer stuff). We tried to do that on our pages <a href="http://www.novelscience.com">.</a> but still some elements (like the navigation bar) should be placed exactly.

There is no golden way. At least to got to keep in mind (and need to really know) what is your target group of people and what are they equipped with.

Regards...	Stefan
you begin bashing the string with a +42 regexp of confusion