Updating my website so it is standards based

Recently, I upgraded from Microsoft frontpage to Microsoft Expression Web. Aside from the time consuming process of removing useless code from the pages, there is the added complication of trying to comply with W3C standards. Consider the following, Yesterday, I completed The Prisoner Page. Instead of using tables, I used the <div> tag to format page content. During the process one thing became abundantly clear, I do not understand how to use the <div> tag. I have read it should be used instead of tables because tables add extra code to a page. Additionally, tables can only be used for spreadsheet-like data and not for page layout.

That is all well and good; however, setting up <div> tags is time consuming and frustrating at best, at worst the formatting doesn’t work, and the page looks like shit. Furthermore, tables in and of themselves do not add unneeded code to a page when used in combination with separate cascading style sheets. On the contrary, tables are a quick way to ensure accurate formatting. I have read nothing yet that has convinced me otherwise.

Keegan