Interesting times to be a web developer, as HTML 5 and CSS 3 are both on the (somewhat distant) horizon. I’ve just written about the Advanced Layout module on CSS3.info, IBM developer works have a nice introduction to the new elements of HTML 5, and Wikipedia has a chart of current browser implementation.
In a few(?) years time, a basic two-column plus header and footer page layout could be as simple and logical as:
body { layout: "aa" "bc" "dd"; } header { position: a; } nav { position: b; } section { position: c; } footer { position: d; }
What a difference that would make to legibility.