Article analysis - absolute positioning pitfalls

The article I looked at this week was Absolute Positioning Pitfalls by Tyssen Design - http://www.tyssendesign.com.au/articles/css/absolute-positioning-pitfalls/. Though this talked a lot about using Dreamweaver to create a site (something I have never done, so its kind of foreign to me) the principle of making design look good, regardless of resolution and screen size, was eye opening. I have seen some poorly done sites that just look terrible for this reason. Most of them look ok on standard settings but when the window is minimized, it begins to go all over the place. I knew that float could screw up a site if not done properly, but using absolutes was news to me.

The reason that this does not work is because when absolutes are used, the elements are not aware of what is happening around them. Meaning, as someone who views the content on a smaller screen, the elements will be the same size as on the larger screen, and the layout will look different, as well as being much more cluttered and disorganized. This was one image that demonstrates what can happen with absolutes. It should have looked like this. It disrupts the nature flow of a site, and tries to smash everything into a area where it just wont fit.

Most people I know use dreamweaver to design, but none have ever talked about this as a drawback. I asked a few friends after reading the article, and they all said that they used the absolutes, because its easy to make, and looks good on their own computer. I plan on learning dreamweaver eventually, but I will have to remember how to get around this obvious problem when using this software to code. This just goes to show that you should know code well enough to find errors that software creates, or omits, so you can create the best site possible.